A funny (expensive) turn of events.

Hi peeps,

I never wanted my first post ranting about BSNL's poor service, that on New Years Eve.

I have been using BSNL for about last 7 years. Previously ADSL and now Fiber.

In my line of work, Internet is the only tool that is used, without it Its just nil.

When I relocated to a remote location on outskirts of my city, I knew getting an ISP is going to be difficult. But still, I tried every single solution, from using 7 hotspots to a unreasonably expensive air fiber connection from a private player.

One day I was just fed up and decided to talk to the nearest bsnl exchange and offer them to pay for the amount of Optic Fiber Cable that should be used to lay down to my house. It turns out, they were never interested in laying out the cable even though the cable should be free for the customer end just because I was the only projected user in that area. I felt that was a genuine issue for them also. So I reached out to a contractor and spent about 100k in laying down the cable. The cable acted as a leased line to me because there was no other user. Even though none of the other residents contributed to the cable, I was ready to happily share the connection with them.

Now, the cable has been laid, a fiber booster has also been installed underground, the only issue was from LCO's end. And when I went to the exchange I was surprised how unorganized the system was. The LCO was literally the dumbest person I ever met in ISP field. When I told him I installed an underground fiber booster for the 10km boost, he was like "bhaiya ye booster kya hota hai" Omfg. I called my friend over to Delhi who was at a very generous post in BSNL asked his friends to visit me that too on my cost. haha, here comes the good part. They came in a Hyundai Grand i10, drunk as hell, smashed right into my Innova, hahaha. It was the hardest thing to believe at the time that I paid a couple of highly experience/educated/matured engineers to drive for 4 hours just to smash into my perfectly parked Innova Crysta.

The next day, after I paid for their accommodation at a nearby guest house, when they reached the site, they said the equipment was non standard and they were unable to configure the booster without the personnel who installed it. I called the person who installed the booster and he single handedly configured the booster in under an hour. When I asked him, what was so tough if its done under an hour? He replied ,as I quote, "Bhaiya ye aapke Delhi wale engineers ko booster mein login karna bhi nahi aa raha tha" and the password for booster's login page was the password that is probably used in every single web based login locally created by a networking device, admin admin. Pff I had enough of it, it was around 3 months I logged into my work portal and at start, I was determined I would only login with the internet from this infrastructure that costed my Innova's right headlight. The only benefit for calling the engineers was that they can hook my line to the exchange more efficiently and quickly than the LCO.

After the hookup, there comes the issue for using an appropriate ONU. I chose a Huawei ONT.

After 3 months of me hustling while being unemployed resulted finally resulted into an internet connection in my house that could have been done in 3 hours If I lived inside a city.

I decided to go for the 300mbps plan. And for around 7 months it worked like a charm, I was receiving 200mbps on all 7 of my access points with 300mbps on wire. I also use inhouse fiber termination to convert data from Cat6 to Fiber.

After 7 months I started experiencing very poor connection speeds. When I traced the route I did not find anything unusual. Everything was fine. I reached out to the LCO he said everything was fine from his end also. As I was in between a very important phase for my work, I shifted to a new place temporarily for 20 days.
When I came back, I ran a network troubleshooting tool created by my friends at Comcast in US. And as I was using a Huawei it was compatible. It showed no signs of error.

Me being a dumb, forgot to check the Receiving optical power. When I logged into the router it showed whopping -36dBm. I immediately realized the issue is not from my side.

Co indecently the Tracert tool that traced the whole networking infrastructure was running on one of my machines. And I noticed there is device missing. I just felt it, I was not sure what's missing. I checked almost every switch, media converter, ONT, PPPOe Logger, nothing was abnormal. Then I randomly decided to login to the booster that was Installed in a locked concrete housing(Like a Sewer) on side of the road 7KMS away from my house. The Page did not load. I was kinda relieved that I found the problem. Next Day I visited the sewer with one of the LCO's "ladka" and on the way he said, "thode din pehle hum aapka booster theek karne aaye the" It sounded a little weird because the LCO did not even knew what a Optical booster was. But however when we opened up the sewer, Boom!! there was no booster. The cable was simply spliced(joined) with each other. I was furious, I called the ISP and asked him where is my booster. He told" bhaiya vo toh maine office mein laga dia, aap tension na lo aapka net sahi chalega" the amount of gaaliyan and anger I showed was immeasurable.

Anyways, I am back at using hotspots not only 7, now I use 9 hotspots and mostly work at my friends, who lives 30 mins from my place. I cannot host get togethers despite having a spacious property just because no one is interested without an internet connection. But yes, I do have some CSGO Lan parties, so that covers up for me.

I never tried contacting that LCO again, Ill probably wait till any other private player such as triple play is ready to use that cable and infrastructure. Jio is there but it uses a centralized system and cannot expand from a fixed circle, also my cable is incompatible for there systems.

My Car's Headlight has been repaired.

Happy New Year Ya'll and be grateful you live in a nice place if you have a nice internet.
 
@namanchhabra out of curiosity, how much did you spend in total trying to get a proper network in your place? 😅 You mentioned you have a splicing machine too—doesn't that cost quite a lot as well?
well yeah, I spent a lot. I hate my job and internet, but it fascinates me.
I spent around 630k on the inhouse installations including fiber and internal termination hubs. And around 10 lac of external equipment. I know this sounds foolish to spend this much on a home deployment but its my only way to earn. I cannot disclose my work here but yeah just consider it dead without this infra. I really hustled a lot building something like this. I have a splicing machine because the personnel who used to splice the cables, did not have the machine. And I wanted my work to be done in a jiffy. So I asked my company to provide me one, I never returned it.
I created this infra in such a manner that there was literally 0 point of failure and just needed a single WAN cable to provide internet in each and every corner. But till date there is no perfect internet to that house. Its futureproof and robust. I hope players like ACT and JIO will soon be available in my area.
 
@namanchhabra Hey bro kaise ho? 😁
Is forum me shyad mai hi jaanta hu aapko 🤩
I'm your biggest fan. Don't worry I won't disclose your identity but finding you on this forum is amazing 🤩
A reply from your side would be amazing 😁
 
why dont you opt for a Leased Line from some tier 1 ISP if you can spend this big
First of all, there aren't in my area. Jio is there but there is no service in my circle.
Second, I cannot disclose my work profile but lets just say, I have to access servers that use BSNL as their primary ISP, so I prefer BSNL because of less hops to the third party ISPs. Otherwise BSNL is shit.
 
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