Once Upon A Time...

....EDGE/GPRS on my Airtel connection was actually fun to use. Around a year ago, I could easily hook up my cellphone to my laptop and enjoy a pretty good surfing speed. Downloads too weren't that shabby, I could get a decent 20-30 KBps download speed at most times of the day. Ah well, times change.

Lately however, it's been moving at snails pace. During peak hours, it takes half a minute for a single page to open along with frequent time outs. Quite irritating, frankly speaking. The only time the speed is anywhere near usable is after 1 AM at night. Anyhow, that leads me to the second part of my post. Back when speed was good, EDGE/GPRS was expensive, and I mean DAMN expensive. It cost 50p for 30k of data transfer. It's good for checking and sending email through the mobile versions of GMail and Yahoo (you can use the mobile version on the PC as well), but anything more than a couple of normal website pages will leave your balance falling through the floor. So what's changed?

For one, Airtel and all the other networks have come out with some killer Internet packs. Back where I study in Bangalore, there's the 90MB plan in which you recharge for Rs 89 and get 90 MB for a month + 75 MB at night. Pan-India, you have the unlimited data plan which costs just 98 bucks and you get 2 GB of free data transfer. In Delhi, you have still other plans like the 100MB per day @ Rs 10 per day. Or the 200 MB for 3 days in just 18 bucks. Good days? You bet. Just hope they manage to increase the bandwidth allocation so it actually moves fast enough to be usable most of the day.