‘Gift a broadband’ with BSNL! No charges for first month! No installation charges!

BSNL Bangalore is offering a scheme for celebrating Christmas & New year called ‘Gift a Broadband…’. You can just walk in to any BSNL customer service center & purchase a Greeting Card enclosed with gift voucher to avail a new broadband connection. This greeting card costs you just Rs.100.  Following are the benefits user who applies for new broadband gets using this scheme:

• Free Broadband Starter Plan (Rs.250) for a month
• No rental on modem for a month (Rs.80)
• No installation charges (Rs.250)

So total value is Rs.580 & you are paying only Rs.100. This scheme is valid only till 31st Jan 2010 & user has to apply for broadband within that date.

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BSNL has reduced usage charges for broadband plan Convinence 250. Updated plan details below:

Monthly Charges: Rs.250

Free Usage: 1 GB

Usage beyond free usage: Rs. 0.5/Mb (Discounted from Rs. 0.9 per MB)

As ususal, modem charges & landline charges are extra. You can view the complete plan details about the plan here.

BSNL Bangalore announced discounts on monthly charges for EVDO & NIC cards for existing Broadband users paying more than Rs.499 every month. Monthly charge for EVDO connection for normal customers is Rs.550, but it is just Rs.300 under this offer. Similarly monthly charges for NIC card connection is Rs.250 & discounted price is Rs.150. These discounts are applicable for one year & after that period you will have to pay the normal charges. You need to also keep your existing broadband connection & should be paying atleast Rs.499 to be eligible for this offer. In case if you discontinue your Broadband connection in between, you have to pay the normal charges. So, basically these are addon plans for BSNL Broadband users to enable mobility.

BSNL EVDO connection seem to be pretty good with city wide coverage & providing speeds upto 2.4 Mbps. As per the experienced users you can get 2mbps speed when you are close to the tower & around 1mbps when bit far away from tower. The big plus of EVDO plan from BSNL is, it’s unlimited!

For more details about these discounted plans check these docs from BSNL Bangalore website: EVDO Plan, NIC Card Plan. For more details on EVDO cards, coverage & help queries you can check out my friend GigaCore’s blog & forum bsnlevdoclub.com.

Few people use PIN locking system to lock their phone to avoid un-authorised access. Though this is a good option, it pisses you off sometime. Three wrong entry of PIN code will result in SIM blocking. Once SIM gets blocked, phone starts asking PUK code to enter. If you again enter wrong code for three times, SIM gets completely blocked. You have to walk into your service provider outlet to get a replacement SIM card.

PUK code is a SIM specific code assigned by your service provider. No way you can guess & enter it. So, when it asks for the PUK code, don’t do anything, get the PUK code from your service provider. Airtel has a easier way of getting PUK code. For getting PUK code of a Airtel number, send PUK<space>PhoneNumber to toll free number 121. You can make use of any other Airtel number to send this message since your SIM might have been blocked already.

If the above method doesn’t works or your service provider is not Airtel, call to customer care using any other mobile phone which uses the same service provider. They will ask some details about you to make sure you are the owner of the SIM card. Questions might include your billing address, email ID, numbers you recently called or messaged etc. They might even ask you number printed on the SIM card, so be prepared with all details before calling them. Once you get the PUK code, enter it into the phone & your phone will return to normal.

BSNL has reduced charges for Home Unlimited Dataone Broadband plans. And in addition to that it also introduced two unlimited plans with 512 kbps speed. Home 900 & Home 900 PLUS now has become Home 750 & Home 750 PLUS. As the name of the plan indicates, charges are reduced from Rs.900 to Rs.750. Here is the new tariff table:

Note:
For Home Plan UL 750 Plus & UL 1350 Plus: Telephone fixed monthly charges per month- Nil, Free Calls- Nil, MCU charges per Pulse @ Rs. 1/- shall be applicable. The calls shall be charged as per pulse rate of BSNl Bfone General Plan. Security Deposit and Installation charges as applicable for Local/STD/ISD shall be taken from new customers.

For Home Plan UL 750 & UL 1350 : Fixed monthly Charges for telephone, Free Calls & MCU charges per pulse shall be as per existing plan of the customer.

For details on other tariff plans http://www.bsnl.co.in/service/dataone_tariff.htm

For Existing Customers:

Existing customers has to do nothing! Peacefully browse internet at home. Tariff for esisting Home 900 & Home 900 PLUS customers will be automatically changed to Home 750 & Home 750 PLUS respectively applicable from the month of April.

Blocking unwanted calls from people you hate or from unknown people is the feature I think we should have on our mobile phone by default. I personally tired up with lot of promotional calls from tele-callers. Though many banks & services offers you to register for “Do Not Disturb”, you still receive many calls from other tele-callers. Vodafone was the first to provide “Call blocking system” to help it’s consumers avoid such calls (but at Rs.99/month). But I have not yet heard of similar service by other providers.

Fortunately there is an application which blocks unwanted calls on any network. Epocware Handy’s Blacklist is a series 60 application that blocks unwanted calls. In first run options will be provided for blocking calls from your contact list, recent callers or unknown numbers. It also provided with an option of adding rejected calls into black list automatically. It also keeps log of all blocked numbers for 60 days.

The dis-advantage of software is, It will not notify you when a call is blocked. You have to check your log to know which numbers are blocked. The application is priced $19.95 (Rs.785), I think is the better option to go instead of paying monthly rental to service provider for same. Purchase this application here.

I never imagined whether this kind of web site will be launched. I am talking about www.YourBillBuddy.com which fetches your bill from your service provider & gives you complete analyses. Web site is capable of fetch & read your mobile bill. It even gives you an option to upload your mobile bill & it even reads that! It gives you graphical analysis of Number wise call distribution, Bill Break up which gives break ups like SMS, Local Calls, STD etc. Following are few

After analyzing your bill, you can check Bill Buddy’s recommendations of plans from other service providers which best suits you. It also gives you data on how much you can save if you switch to that plan & how much could be your average monthly bill.

The website is still in Beta stage, but working pretty good.

Just browsing through my friend Deva’s Blog & found this cool free stuff.

• To get free cricket alerts send sms START CRI to 9845398453.
• To stop this alert send sms as STOP CRI to 9845398453
• To get astrology daily to your mobile send sms START ZODIAC SIGN to 9845398453.Ex: START CANCER.
• To stop this astrology message, send sms STOP ZODIAC SIGN to 9845398453.

After digging a bit I got to know that this service is provided by MyTodaySMS & not limited to only above things. It also provides Jokes, Health tips, poems, Gandhiji thoughts, Budda thoughts, City Alerts & much much more for free!
Hope you enjoy these free services, as many service providers are charging about 30 rs/month for same service. This works with all service providers.

Apple’s launch of iPhone made such a huge news. Probably Tech Bangalore is the only tech blog which didn’t had a post on it. While browsing through techtree.com came across this news. Google will be launching its Gphone in next two weeks worldwide. Google is waiting for US regulatory approval. Techtree also reported that Indian major service providers (Bharti, Vodaphone & BSNL) are in contact with google to launch Gphone exclusively with their service. Even Google also in the hunt of service providers to provide data service which Gphone requires. Let’s wait & see will Google take over Apple’s iPhone or not.

Join Google Gphone Orkut Community!

BSNL Bangalore recently opened registration for IPTV service. Tariff information is as follows:

Service Tax and Entertainment Tax: The Service tax and other Taxes shall be applicable. Entertainment Tax of Rs. 45 per month or as applicable in the area shall be chargeable over and above the charges prescribed.

For registration form goto http://210.212.204.4:8282/iptv/. You should have dataone broadband connection to avail this service.