You have probably not heard about this company if you are not from Bhubaneswar. I never wanted to write reviews for anything, other than, may be gadgets. But then, I had to mention about this company here. You will soon know why.
It’s been more than a month that I have been using this broadband connection at home. When we got an internet connection (a broadband wired connection) at home, there were no other private providers here. Well, the BSNL guys told that a connection to our house wasn’t possible at that point in time. Frankly speaking, we didn’t have any choice whatsoever. Ortel Communication, had a monopoly everywhere in Orissa. Although, I was very reluctant to give my approval, we hooked onto their network.
Ok. To be frank, this is not a review, rather an outburst after all the torture and frustration I have gone through. So, I would only talk about their negatives here.
- At-least once a day, their modem goes offline. (“loses power”). <<—– That’s what they say. And we have to call them every-time to let them know that the poor modem has lost power.
- I had plans of staying at home for sometime, and I would be also working from home for some time. So, I upgraded our connection to a 700kbps plan. I thought it would be enough for my needs. But then I realized that, although the download speed was almost close to 700kbps, the upload speed was pathetic at best (@100kbps). WHAT!!!!
- The day we upgraded our plan, I saw a weird problem. Almost all the pages I opened up, it had an annoying advertisement. I was frustrated, and tried to hunt down the problem. I re-installed my browsers, un-installed all my browser add-ons, but still the problem persisted. After a few more investigations, to my horror, I found that Ortel Communications was injecting this piece of advertisement on each and every page, by intercepting my requests.
- I started writing mails to them on the e-mail addresses provided on their website. Hahaha, I knew what would happen next. 2 out of the 3 recipients mail bounced back. And for the one recipient, I haven’t heard back yet. I kept on doing this for 5 days, yet I haven’t received even an acknowledgement.
- I did a Google search to find out if anyone else has this problem. Of course, Ortel has it’s monopoly in Bhubaneswar. I found almost everyone was having the same problem.
There is a thread here where you can find more people complaining. You would find a few interesting stories as well. I had never thought that an ISP would do something like this. When I asked one of the customer care guys about this, they said that they do this because Ortel is providing internet connection in rural areas at a lower cost, and so they had to compensate for it by adopting this. WHAT!!!!! You are awesome Ortel communications. Great going.
By the way, here’s the code that they injecting into every website that you visit. They get their ads onto our webpages by using this script.
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://ui.streamride.net/ui.js”></script>
This is almost equal to cheating the customers. I don’t really care if they are getting some extra revenue. It’s just so annoying to see those ads all the time. Here is a sample of how those ads look like on your browsers. This is, in my view, breach of privacy and security and cheating.
17 thoughts on “Ortel Communications: A review”
Now get a BSNL broadband. Best in Odisha.
@Debiprasad: They don't give me… 🙁
It's so bad – there are ads everywhere 🙁
Even i am not getting BSNL connection at HANSPAL , earlier i was using BSNL Broadband at Jaydev Vihar . But after shifting here we had to surrender the same as BSNL dnt have tower here… hope to get BSNL soon . the only option i have here is ORTEL but i wnt go for it ever… so 3G is frm bsnl is better option
They screw up in billing department too.. I was charged around 300 bucks extra for excess usage, while my modem was offline the whole time. Infact, the modem goes offline after the allotted Mbs are used up but I was charged for downloading exceeding the given limit.
Been using BSNL since it first started in Odisha. Happy customer eversince…
Regarding the problem, I suggest use of FF with AdBlockPlus. Hopefully it should solve the problem.
or
Try this :
Open your notepad using "Run as Admin" then open file and go to this location
"C:WindowsSystem32driversetc
Open hosts file
and append below lines
127.0.0.1 ui.streamride.net
127.0.0.1 http://c7.zedo.com
And after that you will not get any add.
@Sushant: YEah. It's pathetic.
@Saif: I know, Ortel is a big mistake. But right now I seriously don't have any other option.
@Anonymous: It's just a hell for their customers.
@Bishwadeep: I am on Mac. 🙁
You can reach out to Sahoo, he can help you out with your Ortel problems.
I would suggest you to go for a Tata photon, if interested to WFH, have been using it for the last 2 months for that purpose and its a happy experience.
Best,
Punit
@Punit: Oh yes, He is in Ortel I think. I will try to contact him, but then, I don't hope anything to change.
Really…That's why people don't have faith in companies….
Exhaacktleeeee
At first..I thought..ki tu kisi start up ka achhe se promotion karne wala hai..par yahan to pura ulta pad gaya….. hehe…
Frankly speaking…its same everywhere….a little bit of difference here and there…but at some of the others everything sucks..
tu apni khud ki company kyun nahi khol leta..internet provide karane ki…bahut logon ko bhakla ho jayega…
Well I guess, it's same everywhere. Strange though. Apni company? Hahaha…ok, We will see to that.
I am using Ortel I noticed this Issue of ads since it started the ad service. I was damn sure Ortel is the culprit for this. It was my misfortune and I didnt have any other option, so I choose Ortel. Ortel is really sucking and anybody please tell me any other solution for this problem than to take any other connection.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Yeah… I have found quite a lot of people having that problem.
Even suck with this kind of add from You Broadband..in Surat