Moving to Airtel VFiber from ACT: Questions

S

skoka123

Adept
Hi,

I am from Hyderabad. I am planning to move to Airtel's Vfiber from ACT. What has been your experience with Airtel's VFiber? How good is the 100 mbps plan. Do you really get 100 mbps on both download and upload? The same question for the 40 mbps plan too. The primary reason I am moving to Airtel are the following.

  1. Free Landline connection (BSNL stopped providing landline in my area)
  2. ACT does not have anybody to respond to any complaints after 6:00 PM. Any complaint logged has to wait until the next morning.
How good / easy is it to get Airtel to stop me billing when I ask for disconnection?

How do I ensure that ACT will stop the service end of this month and not generate bill for the next month? @swatkats might be able to help!
 
In Bangalore, experience with Airtel VFiber is good till now. I shifted to Airtel 3 months back, on 100mbps plan and speed test shows speed in the range 100-110mbps, for both upload and download.
 
mathrisk said:
In Bangalore, experience with Airtel VFiber is good till now. I shifted to Airtel 3 months back, on 100mbps plan and speed test shows speed in the range 100-110mbps, for both upload and download.
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OK. Thanks.

Do you know how easy it is to not get them from billing you in case of request for service termination? I had one hell of a time when I asked Reliance Communications to terminate FWT connection in 2004. I kept getting bills and threatening calls for non payment and arbitration requests etc. Thankfully in those days there was no CIBIL.
 
Does telecom bill affect your CIBIL score ?

Btw, I had some bad experience with termination of Airtel connection in Kolkata, back in 2011. I had applied for relocation but since the new area wasn't under their coverage, I raised for termination. The mistake I did was doing everything over the phone with CC. I never mailed anybody and hence didn't had any proof. They didn't terminate the line and kept sending bills for 4 months and even got a call from some 'lawyer' from Delhi. Later to stop the hassle, I paid some negotiated amount. Lesson learnt, always keep email trace and always get to Nodal officer.
The social media team is also good these days.
 
mathrisk said:
In Bangalore, experience with Airtel VFiber is good till now. I shifted to Airtel 3 months back, on 100mbps plan and speed test shows speed in the range 100-110mbps, for both upload and download.
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What is the modem / router they have provided (Make and Model please)? Can this be connected to our home router?
 
skoka123 said:
What is the modem / router they have provided (Make and Model please)? Can this be connected to our home router?
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They gave me Huawei HG8145V. Its a dual band ONT.
From this you can connect any router via ethernet, if thats what you asked.
 
Do check if you get 100 Mbps. I was informed yes but the guys giving the connection said only 40 Mbps.

I have both Airtel and ACT, both have been consistently good including customer service.
 
ajackson said:
Do check if you get 100 Mbps. I was informed yes but the guys giving the connection said only 40 Mbps.

I have both Airtel and ACT, both have been consistently good including customer service.
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I am pretty sure it is the newer VFiber as they are able to provide even 300 mbps in my locality.

Last night ACT connection went down after almost a year. Service is yet to be restored. This is the problem with ACT. Any service disruption after 6 PM you need to wait until 10 AM to get it restored.

How is it with Airtel? His quickly do they restore service disruptions reported after 8 PM?
 
skoka123 said:
I am pretty sure it is the newer VFiber as they are able to provide even 300 mbps in my locality.

Last night ACT connection went down after almost a year. Service is yet to be restored. This is the problem with ACT. Any service disruption after 6 PM you need to wait until 10 AM to get it restored.

How is it with Airtel? His quickly do they restore service disruptions reported after 8 PM?
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I had both down at the same time (probably folks cutting wires during the immersion) and Act was up and running next day morning while Airtel took till evening the next day.

Also, Act is easier to register a complaint via their app (I'm on Jio) vs. Airtel that needs you to call their customer care.

But Act is also highway robbery for their FUP of 750 GB, Airtel gives FUP of 3.3 TB and both Hathway and You Broadband have unlimited plans in my area.

I'm just waiting till news on Jio rollout... otherwise I'll make a move to one of the unlimited plans, keep Airtel, and dump Act unless of course they improve FUP limits.
 
ajackson said:
I had both down at the same time (probably folks cutting wires during the immersion) and Act was up and running next day morning while Airtel took till evening the next day.
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Airtel is supposed to run the cable below the ground and that is the main reason it does not have frequent cuts in cable in my area but do they run the cable above the ground also?
 
skoka123 said:
How is it with Airtel? His quickly do they restore service disruptions reported after 8 PM?
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Nothing until the next morning. They will talk to you, are available 24/7 and tell you to try things. But that's the bottom line if the problem is from their end.

I've been with them since 2006. Still not shifted to vfiber though. They have been bugging me about it for the last two years[DOUBLEPOST=1538069200][/DOUBLEPOST]
technofast said:
Airtel is supposed to run the cable below the ground and that is the main reason it does not have frequent cuts in cable in my area but do they run the cable above the ground also?
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This is the reason i've not shifted to vfiber. My present cable is underground. I've not heard whether this vfiber will also be underground and nobody can give me a clear answer. Its harder to splice fibre than copper pairs. Certainly doable with the right people & equipment though. But coconut trees are everywhere even in the city and fronds do fall when its windy or raining a lot. Entire trees can topple in those circumstances

my disconnect record is about once in ten years due to cable failure. Meaning no dial tone.

The other times i have no connection was because their login server crashed and wouldn't give me an IP. That happens more frequently. That gets fixed by 7am next morning
 
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technofast said:
Airtel is supposed to run the cable below the ground and that is the main reason it does not have frequent cuts in cable in my area but do they run the cable above the ground also?
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I'm really not aware whether it's underground.

But customer service is good with Airtel and they are available on call. With Act you cannot get them on phone easily, but you can raise a ticket on their app.

In terms of performance not much to differentiate between both. I've tested on Netflix, Prime, Alexa devices, etc. and no issues with even 4K streaming. Both work flawlessly.
 
With Airtel, ask them beforehand what speeds they can offer in your house / building. In my area, they have been advertising 100mbps V-Fiber but best speeds available in my building were only 2mbps. This was because of distance from node. Eventually shifted to ACT due to this. Speeds are much better with ACT but latency is not great

Have experienced customer service from both. Airtel has the advantage of being able to reach them on the phone but their response time is actually slower. Their service engineers also dont seem to be as well trained. ACT responds much quicker (last time I raised a complaint at 11am and the service engineer was at my house by 2pm). Their engineers are also better trained. However, they can only be reached on the app.
 
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I have both. Their advertised V-Fiber only ends up giving me 8-10mbps speed as they claim my home is too far from their exchange. ACT on the other hand gives what they promise. I have a 1gbps 5999 package and I get 1gbps on most sites that matter to me.

However ACT does go down once in a while (rare but happens once every other month or so) and at those times, the backup airtel connection is a life saver since I work from home quite a bit and have skype meetings all the time.
 
On Hyd Airtel BB since 5 years. Very low downtime as its DSL. Latency was good to game servers but these days I don't game much so can't say how it is now. Speed wise I get 80% of the promised speeds. On 40mbps line I get 28-32 Down and 6-8 Up.
Fun incident: I spoke to customer service about not getting 40 mbps and he explained me that my 32 down + 8 up = 40mbps. :confused: Thats how its intended. Needless to say I was dumbfounded.
 
Chaos said:
However ACT does go down once in a while (rare but happens once every other month or so) and at those times, the backup airtel connection is a life saver since I work from home quite a bit and have skype meetings all the time.
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This is the headache with cables that go over trees instead of underground
 
blr_p said:
This is the headache with cables that go over trees instead of underground
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This is a recent phenomenon actually and only started happening after the metro construction began in Whitefield. The ACT guys claim the metro guys dig haphazardly and damage their cables.

I'm soon moving to a gated community on Sarjapur Road. Gotta see how that area's coverage is with ACT.
 
Be careful with V-Fiber. There are two different implementations both of which Airtel markets as V-Fiber. In some areas, they provide the connectivity via FTTH (Optic Fiber) and the speeds will be as advertised. The other version is where they do VDSL2 over copper telephone lines. In this version, the speeds will get capped drastically based on your distance from exchange irrespective of the plan. In order to get 100Mbps, you must be within 150m from the exchange and you get capped to 20 Mbps if you are more than 300m.

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skoka123 said:
OK. Thanks.

Do you know how easy it is to not get them from billing you in case of request for service termination? I had one hell of a time when I asked Reliance Communications to terminate FWT connection in 2004. I kept getting bills and threatening calls for non payment and arbitration requests etc. Thankfully in those days there was no CIBIL.
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ACT doesn't do this. They seem to be way better at handling disconnection requests. Unlike Airtel and Reliance brigade, they seem to understand the concept that what ever the reason for disconnection, a customer might come back to them after a while and that its not a good idea to piss them off and give them concrete reasons to not go back.

Based on personal experience (from last year), ACT will suspend the account promptly and won't charge you. They will however keep sending you personalized offers (like special plans, free usage, extra data limit etc) via SMS occasionally to entice you back.
 
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