Tata Photon Plus is the best wireless mobile broadband available in India. It has also been awarded the Product of the Year 2011 under Mobile Broadband (Wireless) category. Instead of the wire broadband you should go for the wireless photon plus option for a simple reason that it provides wireless freedom and you can carry the wireless broadband connection where ever you go.
I have been using a wire broadband connection and had a mobile GPRS connection that I used when traveling. There were a lot of problems with the fixed broadband because of wire snapping, electricity fluctuations and what not. The mobile network (GPRS / EDGE ) from Airtel was no good either the speed was terribly slow. So I decided to get a Tata photon connection that offers the same broadband speed and the tariff is also nearly the same but what I get is mobility and downtime because of wire problems are totally eliminated.
The process of getting the Tata Photon Plus is simple. Just visit the nearest Tata Indicom center and ask for the Photon Plus broadband USB device. You need to submit one id proof ( your driving licence or Passport), one address proof (electricity / credit card / landline bill) and one photo.
Once you submit you can get the new Tata Photon Plus USB device activated instantly. There are many schemes you can choose from depending on your need. The cost of a new Tata Photon Plus USB is Rs. 1800 1249 and with some schemes you can get 100% cash back, so you will get the 1800 back within a year (Rs. 150 for 12 months) . The amount gets deduced in your monthly bill.
The Photon connection is post-paid and you will get a month bill depending on the tariff plan you have chosen.
Tata Photon Tariff plan (basic data)
- Rs. 99 for 512MB valid for 1 Day.
- Rs. 100 for 100MB.
- Rs. 255 for 1GB valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 350 for 1.5GB valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 450 for 2GB valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 850 for 5GB valid for 30 days.
Tata Photon Unlimited Data Tariff plan
- Rs. 700 for 2GB Unlimited valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 750 for 3GB Unlimited valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 1000 for 6GB Unlimited valid for 30 days.
- Rs. 1200 for 11GB Unlimited valid for 30 days.
I got the Rs. 950 scheme where I get up to 3.1 Mbps speed until I reach 5GB after which unlimited at 156kbps. The price is same as my currently fixed broadband where I pay approx Rs.1000 for 500 kbps unlimited.
The Photon plus USB device from Tata (India’s superfast mobile broadband service) is plug and play it automatically installed the software on my windows PC and was ready to use. I even plugged it into my netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Edition and it got detected easily. Just go to system > network connections on Ubuntu netbook edition and choose the mobile broadband tab then click add and you should find the EC152 Huawei USB device listed there.
Tata Photon Plus EC152 Huawei features
- Speed up to 3.1 Mbps
- Upload speed up to 1.8 Mbps
- Plug and Play
- Supports up to 4GB of Micro SD card which can make it work as a storage device too.
As soon as you get the device you can start using it. You get 100 minutes of free internet activity this is until the papers you submitted are verified and your account then fully activated. It may take about 8 hours to get your account fully activated.