Problems with MTNL's Triband Internet Connection

About 15 days back, we experienced totally black-out for almost 3 days with MTNL's internet connection. Upon inquiry we found that their Fibre Channel cable was damaged by a utility company while doing some road repair work. Ok. We understand this happens sometimes.

But, for past 8 to 10 days, kind of problems we have been facing with MTNL's triband is making us crazy. Almost every day some time or other, suddenly for 4 to 6 hours Internet connection starts behaving bad. For some days it has been 'web page cannot be displayed'. Today it is able to load only certain sites e.g., google, google mail, yahoo mail, mtnl, iit bombay, stock holding corporation, blogger etc. It's not able to open sites like irctc, saraswat bank, most links on google search, indian passport, kingfisher club etc.

Talked to various people at MTNL including their server room people. They are clueless. And, to make it worse, today is saturday. So, they will take it up on Monday! Same thing had happened during Fibre Cable damage problem.

I remember, I had faced a wierd problem about 1 year back. I was not able to visit IRCTC website for railway booking. I called up MTNL's help line and after much argument they confirmed that there was an issue with their DNS server; and they are working on it. Since I was in hurry I used Cleartrip's railway booking (which had just started, and I found it to be much better than IRCTC). Any way, after that it's more or less working well.

It should be mentioned here that apart from this few incidents, MTNL's triband internet has been extremely good and reliable.

Online photo print service in India

In USA and many other countries, online photo print services are quite an established business. But, recently I discovered a good quality service provider based out of Mumbai, India.

When I saw their mailer (e-mail) they said they would give 10 No.s 4x6 prints free. Yes, you read it correct - FREE!! I checked that they were based out of Mumbai and decided not to make any payment to them by credit card. They had option to pay cash at one shop located quite close to my office.

So, I went ahead and uploaded 10 best photos of my Kashmir tour and ordered the prints. They charged Rs.25/- plus tax as delivery charges. They sent a number through SMS to my mobile phone; went to the shop, made the cash payment and they issued a receipt of Rs.28/- or so. And within seconds I got SMS saying money was received and prints would be delivered in few days.

It did come - as promised to my place. My first and second impression about this service (http://www.zoomin.com/) is too good.

Today I got an offer saying if I order 1 photo mug, I get second mug free. I ordered 4 mugs with 4 Kashmir photos and fitting caption. All customised. This time I decided to pay through Credit card. This site has Thwate SSL certificate and after accepting my credit card details over a secure SSL connection; transferred control to my bank's website for another verification, and control came back to www.zoomin.com after verification. So, that's how the payment part got over without any problem.

Usability of website is too good to be from India. They allow unlimited photo uploads. You can create albums for private and public use. You can order prints not only on paper but on mugs, t-shirts, calenders etc. etc.