After all the adventure setting up the network in Mysore, we moved on to Pilani – a small town in Rajasthan, where I grew up – to spend the last leg of our India trip. Needless to say, after the experience in Mysore, my expectations were a lot more modest.

As soon as we reached home, I powered up my dad’s computer and to my utter delight the connection was up and working (apparently the stolen cable had indeed been reinstalled). At home, my dad has created a nice setup for managing the spotty power situation, by installing an inverter and a generator. So all I needed to do was to connect the DSL modem to my laptop and I will be off and running. I quickly figured out the setup that required a username and password, created a broadband connection on my laptop, hooked up the Ethernet cable and I was online. That night, I slept a happy man.

In the morning, I setup up a conference call with my team and we started chatting via Skype. I was really excited as the connection was working great, and even the speed was a lot better than Mysore. Suddenly though, the whole thing came to a grinding halt. Upon further investigation, I noticed that the third light on the modem that indicates an active ADSL link with the telephone exchange was not lit anymore. After frantically trying to power cycle the modem, I was able to restore the connection and join back the conversation…Things were great but after another five minutes, no connection again. After going on and off 4 times, I decided to drop out and let the rest of the team carry on.

“Dad, what’s the story with the DSL connection?” I asked my Dad, as soon as I saw him.
“It used to work great before…I have never had this kind of issue.” Dad replied. “If you don’t believe me, talk to Rajesh ji, our neighbor.”
“Nope, never heard of any problems like you are seeing” Rajesh replied, when I called him up to check.

May be I was hitting a rare rough patch, or it might be a classic case of exaggeration, so typical in India. I looked into all sorts of possible reasons like the quality of the line, setup of the modem etc. to figure out what could be going on, but to no effect. The connection continued on and off for the next couple of days, until one morning when the ADSL link light did not turn on at all.

I called the SDOT (Superintendent of Telephone) to report the issue. Right of the bat he was upset, as I explained the situation to him:

“You should not fiddle around with the connection we setup for you”, he complained.
“Well, I needed to connect it to my laptop to get some work done…In any case, moving the Ethernet cable from our modem should not make a difference”, I retorted.
“It’s the government modem that we have leased to you…Don’t think that the modem is yours”, he countered.

After some back and froth, he agreed to investigate the issue and get back to us.

“Should I expect a response in a couple of hours?” I asked before hanging up.
“Look, these things are complicated…I can’t give you a timeline. We will get back to you”, he said and hung up.

I waited eagerly till the end of the day but got no response. The next day, again, I waited…we were told that the linesman was on his way, but again no one showed up. We called Banglore to connect to the head office but the toll free number listed for BSNL did not work. I decided to go over to the neighbor’s to at least catch up with the email. Rajesh had the DSL working so I hooked up but ran into the same on and off issue. I pointed it out to him.

“Oh, that’s what you meant…I guess we don’t browse as fast as you do, so we never have this issue”, he explained.

The next day I was getting desperate. Starting 11:00 AM (that is usually the time the government offices in Pilani start getting active), I and Dad got on the phone and started calling everybody in the exchange we could find. After a couple of hours, we got hold of the JEN (Junior Engineer).

“I checked your line and there is noting wrong with it. My guess is that your modem is shot. You need to take it to the SDOT sahib to get it checked” he said.

I and my Dad got on a scooter and went to the exchange. It was 3:00PM. SDOT sahib was nowhere to be found. We were told that he was out for lunch. Luckily, we found a JEN who hooked up our modem and splitter to test it out.

“The modem looks perfect”, he said. “These line engineers are not thorough. They must have made a mistake”.

He called the lines JEN and asked him to route our connection over to his office line, so that he could test our line. Again everything worked great. He asked the lines JEN to reconnect our line. He assured us that everything is fine, and it will work for us, when we reconnect the modem at home. We eagerly got home and hooked everything up, but again no ADSL link.

Around 6:30 PM, I decided to go over to the neighbor’s to get the emails. I was working when my Dad called me.

“The linesmen are here to check everything out. Why don’t you come back?” He said.

I sprinted back home. The linesmen were fiddling with a number of things but to no avail. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that something must be wrong at the exchange. We offered to drive them to the exchange rather than letting them bike back. When we got to the exchange, it was 7:30 PM and the power was out. The massive exchange was humming nicely in the dark. The linesman took out the torch (there is a backup power supply but for some reason it was not on) to locate our switch. They replaced our switch with the switch next to ours and we raced back. When we got back home, the most beautiful light in the world, the ADSL link light was on and the connection was working. We got the linesman to promise to replace our incoming cable with a better quality cable, the next day, in order to ensure good stable connection in the future.

This time the connection turned out to be a lot more stable. I worked till 1:00 AM but when I got up next morning again the connection was out. It turns out the switch that we have replaced the night before was the switch to the SDOT’s office, and he needed his connection back. Again we were without a connection.

In the evening, the linesman showed up and replaced the line, but again had no success establishing the connection. Eventually they called the JEN. He did something and eventually the ADSL lit up. Unfortunately, I had to leave for the US the next day so I didn’t get to enjoy the new connection. I hear, though, that the connection has been stable ever since :-).

I am in India for a couple of weeks visiting family and wrapping up some business. Before coming here I was excited about the prospect of working in India, as most of the family we are staying with, now have broadband. In fact, while packing for India I even packed a wireless router that will enable me to be somewhat mobile with my laptop.

After the long flight to India, when we finally reached home, I turned on the family computer to check out the broadband (BSNL ADSL) connection. No Signal…Apparently the BSNL server was down. I was told, that it happens occasionally and this might even have something to do with a worker’s strike against privatizing BSNL (it’s a government owned and run organization at this point). Oh well…

The next morning, I got up and turned on the computer and lo and behold the broadband connection was working. All I needed to do now to get productive was to get broadband connection to my laptop. To address that, it was with some relish that I got into setting up the wireless network. The first thing I needed was a voltage converter to convert the 220V power supply to 120V that my router eliminator will accept. I bought an off-the-shelf step down transformer. After plugging in all the required components and the power supply, I was ready to rock and roll. Unfortunately though, I realized that after an initial indication that the router was working, the power light was no longer turned on. I fiddled around with all the combination of power strips we had, even going out and buying a new power supply that generated the requisite 7.5V and 1Amp directly from 220V power supply…still no dice. I unscrewed the router, figured out how to reset it and expectantly plugged it in again…still no light. (I later found out that the issue was that the step-down transformer I bought off-the-shelf was not working as specified and was essentially passing through the voltage unchanged. This had caused a power surge which had actually fried the router).

I was getting frustrated and I had to get some work done. So I decided to move onto plan B which was to takeover the family broadband connection. I unpacked my 40ft Ethernet cable to run the cable from the study to the living room so that I could work and still be somewhat social. Now the issue with running a long cable in India is that all walls are solid concrete and there is no way to drill a hole that goes through. I had two options…Run the cable through the window or through the doors. After a quick family consultation, we shot down the idea of running the cable through the window as it would mean that we will have the leave a couple of windows open – a huge security risk. So I ran the cable through the doors going through 3 doors in the process. After tying the cable to a few nails, to get it out the way of kids, I was ready to be productive…I turned on the laptop…It was lovely, the speed was decent, Skype was working and I could access all my email accounts. I was cruising and beginning to feel connected again when suddenly the connection stopped working…Apparently somebody had closed one of the doors and that had killed the Ethernet cable. The whole system was down again.

The only option I had now was to either work in the study or to move the DSL model to the living room. After some deliberation, I decided to move the modem over to the living room and plug it into the telephone socket there. Things worked for sometime and then boom…the power went out. I was waiting again…

After waiting for a couple of hours for the power, I finally send out an email to my dad about our travel plans in India. I called him up to ask him to look for it on his computer. He gave me a hoarse laugh.
“It won’t work” he said
“Just turn on your computer and check your mail, you should have it. Also print out a copy for reference” I said, pointing out the obvious.
“It won’t work”, he repeated.
Now my dad is no tech wiz, but he can usually read his emails without any problems.
“Why not?” I asked getting a little bit frustrated.
“Well, there was a burglar attack last night in the neighborhood and the thieves took the telephone cables outside a number of houses. They plan to extract the copper from the wires in order to make some money from selling it” he explained.
“So I guess the broadband connection won’t work”, I stated the obvious, with a calmness that even I was surprised by. I guess I was getting used to being back in India.
“It will take just a couple of days and should be ok when you get here” Dad said reassuringly.

I don’t mean to imply from this post, that things are not improving…things are improving in India in a big way – roads are better, BSNL is improving the standard broadband speed from 256Kbps to 2Mbps in the course of next couple of years and even my dad and father-in-law have both a cell phone and a computer – but there is still a long way to go.