ACT Fibernet - Chennai - Review (Part 1)

[Mechwarrior]

Dear Members,

I am new to this forum and I am not really keen on writing reviews but after reading a lot of reviews on this forum, I thought its fair on my part to contribute here. So here I am to post the review of ACT Fibernet (ACT Lightning (40Mbps/75GB FUP/Rs.1299+taxes)) in Chennai. I have decided to write this review in 3 parts spanning a period of 6 months to check the reliability of ACT Fibernet over a period of time.

Part 1 - Sales Visit / Feasibility Study / Installation / First Impression
Part 2 - Review of 3 months of usage giving downtimes/average DLUL speeds/Customer Service.
Part 3 - 6 Months Review/DLUL Speeds/CS Response/Final Decision (whether to keep or ditch)

Sales Visit & Feasibility Study: Gave a call to ACT Customer Service on 15 Oct 2014 to enquire about their new broadband offering. Asked for a feasibility study in my area (Velachery) and asked a Sales guy to call me. Sales guy (Mr.Raj) called me within 3 hours after initial call and said he was in Velachery and inquired about my address. Gave the address and he informed that service is available and a new box will installed (with 8 access points). He mentioned the plans and informed that I will be refunded Rs.50 each month towards electricity consumption of the AP box. Came the next day to collect the check and enrollment forms. This was completed on 16 Oct 2014 in the evening.

Score: 9/10 (Punctual/Knowledgeable/Courteous)

Installation: A Technician (Mr.Mahendran) came to my house today morning (17 Oct 2014). He came with 3 people for installing the box and connecting it to the server. Location was selected and the box was installed in about 2 hours. Even though it was raining, these guys worked really hard to complete the installation, guess they were on a tight deadline. They connected the box to the server and the last mile was connectivity was completed through a RJ45 connector with copper cable. I cannot use my ADSL2 modem with router so its just LAN for the time being. The technician was really cordial and got the job done by 5 PM even though it was raining like crazy here. Customer service provided my password through SMS and email in a few minutes and I was able to connect to the internet.

Score: 8/10 (Efficient/Punctual/Knowledgeable)

I did a few Speedtest checks with different servers in various countries and the results were pretty ok. Ping could be an issue but I wanted to give it a few days and check on actual performance.

(Chennai Server)

(Singapore Server)

(USA-California Server)

First Impression: My first impression of ACT Fibernet is actually pretty good. I am extremely pleased with the way the entire team handled the setup of a new connection/customer. I didn't face a single instance of incompetence or delay. The speed is very good and as promised. If ACT can keep up this service and efficiency in the long run, it will be bye bye Airtel however I am still going to keep my existing Airtel connection for 6 months as a redundancy in case of any of the so called downtimes/intermittent service. By the end of 6 months I will be able to decide if I am going to change loyalties or stick to Airtel and pay through my nose grudgingly.

I hope my review was useful and I shall come with my second review in 3 months.

 

[broadband.act]

Dear Sir,

Thank you for appreciating ACT Fibernet service. Your feedback is important to us

Warm regards,
ACT Fibernet

 

[thundurus]

Very well written review , can you please add a tracert or post a ping test to this ip : sgp-1.valve.net
It is a game server in singapore from valve . Would be helpful for gamers deciding to use ACT for gaming can make a better decision .

 

[uberjon]

34ms to sgp-1.valve.net. I'll let the OP post his full results.
Chennai being geographically closer to Singapore does help pings......sometimes

The speedtest result shows ISP as Beam Telecom? So, ACT uses Beam IP adresses at times for Chennai users? And Internal IP addresses (10.x.x.x) at times for Bangalore users. I wonder if ACT is running out of IPv4 addresses or can't allocate public IP address fast enough...

 

[envy]

I second Mechwarriors opinion here.

I have been using Airtel for more than 18 months now and was happy with them though the maximum speed they could offer in velachery was only 8mbps. I was with Airtel for their stable network as I work from home regularly, and having a stable line is of paramount importance to me, so I never went chasing an ISP with higher speeds. I had a few issues with Airtel over the past few months and I would say they did all they could to fix it (they even re laid the entire cable from the junction box to my modem) but some how that stability never came back and there were frequent disconnections.

Thats when I decided to give ACT a try and called up their sales guy Mr.Suresh(got his number the previous day from one of the ACT technicians who were working in my building) on 20th morning around 10am. He confirmed feasibility and promised me a visit by 12. I was surprised when he turned up with his technicians and the cable. He collected the documents & installation fee and had me fill a couple of forms while his guys were busy laying the cable from the box to my router. The entire process including the cable laying took 45 mins.I was then told my Mr Suresh that he has to go back to the ACT office and log in the form for the connection to be activated and within an hour or so I received a couple of emails and SMSs' confirming the payment and activation. I then had a guy who came in around 5pm to complete the activation process. He called up the customer care for a short tele verification after which I received my userid and password and I was Online! The initial speed test pings to an Indian server showed up 21-22 mbps (Im on the 20mbps/60Gb plan) and I haven't noticed any speed drops since then.

The entire sales and installation process was a breeze and the team at ACT deserves a kudos for this. The presence of a junction box in my premises would have helped fast tracking my request, but 10/10 for execution and commitment if you factor in the incessant rains.

These are just initial thoughts on sales and installation and I will update/add my comments on stability and customer service (if the need arises) to this thread after 3 months or so.

Cheers!

 

[Srinivasan R.]

Thanks for the review. I think you are one of those odd men out. I was planning to switch over to ACT having learned that it's available in my area (Adyar) and my annual subscription with BSNL is due for renewal. However, my experience in getting them engaged for a new connection is pretty much the same as others have commented elsewhere in this forum.

First time when I called (on a Saturday), was told a service engineer would call / visit my place within 24 hrs. Called them again on Monday, with due apologies the customer rep. said he's sending a note directly to the person that handles my area - no response! Again, made a call on Tuesday with a note saying if I don't get any response by Wednesday evening I'd go ahead and renew my existing connection. Fortunately, one Prabhakaran called that evening and I'm in conversation with him at the moment. Said he'll visit me today to do a feasibility study of box installation, etc.

Having read other posts I'm wary if this is a scam or they are genuine and the speed really holds up to what they promise in the long run! Would you really recommend going with them???

 

---

[alphaomega]

From this post I guess the entire good experience really depends on forthright employees. ACT in this case should get their recruitment correct or their training correct, so that customers across get a pleasant & standardized customer service.

 

[S.Ranganaathan]

Thanks for sharing extensively, today went through the 1st phase, experience was the same. Could you please guide what is the router which is suitable for ACT connections, understand it should be a RJ65 input.