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
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.
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.
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
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.
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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