Chennai on top in Net access

BANGALORE: Chennai is the best city when it comes to accessing the Net.

Hyderabad, which is being touted as a strong threat to Bangalore’s status as

India’s Silicon Valley, has one of the poorest Net connections, says the first

ever review of services offered by ISPs across the country by PC Quest.

According to a PC Quest release, the study found that Internet services had a

long way to go before customers could expect high quality service. Areas of

concern include lack of bandwidth, busy telephone lines and Help Desks that

could have done better in handling user problems.

Of the regional ISPs, only Glide in Chandigarh could effectively compete with

the national ISPs and beat them in service. In all other cities, it was the

national players who came up trumps. The public sector ISPs, VSNL and MTNL

scored poorly in Help Desk performance and in ease of purchasing accounts. In

spite of that, VSNL put up a creditable performance to top in Delhi.

ISPs in Hyderabad fared poorly when it came to bandwidths and service.

Bangalore fared better, but Delhi and Chennai were way ahead, the release said.

The tests were carried out live in the cities of Bangalore, Calcutta,

Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram. Here

are some of the parameters to gauge the performance of the ISPs. How the various

services perform in actual use? How easy was it to buy and register an account?

How fast can you surf and download? What help can you expect in case of trouble?

PC Quest’s team of reviewers actually purchased and used accounts in these

cities to evaluate the quality of the services.

The July edition of PC Quest has carried the findings of the report in

greater detail.