Almost 6 months ago, I switched from Airtel to Excitel, mainly due to the fast internet speed Excitel was offering with no FUP and relatively low price. My initial review of Excitel, along with review of their installation can be found here, Excitel Broadband Review.
A lot has changed since then, for one, Excitel has increased the speed from 20mbps to 50mbps for no extra cost. They have also been expanding and adding more peering. So I feel it is time for a fresh review of Excitel’s 50mbps internet connection, which I am using at the moment.
Cost
When it comes to cost, Excitel’s broadband plans were always quite enticing. Now, with speed increase, they look even better.
Though they have changed their marketing a bit and instead of advertising cost of the plan inclusive of taxes, they are now showing them without taxes on their website.
Not a real biggie, here is what their plan actually translate into:
Rs. 695 50mbps plan = Rs. 799.25 (including taxes)
Rs. 845 75mbps plan = Rs. 971.75 (including taxes)
Rs. 995 100mbps plan = Rs. 1144.25 (including taxes)
I am currently using their lowest tiered plan at Rs. 799.25 per month, which gives me unlimited data usage at 50mbps, with no FUP whatsoever.
Connectivity
Over the past 5 months, their connectivity has improved vastly, as they have added more peering and now have direct peering with Netflix as well. Resulting in a far better Fast.com speed test than earlier (Fast.com is hosted by Netflix and earlier my Excitel connection used to top out at 2.5-4mbps).
Speedtest.net test result for NCR servers is as usual, fantastic and usually shows I am getting full 50mbps speed, if not slightly better!
However, running a Speedtest against New York based server shows, unless you’re connecting to a server which has direct peering path with Excitel, you won’t really be able to exploit full speed of your internet connection.
This is understandable since not even US ISPs promise full speed on national and international routes.
Though if you are into torrents, then you will be able to max out your connection quite easily. Sadly, I used to get twice my normal speed, when I used to use torrents earlier. Not any more. Now I am limited to my connection speed.
Apart from this, connectivity is mostly good. Though at times it can be quite erratic with Facebook acting up, along with other websites and slowing down. Excitel’s network still isn’t as stable and fast, as that of Airtel. So if you’re looking for a connection, which works extremely well for the vast majority of websites, most of the time, it would be a good idea to opt for a costlier, yet more stable network.
However, if you’re ok with such occasional hiccups, then by all means, Excitel is fantastic value for money. And best of all, be it Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube or Hotstar, streaming works extremely well.
Customer service and downtime
The best way to reach Excitel these days is via their app or their website. Trying to call them often results in a wait time ranging from 10 to 20 minutes! And after that, they run you through the same routine of unplugging and plugging back WAN cable, restarting the modem, before they log your complaint.
Complaints often take an hour or more to get resolved, a lot more if you face a local issue in the evening.
Worst still, if you encounter frequent disconnection issue or in case your internet connection is going down daily, then unless you post a screenshot of account activity log in the ticket, they won’t completely resolve the issue and you would have to complain daily to them. Only after you show them through the log, that it is a daily or regular occurrence, do they go ahead and fix the issue for good, until it happens again a few weeks later!
So yes, with Excitel, you need a backup connection. Otherwise, downtime can seriously piss you off.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, I am not as satisfied with the customer service and stability of Excitel, as I was with Airtel. Yet, I completely disconnected my Airtel connection and now only have mobile phone connections as the backup internet for my Excitel connection.
For the price and the fact that it is an unlimited connection with no FUP limits, Excitel’s 50mbps broadband plan is a real value for money. One I would likely keep using, unless downtime or some other issue, forces me to change ISPs.
31 Comments
has the connection stability increased after the 6 months ?
Somewhat.
Hello Yogesh,
That was a good review, truly appreciate your time and effort!
I’m with ACT/Beam ISP for almost 7 years (currently 25 Mbps fiber line for 767/- per month with GST), now I’d pondering to switch to other ISP such as Excitel. But my ACT ISP is highly reputed for its speeds and very low downtime of few hours (2-3 times an year!).
The problem: the ACT guys changed the network across the cities from public static IP (183 series) to private series or double NAT (10 series). This resulted in IP visibility problem (remote connectivity issue) and P2P upload issues (port can’t be connected).
How is Excitel broadband service from my problem perspective? What is their IP implementation? Public or Private? And, please share your experience on Torrent connectivity and upload speeds too.
Thank you very much,
Dr. Madhav
Dr. Madhav, Excitel implements private IP just like ACT these days. No issue with torrent download or upload though.
Thank you for responding, Yogesh!
Well, then Excitel offers Private IP solution too. Didn’t you face any issues while seeding on torrents at max potential upload speeds?
I used to get 2.8 MB/s uploads on public static IPs, but situation got degraded once ACT rolled in Private IPs. On the P2P front, now am greeting with “Not Connectable” RED warning in uTorrent client. It means that port forwarding isn’t working anymore! Is it same for you too?
Thanks again,
Dr. Madhav
I rarely use torrents. So didn’t notice any issue. The times I did use them, they worked perfectly.
I am looking to switch to Excitel and eventually stop using AirTel. Since they seem to be a new player, would you say that their service has improved over the time you have starting using them?
They have improved somewhat. However, their customer care phone numbers have long wait these days, so I prefer using their portal to log tickets.
Worse send me your email id I have lots of screen shots and also register complaint in consumer court.
They are saying we didn’t provide static IP & port forwarding is impossible due to same public ip shared by many users.
IS THERE ANY WORKAROUND for portforwarding or static IP ?
hi there is a huge issue of ping in excitel and the speed is very much fluctuating in the daytime . any solution mr yogesh ?
Gather evidence by way of traceroutes and ping screenshots, also with speedtests. Post them in a ticket on my.excitel.com and hope it gets resolved.
HI Yogesh
Could you also share the configuratin details of the excitel service on your router. it wold be a great help
Hi Yogesh,
I have just bought a Amazon fire tv stick, So i will be watching youtube, hotstar, voot, amazon prime, eros now, ditto etc. Have you tested all these apps working well with excitel?
I am looking for a new broad band connection since the speed of my 50 mbps siti broadband reduces drastically to just around 2-4 mbps after 10 pm in night.
I have chosen 3 ISPs Hathway, Den Boomband and Excitel. Which one would you recommend?
I live in east Delhi, power cut rarely happens here.
Thanks!
I used Excitel with all these services, except Voot. It works fine most of the time with these and has direct peering with Amazon, Netflix, Hotstar and Youtube.
I haven’t used the other 2 ISPs, so can’t say anything about them. But they are larger players and also present in my area. However, their packages were costlier, hence I went to Excitel.
Hi Yogesh,
Since its almost been 6 months since you wrote this post – how is the downtime/ customer support now? I currently have Airtel broadband (for 7 years or so) and wish to change to Excited for good. but I am very scared of downtimes which I rarely encounter with Airtel.
It has improved a bit, but still nowhere in the league of Airtel.
is speed is constant in use ? whenever we use
Hello at which location are u using
and whats the status of downtime as i talked to sales team
they said if any thing occur Like this they will extend the days according to that
and is it still good in service ?
as i saw here local providers are more helpful then the customer support
please tell ur experience of nov and dec
as im payin 1k rs on timbl with 10 mbps
and now want to movie high speed
from timbl i rarely faced downtime just for 2-3 min whats as of excitel improves here ?
There are issues and downtimes, international speed is good during morning, suffers during the afternoon and evening. Though local and peering speed is usually good and occasionally has issues. Downtime happens at least 2-3 times in a month, takes a few hours and usually gets automatically rectified. There is problem with them, if you want to use Google DNS. So you have to use their DNS service, which isn’t as great.
Hi Yogesh, Thanks for the detailed review. I face a peculiar problem with Excitel though. FIrst of all, my utorrent client always shows connection status in yellow color implying no incoming connections. I am aware that Excitel uses Extreme local peering and hence I am only able to download only those torrents from torbox that have local peering enabled (shown in green color) at full download speed. But all other torrents though very healthy (more no. seeds & peers) don’t download at all My doubt is these healthy torrents that dont have extreme peering should at least be downloaded at base speeds right? Did you face this problem ?
I don’t download a lot of torrents. However, so far I haven’t faced this issue. As long as there are seeders, torrents download just fine. Check your firewall and router settings, maybe something is causing issue.
Worst service. Even local cable guys provide better service than excitel. I am getting 600 kbps on 50 mbps plan. No benefit in calling customer care as well. they just register your complain. No action affterwards. Location shaheen bagh.
i’m thinking of connecting Excitel, but i came through this today, it change a bit of my decision because i was in dilemma between ACT and Excitel, i need my connection for works only. Comparing the plans they offer, Excitel is one of the best ISP ever in India…. any idea which one to go?
hi yogesh i was using airtel and by seeing this post i now think excitel matches my requirements even better. Does unlimited fup means that if once installed, then we can use the internet for how many days bro???
Unlimited FUP means there is no data usage restriction. You can buy their pack for 1 month or more months and use it for that duration.
hi yogesh i have excitel broadband connection i need static ip for online gaming please help me
That’s not possible with Excitel, you will either have to use a VPN or switch to another ISP.
are you still using excitel ? has the service changed since then ?
Yes, I am still using Excitel and it is still a mixed bag. It is good when it is good, but ever so often it goes bad. Even though service is restored in a few hours, but it is a headache nonetheless.
Excitel support is worst