Pros:

Excellent customer service. I have two examples here.

1. Ravi(name changed) never faced a downtime for two years, except for this one instance. Upon calling the Airtel CC Portal, he was informed that his problem would be solved within the next 6 hours, the quite expected answer. But the fact that a qualified engineer came within 4 hours of the complaint, and fixed the problem with ease came as a pleasant surprise. Never after the incident did he need to call up the Customer Care again. (He did have another downtime though, which was due to the laying of new cables in his locality. He was informed in advance by the Airtel CC about that.)
2. Shashwat Chugh, another happy Airtel customer, has yet to face a problem with his broadband connection. Though not declared officially, he was promised by the executives, at the time of installation of his connection, that if he ever faced a problem, it would be solved within 24 hours of complaint. If an engineer does not turn up within the aforesaid time limit, the inconvenience would be compensated with a 30% discount in the monthly bill.

Double speeds at night. This has not been declared officially by Airtel on their website, but in about 70% of their covered areas, the speed is doubled at around 11:30-12 p.m, and returned back to normal at around 6:30-7 a.m. The fact that surprised me the most that double speeds are also given to users who have speeds up to 2 Mbps! Shashwat says he gets a constant 3.8 Mbps (400 KBps) at nights.

On studying Airtel’s network, one can most immediately get to know the fact that Airtel’s user base and network areas are very small as compared to big players like MTNL. But Airtel’s strategy has been of providing excellent services in the small base that they have, while simultaneously working on spreading it bit by bit, steadily. They first establish their network in an area, wait for consumers, and when that base is stable with enough consumers, they move on to another area, while maintaining focus on consumer satisfaction.

Airtel has something called SoD (Speed on Demand). This means that you don’t have to change your plan to increase/decrease you speed. You can just buy the new speed as a top-up/patch and pay for it in addition to your usual plan charges. And this service is available online, so you don’t need to write down an application and go to submit it to the Airtel customer outlet.

NetXpert, Airtel’s internet diagnosis, VAS, and live support tool is also a handy little tool, which has been appreciated by many. This provides services such as online radio and email. It also has a live online chat, so that any technical problems relating to your computer can be solved online, for free. This service is useful if your connection is working, but you are facing other problems, relating to software. The executives on this chat, though semi-professional, but are able to help you with small things most of the times.

Airtel gives you games on demand, which are cheaper if you want to try out games for a while.

Cons:

Their greatest drawback is, as I have mentioned above, is their limited coverage area. So before deciding on anything, be sure to check whether Airtel is available in your area or not. Though they are currently not widespread, they promise to go each and every possible corner of India in the future.

Airtel has a wide variety of plans, all of which are, in general, expensive compared to other ISPs in the market. Also, the data limits in plans are nonsensical. They have recently launched an 8 Mbps plan in Bangalore, which has a data limit of 8 GB for Rs. 2000.

Extra services like IPTV are not available.

Hardware provided (router, telephone) are not of a very good quality, and have been a source of criticism to Airtel.

Conclusion

In all, the thing to look at is Airtel’s great customer support. What’s the use of a cheap and fast internet connection if it is down all the time, and you can’t get proper help to fix it? Also, their history suggests that the call center executives are directly linked to the technical department, so they know about latest developments, and are also able to help people on the phone.

So if you are someone who believes in quality and not quantity, Airtel is the ISP to go for. Of course, only if it is available in your area.

Update: Breaking pings on Google is Google’s problem not Airtel’s

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