# Never go for Tata Docomo FTTH



## heidi2521 (Sep 20, 2014)

I had an Airtel connection for a long time until ~3 months ago, when Docomo started offering their FTTH service in my area. Since I really hated SmartBytes, I immediately jumped on board even though the FUP wasn't very much higher for a much higher price. I took their 100mbps/200GB plan because it was the best one available. They took a months payment in advance, which was completely understandable, and then installed the line. However, I've been facing issue after issue with them since then.

1. I never get the full speed. My speed can vary from 512kbps to 95mbps, usually hovering around ~15 in the first month and ~5 now. The technician tells me that I need to do multiple downloads at once in order to get the speed. So I end up doing something like downloading Total War Shogun 2 on Steam, a FTP download of Debain Wheezy, a torrent of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and a regular DDL of Windows 8.1 from Microsoft's website, but the speed total speed doesn't go up. They make the excuse that they offer _upto_ 100mbps.
2. Regular downtime. I get two periods of down time every day, without fail. It can stretch from 5 minutes to a few hours, depending on how their authentication server is feeling. 
3. Random password resets. They give me a  really weak default password, so the first thing I did was reset it and put my own stronger password that is most certainly not comprehensible to the average speaker of <human language>. But then it randomly resets back to one of the two passwords they gave me "Internet" or "Internet1". So wow. Much strong. Great security. Technician tells me that they had to reset the  server. WTF. What sort of data store do they use that it cannot even remember passwords? 
4. Customer support doesn't know how optic fiber works. Each and every time I call them they ask me to check my modem. Like these things come with a modem.
5. Random measuring of data that is used. My connection was down for a week, and yet they managed to measure 66GB of data usage. Works both ways, because downloading ~30 GB in a day still showed up as only 8 GB on their site.
7. Horrible Packet loss. At times I've had packet loss exceeding 50% making using the internet nigh nigh impossible.
8. Terrible routing. Why do I have less ping to Hyderabad or Bangalore than my own city, Kolkata? 8.8.8.8 gives me  ~70ms of ping, Hyderabad and Bangalore servers give me ~30ms and Kolkata gives me 80+. What sort of black magic they use to achieve this, I don't know.
9. At the end of the first month, I get a call from the billing department, asking when I would pay the bill of the first month. I try to explain that it has already been paid long ago. They don't accept it, and call me again, but after some time their site magically shows that no more payment is due, inspite of me not giving them a single paisa. 
10. Promising a waiver for extended downtime and still hitting me with the full bill and the end of the month. In July-August cycle, my internet connection went down, and wasn't working at all due to the line breaking at their end. First they kept on trying to ask me to delete my temp folder, reboot my modem, restart my computer etc. before sending a technician. The technician was unable to find the problem, even though I'd located it long ago, because he was looking at the wrong place. After I threatened to disconnect, they sent two senior technicians who agreed with my diagnosis and had the problem resolved, and promised me a waiver for the extended downtime I had. And yet when I got the bill, it showed the full amount being charged. I tried raising a complaint, but they kept on transferring me from department to department. They finally connected me to their billing department 2 days ago, and have given me the resolution date of 22nd of September. 
11. My connection was down again for the past three days so I called their customer support this morning and asked them to cancel my connection. The representative takes all my details like my name, broadband number, account number, address, reason of disconnection, registered email and phone, alternate contact number, potential name of my first born etc. and then tells me that they are unable to open a ticket, and asks me to write an e-mail, after which they will initiate the disconnection procedure. . I call again in the afternoon, and this time they transfer me to their technical department, who promises that the technician will be at my home before the end of the day and fix the line. But, unsurprisingly, the technician is a no show. I had raised a complaint regarding this on the 17th and was promised that it would be resolved by the 19th. Today is the 20th, and I had downtime until ~5PM in the evening. Even now I am getting speeds of ~2mbps and terrible packet loss.

I plan on walking into their main office tomorrow and handing a disconnection request in person. If you were considering taking a Tata Docomo connection, do reconsider it. This is by far the worst experience I have had with an ISP. Would not recommend.


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## swatkats (Sep 21, 2014)

Looks like I read this case on other forums as well. Anyways, thanks for the heads up.


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## $hadow (Sep 21, 2014)

So someone is still worse than BSNL


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## vidhubhushan (Sep 21, 2014)

jai ho


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## amit.tiger12 (Mar 29, 2015)

FTTH Broadband plans: Compare Airtel, Tata DoCoMo, BSNL and OTHERS : Telecom Vibe


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## rvlkiran (Dec 29, 2015)

OK, thank you for the heads up ! Sounds like things are exactly the same as I remembered. I was a long-ago victim when they were offering DSL broadband (2005-06). At that time they just acquired VSNL and started branding their Internet service as Tata Indicom. They didn't have permissions to lay underground cables, so they used to pull their cables from trees, buildings etc like your local cable operator. Inevitably whenever a tall truck passes through the road, it will snap the cable and I used to have 2-3 days of downtime, exactly when I needed the Internet the most (i.e., weekends/holidays at home). And the same fights with the billing department. After 6 months of torture, I had enough. For disconnection, I think I gave a written request to one of their technicians at that time.

My next step was to go to BSNL, and I would say they're quite reasonable. With DSL I had may be 1-2 days outage in 6 months, half a day outage once a month etc. Way better than Tata Indicom/VSNL. I moved up to BSNL FTTH later on and it was decent in the beginning. But the Internet speeds were going down with each passing month - For a 20 mbps connection I was typically getting 2 to 8 mbps.

After I shifted my home, I'm with Airtel FTTH and have a wonderful experience so far. I'm on 16 mbps plan and the speed exactly measures 16 mbps download & 2.5 mbps upload whenever I check.

I'm getting pamphlets from Tata Docomo FTTH recently with matching plans similar to Airtel, so I was just wondering how it was. After reading your horror story, I'm freshly reminded of my old experience like a slap on my face - never going to try Tata Docomo.


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