Poor net connectivity irks consumers

Nellore: Suresh Kumar, who depends on the internet for transferring data from home, says he feels tensed during peak hours to discharge duties promptly and efficiently. He says, even though, he resides in city limits he regularly faces trouble due to slow internet connection.

Thanks to the flash-speed services being lured by majority telecom networks through various packs offering 4G services that fail even in the urban segments. It is not only problem for home based working people but also for many, who were not getting high-speed net connectivity in many towns in the district as it is being publicised. Consumers say the services are not up to mark in towns due to lack of mobile towers.

Consumers residing on the outskirts of Nellore and in Kavali, Gudur, Naidupet, Atmakur, Kovur, Venkatagiri, and other places are experiencing slow net connection. Suresh Kumar, who works in a private company is using two SIM cards of popular mobile companies but still they are useless for him even though he resides in city.

“We have to wait for the connection and sometimes run for half a kilometre for better signal strength,” he added. The same situation is being faced by many consumers in Kavali town where more than one lakh population resides. Very few places close to the towers get somewhat better signals. “There is no question of 4G connectivity in the town and it is only available in Nellore.

When we observe advertisements, the telecom companies are completely misleading people and we are planning to approach consumer forum for justice,” said D Bharathi from Kavali town. Soon after use of Android app for smart phones has been rampant, settings play a very important role in connectivity.

An Access Point Name (APN) is the name of a gateway between a GSM, GPRS, 3G or 4G mobile network and other public computer networks. A mobile device making a data connection must be configured with an APN to present to the carrier and the erratic settings give troubles to the consumers when not configured correctly.

“We tried to change even the APN settings according to the network operator still we are unable to get the connectivity. This problem is due to private telecom operators have failed to set up their own towers in the towns. Majority of them collaborate with other companies, who are having towers in rural and urban areas and sometimes they don’t provide network due to technical errors,” said P Ramana Kumar, a techie from Gudur.