I am using at Tata Indicom Broadband connection (unlimited 1Mbps plan) as a backup broadband connection in Kolkata. Browsing the web you will find several pretty negative experiences with Tata Indicom Broadband connection (provided below). Here is a review of experiences with Tata Indicom Broadband connection; must-read if you are considering Tata Indicom broadband for home or business.

Tata Indicom Broadband Review
Overall the impression on the net is very negative about connection quality and service.

15 Things you get with them -
1. Headache
2. 24/7 Tensions
3. Losing Money Pre Paid for the Connection
4. Sucking(I did mean Sucking) Pain
5. Too Bad Support who just forward you to many many concerned departments
6. Losing lot of money by calling them daily but getting no replies from them
7. Switched off phones - Service Line guys
8. 1 Month minimum New Connection Waiting Time.
9. No Refund for the payments made ie A Dead Investment
10. No Extra Credit Days even though their servers are down(Fuc**d up)
11. No Amount in your account even if you have paid a 3 Months pre paid
12. A Used Second Hand Router which does not work every 5th day and a TATA Indicom support guy comes after a minimum of 48 hours to replace it and get some Bribe for that.
13. Customer Service Helpline number which changes frequently so you cannot book a complain easily :(
14. Value Added Services like Link Down, Bad Connection, Bad Routers
15. These Guys who install the hubs on rental basis never pay their rents and in return we End Customers lose the connections.

Source

This article simply points to the one above but has one commenter who lauds Tata Indicom from Pune. Rest of the comments are all disparaging.

Tata Indicom Broadband ConnectivitySandip had awful experience with Tata Indicom in Delhi, coupled with clueless, poor and unresponsive customer support.

What I didn’t realize while taking the connection, was that Tata Indicom Broadband is just Dishnet DSL with a new name, and it comes with Dishnet DSL’s “renowed” or shall we say notorious service record. Right now, in my last five weeks of subscription, the line has been unusable for two - that makes it a 20% downtime!

The stats displayed that he downloaded data even when his connection was down. You should be afraid of taking data limited plans with them.

Best of all his smokeping results (above) are very informative about their service quality.

Getting their connection appears to be a nightmare.

I'm a Tata Indicom Broadband Subscriber from Thudiyaloor, Coimbatore. From the begining, my experience with tata has been disgusting. I applied for my connection 27-02-2006 ( application number: 0767209 ) and Mr. R. Vinoth Kumar ( sales exec. ) said it'll be 15 days before he can give the connection. Even after a month I hadn't recived the connection! The connection finally came on 16-05-2006 after repeated visits to your office and meeting you Coimbatore Manager, Mr. Ramesh. They would'nt even refund my cheque, I'd applied for the pre-paid connection with advance rental for 64kbps unlimited. I've spent more than rs. 250/- in petrol just visiting the TATA office to ask them to put up my connection. I couldn't even switch to another service provider because I'd paid TATA already - TATA was holding me for ransom! Even after I got the connection, there was frequent downtime like 5 hours a day which is unacceptable - I wonder which idiot at ISO certified your network. Now,
my connection hasn't been working for the past 48 hours.

Source
Overall the feeling of this thread is pretty negative too.

Sourabh too has only bad things to say and so are the comments on his blog.

Tata Indicom Broadband in Kolkata
In my experience I have seen broadband connection quality varies with region and last-mile connectivity issues. Despite the strong negative experiences above I am still considering Tata Indicom Broadband as my secondary connection because:

  1. Lack of viable alternatives:
    • Airtel Broadband is not available at my location.
    • Reliance Broadband is a joke on the word Broadband when I last tried. Their speed was pathetic.
    • BSNL Dataone Broadband sucks; yet it is still my primary connection due to lack of better alternatives and reasonable price. Having it as a secondary connection too is out of question.
    • Alliance Broadband was unreliable and slow when I last tried about a year back. I have been on and off Alliance Broadband for sometime for this reason. I want to try something new before being forced to switch back to Alliance as fait-accompli.
  2. I had reasonable experience with VSNL dialup connection in the past. Also it will merely supplant and act as backup for my primary connection.
  3. VSNL is the backbone provider for India. It is not unreasonable to expect that they would soon clean up their act. Am I being unreasonable in my expectations?
  4. They have a reasonable 1Mbps and 2Mbps unlimited plans.
  5. One static IP with every connection. While I do not plan to host my websites on Tata Indicom, having a static IP on local connection helps significantly in providing security on my customer facing websites and for backup purposes (more on it later).

What is missing from this picture is feedback from VSNL Broadband subscribers from Kolkata. If you are a Tata Indicom Broadband subscriber from Kolkata, please speak up and let us know about your experiences.

Update: Read my recent review of Tata Indicom Broadband PostPaid Connection for another viewpoint from personal experience. My personal impression from Kolkata has been extremely negative to say the least.