Why I switched from Airtel Xstream Fiber to Tata Play Fiber?

[Deleted member 87056]

I was having issues with Airtel Xstream Fiber at my parent's house in Pune. We have been on Airtel for over 3 years now. Since last 1 month, the internet would randomly disconnect for 10-15 seconds which was quite annoying considering the dependency we have on home broadband these days.
I had enabled bridge mode on the ONT provided by Airtel and was using the TP-Link Archer AX10 router since day 1. So there was no router issue. Upon inspecting the logs, I could see that PPPoE was getting disconnected randomly during the day. Upon raising a SR with Airtel, their incompetent technician couldn't identify the problem and blamed me for having the router in bridge mode and said that there must be some fault in our devices. He also told me to "record" the whole internet not working thing which was unacceptable, why the hell am I supposed to justify my problem, I am not taking their services for free and why would I waste my time dealing with CC if there was no issue originally? I was pissed off due to this incident and decided to disconnect Airtel instead of arguing with their dumb CC.

I decided to give TPF a try since they serve our apartment since a very long time, even before Airtel started their services. I was given a discount of about 15% on their quarterly 200 Mbps plan with complementary 4 OTT Apps(which I barely use). The installation was pretty quick, they put up the wiring and router after 20-30 mins of payment. I paid a total of 3186 for quarterly plan.

Initial impressions: Internet feels snappier than Airtel for sure. I don't know what's wrong with Airtel these days, I experienced something similar when I was in Bangalore, switching from Airtel to ACT there was a difference of day and night in terms of browsing and streaming.

I feel Tata Play Fiber offers a better value for money and they were pretty quick with the installation. The technician even agreed to put the Nokia ONT in bridge mode so that I can configure my own router. He also gave me his personal number and told me to contact him directly in case of any issues. I have heard good things about TPF from neighbours so I don't think there will be any reliability issues. I will try to update this thread and post a long term review.

I honestly feel that service quality and Customer support in Airtel has gone down the drain after the expanded rapidly in India. Internet feels sluggish, their staff are incapable of resolving issues. Internet connectivity is something which is very important nowadays and companies should hire more capable staff or train their existing staff in order to rectify issues quickly and accurately.

 

[Deleted member 87056]

One thing I noticed is that YouTube videos now play at the maximum quality on auto settings on TPF while on Airtel I had to manually select the highest quality every time which was very annoying. Same router, same location, same device and same distance from the router although the plan speed is less on TPF(200 Mbps) than Airtel(300 Mbps).
Netflix now also loads slightly faster and the transition from profile selection page to home page is now super quick which would get stuck for a while on Airtel.

 

[vishalrao]

Touchwood TPF can maintain this and not also eventually turn to shit like Airtel.

 

[Kyle Crane]

i wish my apartment had tataplayfiber or something ,i had once used there office connection and things were loading a lot quicker than my home Jio fiber back then

i guess this all comes down to not having DPI or something

hey @87056 do upload speed test screenshots it's always nice to see those

 

[Deleted member 87056]

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

View the full results, and test your own bufferbloat

www.waveform.com

This is the buffer bloat test on WiFi. TPF Nokia router is in bridge mode connected to my TP-Link Archer AX10

Speed Test result : Done over WiFi in the next room, a thick wall in between. Device used: Macbook Air M1
Still getting "uncapped" download speeds . I am on the 200 Mbps plan.

Honestly I don't believe in performing speedtests, it's not a true metric of how good the connection is.

 

[Kyle Crane]

@Ryuk lol nice
here its about time to recharge my local broaband ,might take the 200mbps plan now

 

[Chip]

Again I think this is more a local issue but nevertheless you did the right thing by giving Airtel a kick on their rear ends. I have been using both for a number of years now and have found both to be rock stable at least for me with the normal unexpected downtime once in 1-2 months. Surprise of surprise but TPF was unstable due to issues with competitors cutting the cables but that's all resolved and now and both are performing very well.

Now to Airtel, their level of support has definitely decreased over the past 2 years since they expanded and I think they've been cutting corners in terms of the number of field techs as well.

As an aside - BSNL fibre is also stable but not as much as TPF and Airtel.

PS - I use pfSense normally but letting my Asus router take over main router duties for the time being. Speed tests are done with a wired connection except on BSNL which acts as a tertiary connection

 

[Deleted member 87056]

@Chip Just curious, why would one need a "tertiary" connection that too from BSNL which is known for it's unreliability. Don't you think a secondary connection in failover mode is good enough in case the primary one goes down? I mean it's highly unlikely that both TPF and Airtel would go down at the same time unless there is some sort of deliberate wire cutting going on.

 

[Chip]

@87056 that tertiary connection is for the landline (copper converted to fibre) and for a few 100 bucks more I get internet
connectivity.

PS - while BSNL is not as stable as the other 2 connections it's improved a lot and I get downtime may be once a month or during lengthy power outages which are rare nowadays. No there is no cable cutting in the part of Pune I live in (near KP) so that's more or less ruled out. However there has been damage due to gas pipelines and metro work and that's normal when infra is upgraded and there's no coordination between agencies. Same thing happens to our power connections.

 

[Rhishav]

Good decision @87056 Airtel service quality has gone down severely.