AirTel Sri Lanka in Review
by Dush on Jan.30, 2009, under Interesting, Life style
Getting ready for a nice weekend..! so thought to post some comments about the “Talk in the Town” Topic AirTel,
So many happy comments, so many bad comments, Still I am getting emails with all sorts of comments about airtel.
Just now I got my AirTel Broadband connection activated, so far I am in a position of to post in few comments about our new visitor of mobile communication.
Ok enough with the intro. I’ll get in to the topic.
Though I got this connection activated today, It took me 4 days and 7 telephone calls to their Customer care, to get this activated. That means I get the credit for getting my connection activated today, since I the effort is mine to get that done. When I purchased this connection I was told that it would take maximum of 3 days ( 72 hours ) get my new connection activated. so the excitement that I had to test this connection got me counting days. I waiting for 2 days for the connection. I use to plug my modem with the New SIM card to see whether it is activated during that time. when I see no response I started calling Customer care to get my connection activated. I spoke to 7 different guys what they all did was taking my mobile number, my name, my SIM number (which i got really irritated reading that long number 7 times ), and my AirTel number to log a complain.
So after keep on calling for 2 days for 7 times, today morning i saw the good news on my modem software status bar with the “SRI 05″ signals. I left to work and came back in the evening thinking “ok now I’m happy to browse around with AirTel”. well that happiness did not last long when I found that I need the HSDPA settings to get connected. so here I go again I called their Customer care thinking that within a 2 mins discussion I would get the settings and I would be a happy web surfer.
Well the answer was not that happy. the 1st one who spoke to me was like fallen from the sky he didn’t know a thing about what I was asking. as usual he took my number, etc etc.. saying within 1 hour they will get back to me with the settings. that answer was not good enough to me. so I wait for few minutes and called again then somebody else took the call. well shame on me I got the same answer.. but different time frame.. 3 hours. I thought to myself this is not working.. and gave up the idea of getting the information from the CC. i started testing my own guessed settings suddenly WOW.. there you go.! one setting got accepted and I got connected.
if one of AirTel Head people get to read this. I have a few points.
01. Please educate your Customer Care people, Don’t let the Customer take care of them, at least give them a printed paper with relevant details, settings, values, prices, packages. so at least they can defend them self with having a sound about what the customer talking about.
02. The AIrTel website. I really don’t find it helpful, being a web engineer for about 6 years. I can clearly mention that the site is USELESS, I don’t even see a point on marketing view. it looks that it only wana talk about the company.
If you have an information oriented website, I am pretty sure that you are can run your Customer care call center with just a few people. I shall call it a well strategical website.
About “Sanga”
I got a few mails criticizing our beloved cricketer, criticizing the AirTel advertisement. Any one who is with a business and marketing mind would understand the basics of competition. I don’t see anybody who are in the category of mobile user complaining about the ad, so it gives a clear picture about the mud campaign.. (a public secret)
AirTel HSDPA Settings
Finally here are the settings for your HSDPA connection.
APN : airtellive
Dial in Number : *99***1#
Username : <Blank>
Password : <Blank>
OK quick update : just now one of AirTel guys spoke to me with the settings. so they did get back to me 
as he mentioned following are his settings and it did work.
APN : AirtelLive
Dial in Number : *99#
Username : <Blank>
Password : <Blank>
Next week I am hoping to review about the Sri Lankan HSDPA Providers ,connection packages and qualities.
15 Comments for this entry
2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks for this entry
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Airtel HSDPA [Sri Lanka] « Dushan888- Technology & FOSS for Humans
April 18th, 2009 on 3:51 pm[...] their customer care, because after some time I found that its something like fallen from the sky (more..) . There APN was AirTelLive and I gave the access number as *99#. It worked! But first I got only [...]
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I’m gonna say BYE BYE AirTel.!!! - Dushmantha Gunasingha
April 21st, 2009 on 9:18 am[...] with my previous post, which is my testimony of purchasing AirTel unlimited data connection (if not click here ) and the the great care that I had, this is the latest update.. the serivce sucks!!!! and I have [...]
February 5th, 2009 on 3:19 pm
This is a really good post.. and help a lot.
I think the Airtel guys should put a link to this in their site.
Airtel site is a total mess. All you could find is please contact the nearest store.. and when you do that.. the same old story follows.
April 14th, 2009 on 8:44 pm
Thanx for the info. Im also agree with your attitude on airtel site. its really useless! do you know a way to track our data usage?? I couldnt yet. if you know please share with us. thanx againg for the info.it was really helpfull.
April 15th, 2009 on 9:51 am
hmm… I don’t think, they have given us such a mechanism.. :S, well anyways I think If you are using a unlimited connection it wouldn’t matter,
,
but I am using E220 Huawei modem, so it shows my stats on my connection software. other than that I don’t think so…. may be I should sniff
around and see..
April 16th, 2009 on 11:31 am
thanx for the reply.Im also using the same modem. But the info it indicates is no persistent. Im using the 600 package.
thanx again.
April 17th, 2009 on 4:15 pm
How is your Down/Up speed..? where is your location if you don’t mind, coz nowadays for me Down/Up is sucks… even go below 1 Kbps
April 18th, 2009 on 3:18 pm
Oh im @ kaduwella. Im not receiving good signal here.HSDPA strength is about 40%. download speed is about 65kbs with IDM. ya it sucks!
May 11th, 2009 on 9:30 pm
Thanks, I have posted how to configure Airtel on Ubuntu 9.04 if you want to use the connection with your mobile.
http://lahirumanaya.blogspot.com/2009/05/configuring-airtel-hsdpa-on-ubuntu.html
Lahiru
July 19th, 2009 on 12:26 pm
Hi Dush,
I’m from Kurunegala, i was really lookin forward to airtel data packages being available in kurunegala but after i saw what u had to say i am havin second thoughts. i heard that airtel 3g will soon be available in Kuru and i’m plannin to buy the unlimted data package. whats ur thought on that? is it still full of crap or has it been fixed after so many customer complaints? please give me an idea….
July 19th, 2009 on 9:22 pm
Hi Udesh,
I gave up on AirTel 2 months back and moved to a ADSL connection.
to be honest I really don’t know, how their service now, they built a huge
impact on the impression that I had on them.
I am not updated about their service quality now, but I thank you for bringin
this up today, I will look up about it and will try to put a blog post again. I will
update you as soon as I am updated.
Thanx a lot for your Reply..
Have a nice day
July 21st, 2009 on 10:47 am
Hi Dush
Thanks a lot for ur reply. Looking forward to ur update….
Have a good one.
July 22nd, 2009 on 9:43 am
hi,
Ok.. I just happened to walk in to a AirTel office yesterday, when I asked about the speed problem
one of the agents said, it’s STILL EXISTS with unlimited connection, but not with that 600/= (3GB limit) plan,
so it’s clear that they are throttling bandwidth on unlimited connection..
though he wanted me to check their 600/= package I was not interested, just walked out..
April 28th, 2010 on 1:47 pm
Thanx dear.. gr8 post
May 30th, 2010 on 1:17 pm
Hi, I’m trying to figure out a good hsdpa package to purchase and came across this review of yours. Did you get a chance to look into the other service providers like you’ve suggested? If so, what’s a good deal?
June 2nd, 2010 on 12:31 pm
Hi Dribby,
). I am just speculating that if any service provider promises unlimited download speed on HSPA, there should always be a drawback. so better get into deatil with them before you buy. but let me have your feed back if you have already purchased one..
yes I’ve used both other providers Mobitel, and Dialog. I use to have a Mobitel connection which had good speed by that time, but since they did not have the coverage as much as Dialog, I moved to dialog. which I used for some reasonable time. only disadvantage with dialog is the FUP (Fair Use Policy), which when you exceed their download limit that they have mentioned, you connection speed will be throttled and will be less than 10kbps till your next billing date. how ever you could lift the speed limit by paying about 100/= Per day , (There is always a way for the rip off
Thanks
July 13th, 2010 on 2:37 pm
Hey all,
I also experienced most of the issues mentioned here. However, I must say that there has been a huge improvement in the speeds. Customer care can be improved, but overall, for the price, I think it’s one of the best plans out there.
They’ve also launched a new plan called “impatience”, wich offers 5GB for Rs. 299… And thats bloody cheap.