I was chatting with a friend recently and advising them on getting an AP/router since their Jio-provided one was absolute dogshit when it comes to signal strength/directionality control and due to that, they weren’t getting good coverage in the adjacent room. I assumed it should be fairly easy even with Jio’s shady lockdowns of config to disable WLAN entirely and bridge to his new AP that’ll take care of WiFi. I am realizing their anti-consumer tactics have gotten way worse.
There is apparently no way to disable WLAN on JioFiber home routers. All I can see from Google searches are about a “visibility” setting that also doesn’t seem to work. How is it justified that after spending shit-ton of money monthly on Fiber plan, even paying for the darn router that you as the consumer can’t control what happens with the said device in your own personal property? AFAIK, this used to be at least controllable in the past but has been locked down even further even though there’s no technical reason not to allow someone to turn on/off WiFi.
Friend tried contacting their customer support but they have been ghosting him for a while, closing any open tickets without justification.
It’s not like we’re asking for their dogshit router. We’d be happy to skip the rent and get our own routers if there was a choice. But they don’t give us that choice.
This WLAN control situation is just the tip. We should honestly be allowed to do much more. All we care about is the lease/credentials to connect to their network and the internet. What happens in our homes, with our own devices and ecosystem should be under our control which fits our purpose. It’s fine for Jio to give their defaults but if someone chooses to go their own way, Jio shouldn’t stand between and create this stupid friction.
I want to get thoughts from this community about raising consumer court complaints against JioFiber and similar ISPs who are getting off with these tactics.
I’m aware that you can always go with another ISP. True. But this is not always an option. Sometimes, these folks are the only choice or the only reliable one. That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get away with anything and everything. I’m also aware this particular situation can be controlled by faraday-caging the router but that’s not the point of the post.
Jio Fiber & Airtel each share an area. BSNL was good so I took it while Excitel isn’t available there in Hyderabad.
It will take an year for a complaint to be taken into cognizance and for it to be completed.
When I returned the router which the airtel gave with its connection it sent a notice saying it has continued the connection and we went for arbitration and paid a nominal fee and resolved the case in Hyderabad.
Again I was afraid to take either Airtel or Jio because they might again send me a notice even after the connection is terminated. That is why I took the trusted BSNL.
This is horrible indeed what JIO Fibre has done/is doing. Of course no individual has the strength & patience to fight this behemoth! Only a collective effort can make a difference and drag them to court. I don’t ever plan to use Jio Fibre (in Mumbai) as my existing private ISP (Patel earlier Pacenet) is awesome for past 20 yrs.
It will be a difficult fight. How can you prove that the WLAN toggle is your right? Nevertheless, if LAN port works, just connect any router in AP mode, and you will get WiFi. Then just hide the Jio WiFi. It should work. I have used multiple broadbands - Railwire, Bsnl, GTPL. Used Jio for a month and got tired because of the high ping. Switched to GTPL and now it works like a charm. Still using Railwire and BSNL too (different locations)
That sucks to hear. TBH, BSNL aren’t saints either. I caught them injecting ads into my HTML requests a while back and fucking the responses. I’m sure I also read some posts that the ad servers themselves for hijacked by some unknown parties. BSNL back then was known to be desperate to make money since they were losing big time to Jio/Airtel. I don’t think that has changed much since then. I use my local cable operator’s internet these days and that hasn’t given such troubles so far but I’m always on alert and try to use VPN/Private Relay whenever possible.
I used cloudfare DNS only since BSNL blocks steam, Epic and XBox Gamepass sites.
I pay the BSNL bill either using their app or phone pay.
Here in Anupuram, TN private ISPs aren’t allowed so we only have BSNL and if it reduces the prices and give high speeds it will be benevolent to Gamers and Video editing guys.
Recently I found that the ISP provided router is currently completely locked out.
I can login with the credentials I have, but none of the networking configurations as user modifiable.
I wanted to add devices to the local DHCP server for static IP assignment and currently it is a no-go.
I tried creating a ticket but as usual I got some weird response, and the ticket was immediately closed.
But looking at the posts I don’t see much optimism to try other vendors if they are doing similar stuff.
It is my private space. Just like how leasing a line from Jio doesn’t give them unrestricted access to come and stay at my home and use my space for their whims, applies to the digital space too.
Allowing me to disable WLAN entirely and use my own WLAN means I’m not contributing to overcrowding of the bands that interferes with other devices in my own home and my neighbors’. Disabling WLAN here is the responsible and ethical thing to do so that mine and others’ WiFi access isn’t disruptive.
Allowing me to disable the WLAN can be a personal choice for my own privacy/security. Maybe I don’t want WLAN at all and I prefer to do wired to avoid anyone else attempting to connect to my hotspot.
It is my right to choose an equipment that suits my needs and wants. All I’m asking from Jio is their service. This is not a novel technology — many ISPs already allow for all these provisions in India and across the world. There is no reason for Jio to strong-arm me into buying their locked down device when I can bring my own and they can give me the credentials to connect to their network.
This is not the same as turning off WLAN. They still occupy the signal band for no good reason, which is crowding it and I don’t know what else is connecting to it even in that mode. Why should I simply let it run, waste energy, occupy the band and let someone possibly connect to it?
It is quite the whack-a-mole. AFAIK, no ISP is out there in India being truly consumer and privacy friendly. My LCO (KeralaVision) thankfully doesn’t lock things down so I was able to grab credentials, put the ONT + Router into bridge mode and use my own OpenWrt Pi.
What do you mean by being “not allowed”? Are there rules that monopolizes the internet access or is it just that you don’t have any other options in your locality? I’m guessing it’s the latter.
I’m being a bit nerdy here. But it shouldn’t even have to be that level. I should be able to buy the best consumer-friendly option that I can afford and use it. Whether it’s TP-Link, Asus, D-Link, Ubiquiti or even a DIY setup. Most of the newer hardware are better in terms of performance, standards support, security and everything else.
Most of the newer consumer-grade routers are easy to configure as well.
My point here is definitely about claiming any such T&C to run against* consumer freedom, privacy and choice. T&C shouldn’t be a place to go full-on anti-consumer. They got away with a lot of it but it’s getting to the point even disabling basic features — things we can do on our own phones, laptops and any other reasonable device from a reasonable vendor — is now next to impossible.
Thanks for this. I didn’t expect it’d be very similar to what I do with my cable fiber, except for the weird obfuscation shit going on.
Still, this doesn’t change whatever I stated originally. In fact, given this is a grey area w.r.t T&C, for whatever reason this gets caught, not sure what the consequences would be. I’m curious to know if there have been cases where Jio updates their firmware that changes this whole thing around and breaks folks who are trying to spoof the original boxes. Guessing that might be rare but I’m sure that’s a possibility.
It really shouldn’t be difficult if a customer chooses to get better or preferred hardware to go along with their fiber connection. Same reason we aren’t locked into some weird Jio Smartphone if we want to get a Jio cellular plan (imagine the horror!).
WLAN’s the same thing. Sorry for the confusion. And yes, at least at my friend’s place, there is no visible option. The visibility toggle also doesn’t seem to work. Support tickets get auto closed or ghosted.
WARNING: DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME THINKING GOING THE COURT ROUTE. YOU WILL WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME.
I have tried in case of Jio Airfiber. Wasted a lot of time just getting the complain rejected in consumer court. The system is very complicated, slow, worst to look or get help from.
Local consumer court staffs enjoy sitting and really doesn’t want to help.