Most youths are low on cash, even if they are not they prefer to spent their money on stuff from which they can get out the max. Well readers i also fall in this particular category. Private engineering colleges in India have cropped up like shops – yes they are actually shops, if you have money you can definitely buy a seat. A very small percentage of students get to study in quality govt. engineering colleges.
You guys must be wondering why i switched to the topic of crap engineering colleges after starting with talking about cash, here i explain…..most of these so called crap engineering colleges are situated in far off places – by far off places i mean outskirts of cities or countrysides. Most of these colleges boast about providing its students 24 hours internet service either through computer labs having crappy dial up connections or their so call dedicated campus WiFi. These WiFi are very slow, the institute web administrator block most popular sites and the connection is switched on or off at the whims of the web administrator.
So what can the students do who stay in the campus hostels to connect to the net??
Every one has a cell phone these days. If your cell phone is capable of connecting to the internet through gprs (general packet radio service) network, it can work as a modem to connect you to the internet through your PC/Laptop. All you need to buy is a data cable with its software compatible with your cell phone model. Its advisable to use a data cable as the connection that sets up is more consistent than with bluetooth.
You need to contact your service provider to send you gprs settings compatible to your cell phone model and to activate a per day, weekly or monthly gprs service rental plan. Do not go for no rental plans as they charge money on each Kb of data transferred and ultimately would make a hole in your pocket.
In India almost all cellular service providers like Airtel, Idea, Hutch, BSNL, MTNL, TATA docomo, RELIANCE etc. offer gprs services. Here this is the maximum that is offered in terms of cell phone internet. Ya BSNL’s 3G is service is there but it is still not popular at all, costs are high and BSNL’s network is erratic at lots of areas. I hope BSNL sells 3G slots to other service providers soon!!
Out of all these service providers Idea’s gprs has a decent speed compared to others. Download speed is 72Kbps (on average) during the day and at night mostly after 12 AM download speed sometime reaches up to 200Kbps – quite decent. They have a gprs20 plan which chargers Rs.20 a day ( mean monthly Rs620) for unlimited browsing and downloading. Best part is this plan can be activated or deactivated at will. Though you should first confirm from Idea’s customer care if this plan exist in your state or not. While activating gprs rental plan always go for the plan that offers unlimited downloading, it would a worth the price if that’s upto Rs600. Airtel and Hutch provides cheaper monthly rental plan than Idea but their speed are slower.
