My home Internet access for the last 18 months has been thru LG2030 Reliance Rconnect plan. Been quiet a happy camper with this setup – reliable and steady 144kbps connection via USB/Serial port on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux. The best part of using Rconnect is that it would work anywhere in India and at the same rates. This was a killer deal. The only downside to Rconnect is its min 300sec latency to any host which I found to be grossly annoying when I would go oncall and needed a (almost) real time experience over SSH.
I always wanted to switch to DSL but the high entry cost and the usage based billing always put me off. However, I chanced upon the Airtel booth at foss.in/2005 and learnt that a Rs500 down payment with Rs999 pm will get me unlimited usage @256kbps. This is way better than the Rs1008 pm which I pay for Rconnect.
The link is up and stable for the moment. However, Airtel is not without its set of problems.
Probably another week before I can call the Airtel link production worthy for my use. Meanwhile, I have downgraded my Rconnect plan from the 650 plan to the zero rental one where you pay per minute. No plans to hang up Reliance connection yet, it has proved to be a life saver on many occasions during oncall periods.
