Digital India: Modern day dial-up connection on Vodafone 4G!

This speed is like catching bottoms in financial markets, except this sucks if you are in my shoes today.

More often than not businesses don't honour their commitments in India. Hence I have no fixed line internet today as the new provider has failed to complete their installation due on Monday and my subscription on the previous one ended last night as planned.

I'm left to deal with Vodafone's mobile data with their shoddy connectivity. Usually I get 500kbps-1.2 mbps if the phone manages 1 bar of signal to run on LTE/4G in my location.

Today Vodafone wanted to take me down the memory lane to the days of the 56kbps dial-up internet days. But this is more like a 144kbps DSL line running at half capacity. I'm not sure if you remember these old speeds!

It takes the same amount of time to reconnect to mobile data if by chance anyone calls me. It's been a nightmare to get any real work done earlier today.

My regular speed was a 25mbps- unlimited plan for past 4.5 years and my service provider who i've known for more than 20 years lied to me about upgrading my plan during the lockdown. I had major issues with my internet through March-April and he failed to resolve it quickly and when I asked him to upgrade me to a 100 mbps line he lied about doing it.

This unprofessional behaviour pushed me to seek out another service provider finally who was offering 100mbps unlimited plan. I also have a 3rd option JioFiber with some monthly data cap but I can get upto 1 Gbps speeds.

I was half a mind earlier today to go balls to the wall and get the 1 gbps line or 500 mbps line. But honestly, I don't use more than 1 TB per month now so it will go wasted + the extra cost per month isn't justified.

Also, JioFiber which has the 1 gbps line offers an asymmetrical bandwidth which is a bad practice IMO.

Hence, for all practical purposes it means that the 1 gbps line will offer upload speeds of around 80 mbps only. Their 100mbps line offers 7.5 mbps upload as I saw at my neighbour's house.

It's supposed to be 1:10 (Uploads at 1/10th download speed) but in reality the downloads are mostly on point but upload speeds are slightly less than advertised.

Also, my old provider and the one i've selected right now both have ultra low latency/ping which are in the 1-4ms range- just fantastic! I hope I get the advertised speeds with the new one when they complete installation.

All of this makes a difference when you run VPN which I do sometimes so I prefer to have a fast connection which my old provider failed to give all these years.

JioFiber latency is higher than these two but still acceptable. Another pan-India telco called Airtel with good plans doesn't service my area. I have only 4-5 operators in my area currently.

The only way any phone network will work great at my place is in my parking or best if i'm out on the street itself. It's pretty much how i've managed to put this post together by tethering WiFi which is kept at the window.

If you are wondering, I don't live by the countryside and live in a good city where mobile data speeds can range from this shit show to 70 mbps on the same network.

While I'm welcoming myself to digital India 2020, feel free to drop your high speed tests in the comments. Let's see who has the fastest internet around here.

Also, if you remember the dial-up internet days lemme know what it was like for you back in the day!