The rotten state of connectivity

In this era of online world, being connected all the time is an expectation that all of us have. Being off the network for a few moments is almost like we aren't able to breathe. Checking WhatsApp messages every few minutes is the way of life and if there are no new messages, it is almost like a depressing feeling.

From a time 'what is internet?', to having multiple connections at home, now, is very common. These connections would be in the form of a broadband/cable internet/wi fi router at home, and also the mobile network from 2G to 3G to 4G. 

For a long time I was a user of Vodafone and when they started to get subscribers to upgrade to 4G, i realized that it wasn't working on my Xiaomi Mi phone. After many months of back and forth, we finally figured out that the frequency on which Vodafone was operating the 4G services, wasn't supported by my Mi phone. So I could now either change my phone or change my network. 

Interesting, all in my family were on Vodafone, so even if my phone wasn't catching the 4G network, my wife's phone could, but it was also mostly showing 3G. We finally concluded that though Vodafone had given us what they claimed was a 4G sim, but the services were definitely not there yet. Eventually, I had my all our numbers ported over to Airtel. 

For the first few months Airtel's 4G service was awesome. Coming off Vodafone, anything would have seemed awesome, but this was really good. Messages didn't had any issue anyway, but videos, songs etc. were playing or downloading like a charm. Absolutely no delay, no buffering. I even did most of my official Skype calls using my phone's hotspot. The service was so good, that I was about to cancel my home broadband from Spectranet. I just kept it because I had already paid for 6 months, so it didn't make sense to cancel it in between.

One fine day, Airtel services started to degrade. The initial noticeable issue was call drops, low signals in some parts of my home and we need to point the phone to a specific direction for things to work. With time, the 4G signal began to drop and in most cases I was living of half the signal strength, most of the times. Very frequently the signal would downgrade to 3G or even 2G at times. What I didn't understand though was before 4G, my WhatsApp was working fine on 3G, but now, on Airtel 4G network, if it downgraded to 3G, it was almost as of internet access would stop. The signal would show 3G, but data refused to flow back and forth, and like Bajaj scooter's title therapy, this needed a switch over to airplane mode and back or turn off cellular data and on again. 

In time I had to switch back to my Spectranet broadband connection for my Skype calls (good that I still had it), as I was embarrassed on multiple occasions for being thrown off Skype calls with my clients, while using Airtel. Things continued to deteriorate and complains to Airtel didn't result in much. 

Tweeting used to get immediate attention (at least that is good) and Airtel has even assigned a person who calls me dutifully every day to ask for feedback on improvements. Like a recorded system, he tells me "Our network team has done some more improvements. How is your experience now? Is it better?" and I have to always tell him, that it is the same. I even ventured to ask him one day, what kind of improvements have they been making over the past week (every day there were supposedly improving), but obviously he had no idea. Poor guy! 

Fed up of this daily struggle with network, I found that other members in the society found Jio to be better. Even at my work place, where Airtel's signal used to drop (and this was regular cellular signal, not the data one), they told me Jio works well. So I decided to give it a try. With the power of Aadhar card, I managed to get a new Jio Sim, and activated and working within 10-15 min. The Jio guy, conveniently put Jio Sim in Sim tray 1 and moved the Airtel sim to Sim tray 2. Fortunately my Moto G5S Plus, supports 4G sim in both trays.   

It has been about a week now, with the new Sim. The experience on it has been mostly good, though not exceptional. Its signal strength also falters, but interestingly it still manages to deliver 4G better than Airtel could. At my work Jio isn't all that great. And the Airtel sim seems to have realized about the close competition and has started giving better range. 

So its a wait and watch for now to see who wins the battle, but I must say that the service providers are seemingly only busy getting more clients with no regards to the quality of the service they are providing and as the news tells us we are the slowest in the world.

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