Beware of Hathway DocSIS 3.0 50Mbps connection (Bangalore)

sabby

ex-Mod
This is my own experience after using the connection for 2 weeks+. I had to relocate recently and the place I live in is not covered by ACT yet. So I was searching for good and fast broadband provider at a reasonable price. I found out I have 2 options - 1. Hathway DocSIS 3.0 network which supposedly gives 50Mbps connection 2. TTN FTTH broadband who are promising to give 60Mbps connection.
Since I read more bad review of TTN and Hathway is a relatively well known brand, I went ahead and applied for the HD Stream 2 plan. Here are the plans
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First thing you should notice is that there is no monthly payment option, so once you have paid, you have to stick to them for at least 3 months or more. The above tariff are of course exclusive of taxes. There is also an additional installation charge of around 1100/- which is non-refundable. So I paid a total of 4500/- for 3 months including installation charge. The engineer came after 3 days after calling them a few times to activate the connection. They basically use a cable(thick coaxial) line from their nearby cable line box/hub and add a modem to convert to RJ45 connection for your PC.

Now the problems:
1. Logging In - Even though they advertise it as a login free connection, you actually need to login to their page. Now, unlike ACT broadband, you can not create a PPPoE connection. You must open their website (via direct IP) to login. A lot of the time that server is not reachable or very slow or logs in wrong user. I called the customer care to ask why is it not login free, they replied that it will be provided only after paying 120/- per month which basically gets you a static IP.
Almost forgot, Idle timeout period is a mere 30 minutes, that is if your connection idle for 30 minutes, you need to open their site and login again. :banghead:
2. Downtime - Almost every day I face downtime of 30 minutes, sometimes even a few hours. And that is only in the evening when I'm home, no idea what happens in the day time or in the morning. If I call the customer care (which is another pain that I'll talk next), they will suggest weird solutions such as clear cookies or restart you machine where as I can clearly see the yellow icon and the troubleshooter says I am connected to a network which does not have internet connectivity. In the last 2.5 yrs I used ACT, there were hardly a total of 4-5 downtimes.
3. Customer Care - Whenever I call them, I am placed on a queue of atleast 12-14 or larger. After waiting and burning my phone bill for at least 15 minutes, I hear that I am the next in line and the call gets disconnected. It happened many times. When I was finally able to connect to them after several tries, I complained about it and they just say sorry and that's it. They do not have any support over email whatsoever, I sent a complain of downtime over 8-9 days back and still have not heard from them. I even tweeted them and only response I got was that they started following me.
4. TRAP - Yes, as I mentioned in the beginning, there is no 1 months billing system. You have to subscribe at least of 3 months or 6/9/12 months. So I can not change untill that 3 months expire.

5. Speed - The connection speed is advised as 50Mbps downlink / 5Mbps uplink. So unlike ACT where Upload speed is sometimes even more than download speed, here it is significantly slow and the upload data counts to the FUP. And that is just the advised value. In reality, I usually get between 3Mbps to 5/6Mbps of download speed and yes that is bits not Bytes and those are the values from speedtest.net to chennai/mumbai servers, pings are terrible too. Uplinks are usually around 1-1.5Mbps max.

So there you have it, charging premium for pathetic speed and reliability is the way Hathway chose to go. Once my 3 months get over, I am thinking to move to Craptel/Failtel, yes, hathway is THAT bad.
 
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Sorry to hear about your experience. Dunno what is keeping a good connection being provided by the ISPs.
Govt is doing a good job in keeping 512kbps as the definition for 'broadband', while ministers demand and get exclusive connections/plans.

upload data counts to the FUP.

Isnt this always the case? FUP is applied after certain amount of data traffic has been clocked..
So that means DL + UL. Right?
 
Isnt this always the case? FUP is applied after certain amount of data traffic has been clocked..
So that means DL + UL. Right?
Yup, I just mentioned that since in ACT upload is not counted towards FUP and many of the forum users in Bangalore are used to it. Especially since ACT is the one who started this reasonably fast connection at reasonable charge.
 
Hathway is a company being run by douchebags. 8years back experience with that company still not forgettable, used to spend atleast 400 mins every month to that company's CC and parents used to think i am talking to my GF.

Faggots come back in hyderabad selling 50mbps plan for 400 bucks/month few months back. The same day i called them, they say on a 3month plan. Meh.

I think @prateekS had good experience with hathway Docsis 3.0 plan.
 
I stay in Mumbai.. Not bangalore, here Hathway service is decent. Customer care is good. They send technicians within 1-2 hours of complaining and those people actually have some knowledge... About stuff unlike the MTNL people.. I guess it depends on the area franchise..

They didn't charge me tax, God knows why.. Rent free modem and I pay 550/month now.. For 50 mbps till 15gb and 1 mbps after.

MTNL charges me 600+ tax for 2 mbps at night, 1mbos evening 768kbos day.. Unlimited.

I guess ISP service depends on area.
 
Oh 1 more thing.. I had login system on old broadband 2 mbps... This plan has no login for me.. I don't know why u got to login..
 
Been a hathway user since last 9 years and just shifted to Docsis two weeks back. I too was told there would not be any login system so immediately paid 6403 including taxes for the 6 month HD stream 3.

It took them a week to come to install the new modem but the guy informed me that my previous week of usage is free as validity starts only from the day they activate the new plan. The irritating thing was that the login system was still there! On calling their customer care, they said that initially it was a login free connection but from 1st July, all customers would now have to log in.

Since I specifically upgraded to this plan due to the No login system, I wrote a mail to them which as usual wasn't replied to for 5 days. After multiple reminders and marking their nodal office in copy, I got a call from one of their representatives asking what the problem was and she had the cheek to ask me to pay extra for a static IP. I refused and told her to waive it off to which she said she would check what she can do.

I then got a call from the sales guy who informed me of this package in the first place admitting his mistake and saying that static ips are no longer provided for free etc etc but since he committed he said he would get it done for these 6 months for free but after that the login system would be back! Got it done yesterday and all working fine.

As for the connection itself, it's been working fine last two weeks with no downtime. Speed test shows up to 55Mbps down and 4-5Mbps up. I doubt uploads count towards data usage with hathway (never has in the last 9 years) and doesn't seem to be the case now as well. What i had realised over the years is that if the connection is stable you are sorted however incase of issues, they take forever to reply! Thankfully no such issues here.
 
beam never used to calculate uploads into fup. even after fup, the upload speeds used to be 15mbps for me.
 
Apart from the regular small downtimes, Connection is completely down since 30hrs. Have raised a complaint and waiting for their engineer to show up.
 
So it's been about 2 months now with the new connection and thankfully no issues at all except one day when it was down for four-hours due to a server issue. No downtime at all beside that. Speed has consistently been above 40mbps down and 3.5-4 mbps up.
 
Hathway seems to be topping charts at ookla's Netindex because of their 50mbps plan being standard. they could try to be another Beam in future.
 
Hi,

I am also facing the same challenge from Hathway. I have moved from act 20mbps to Hathway 50mbps 6 months connection just 2 weeks ago

I am getting only average of 2mbps always and need to login

I am trapped now and I have requested to cancel the account and my connection is just 2 weeks old.
 
Heads up, ACT is now available in HSR layout, at least in 1st sector. Hopefully their service here will be similar to what I had in HBR Layout in the last 3 year. I switched to TTN for last 2 months which is better than Hathway but still sucks at peak time. If ACT can deliver, Hathway and TTN will probably loose their 80% customer base.

Update: Its been 10 days, still haven't received the ACT connection. They need to better than that.
 
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Hear my story. It has been around a week since in got hathway HD stream 2 connection in K.R puram, Bangalore. I got ABOVE 50 mbps most of the time. Today it became down but within 4hrs of calling C.Care it became proper again. There was no waiting for support. Overall I would rank hathway 5 stars. I dont know about others but I think Hathway is better than ACT since it provides more speed which is required. ACT offers more data for less speed.
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