The Hindu : Front Page : BSNL offers dial-up Internet free, for now

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Sunday, Sep 28, 2008
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BSNL offers dial-up Internet free, for now

Anand Parthasarathy

Scheme promised till October-end

BANGALORE: This is one of those landmark happenings on India’s slow but steady road to connecting all its billion-plus citizens — yet three weeks after its low-key launch, not many know about it.

The nation’s biggest public phone provider, BSNL, has made dial-up Internet access free for all landline customers. There is no registration, no hassle.

How to go about it

If you have a BSNL telephone connection, it will be simple to set up the free account using the standard options of the browser, once you have plugged the telephone jack into your PC or laptop. Against “User name” or “User identification,” enter your telephone number preceded by the STD code minus the zero (for example, if you live in Chennai and your phone number is 23456789, your User ID is 4423456789). Against “password,” enter your telephone number (example 23456789). You are all set to browse the Internet through the all-India dial-up number 172222.

When we tried out the free service, we obtained speeds quite close to the maximum you can expect with a dial-up modem which is 56 kilo bits per second — and a good bit faster than some paid dial-up services!

Of course, you pay local call charges for the duration of the surfing, but this is much less at off-peak hours BSNL has partnered with the Ahmedabad-based Elitecore Solutions, which already provides the billing solution for its Net One service as a franchisee.

Anil Jain, BSNL’s Deputy Director-General for Broadband, told The Hindu that over 1,000 users had signed up daily since the launch. The scheme is promised till October-end, but there are indications that it will be extended.

Awesome initiative

This is a clever way to increase the number of landline subscribers. But why look a gift-horse in the mouth? Free Internet is something few nations have ever offered — and to do this across a country as big as India is an awesome initiative indeed.

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