N R Colony is a very nice locality, except just that getting a broadband connection here is equally tough. For last one week, I've been enjoying living very close to the lovely vegetarian restaurants of Basavanagudi, our usual hang outs of DVG Road, and not-so-polluted air of Bugle rock park. It is back to all-Kannada neighbourhood, which feels more like home (more like Shimoga where I've lived for more years than any other place), but not connected to the Internet all this while.
And why would getting broadband be tough in such nice and central and commercially well established locality you ask? well, there lies the problem. The neatly tarred roads are the culprits. BMP (Bangalore Mahanagara Pailke - the municipal corporation) apparently doesn't give permission to telcom companies to dig the roads. Not that the telecom companies wouldn't neatly repair the dug up tarred roads, the telecom companies are well equipped for this. But the Corruption is such, the bribe figures are sky high, I'm told. No external influence for getting things approved for one time would do - as the companies will have to go back to the same BMP bureaucrats for their next many assignments. "Go back to your officer and get work done with him" would be, I hear, the answer if things are got done with influence from higher authorities. Whatever is, the whole affair of getting a broadband here seems to be a very complex one, and like most people of Bangalore, I too fancy staying away from getting entangled in the corrupt system.
BSNL - the ruddy old sarkari-like telecommunications (giant?) is the only option to get broad band in this locality. Call Airtel, they would say "N R Colony? not at all possible, Sir!". Tata Indicom is the worst service of all as of now, so bother not event to ask them. Hathway (via the usual cable vendor) seems OK, but someone used to better, sophisticated Internet connection wouldn't fancy that. Reliance has just some weirdo product and marketing strategy that you would find every possible service except just the one you're badly looking for. I hear that their data cards are just too costly and not worth the money. Not sure though, as I haven't tried them myself. BSNL, on the other hand, has just the right plans, the required services, but nothing there gets moved unless you yell at them, say, as opposed to the Airtel way. Customer Care for a long time now has been the best only on Airtel, and I doubt whether any other Indian company would ever come close to theirs in years to come.
After many calls to the BSNL office, many agonizing visits to the nearest exchange, I finally got an ADSL connection with a new DSL2+ router/modem. But the bandwidth, to my surprise, lingers just around 64kbps! Wish me all the best while I wrestle with BSNL to restore the Internet connection back to sanity. :-)
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