If you are looking for information on setting up Aircel Pocket Internet on PC / Laptop, then read my post explaining it by following the link.
This was my first trial on Aircel Pocket Internet. Read my speed review part 2 here.
I was using Airtel Online / NOP for quite a while until recently Airtel pulled these back. I know the reason behind Airtel’s move to withdraw Airtel Online / NOP – there has been a number of hacks and tricks around through which one can use Airtel Online / NOP on pc, even though they aren’t for pc and to be used only on mobile and comes with a nominal charge of 99 Rs for unlimited mobile browsing for a month on the postpaid plan.
Quite dejected, I decided to test the Aircel’s Pocket Internet. Power cuts for two hours – one each in morning and evening, I decided to spend my time walking during power cut.
I walked to Thippasandra market in Bangalore, which is quite near to my home, and went into at least 4 mobile recharge stores for Aircel’s Pocket Internet. All had the poster mentioning about Aircel’s Pocket Internet cards worth Rs 14 and 98, but when I asked “Aircel Pocket Internet card iddaya?” (Do you have Aircel’s Pocket Internet card, all of them told “NO”! Well, everyone had the poster of this ad posted on the Wall !! Its quite a shame that Aircel people aren’t educating these people about new offers, schemes and something like this when they provide such ads to be pasted on their shops!
I ended up in front of a small shop where they sell the DTH services and they looked to be selling the mobile phone SIMs and recharge coupons too. Seeing the same sticker again, I repeated the same question to get the same answer ! But this time my question was noticed by a man standing in front of the shop – he must be the actual owner of the shop and I asked my question to the boy standing inside the shop. This person asked me what I am looking for.. I pointed at the same ad which was on the wall – I am looking for this. He asked the boy, do you know what is this – The boy said ‘NO’. He shouted at the boy, we are the distributor and you don’t know what is this, how others will know then? I told I have visited 4 shops prior to this.. The person made a quick phone call to some Aircel office and confirmed that we can do an easy recharge to get the plans activated. I was happy, at last I can get Aircel to test the Pocket Internet!
I took the SIM, got a life time recharge done for 49 Rs and activated Pocket Internet with another recharge of 98 Rs.
Now the real review of Pocket Internet
On my Sony Ericsson K750i, I could open the mobile friendly pages without any issue, but the GMail for Mobile didn’t fetch my emails. So I would say, on mobile phone this connection works fairly okay for light web browsing. I tried downloading mini fring of 575 KB, this is where I felt the connection lacks ! It took at least 20 minutes for me for the 575KB download with many network errors and resuming download.
I connected mobile to my PC to test the speed and run a speed test using http://speedtest.net . For the dial up settings for Aircel Pocket Internet on PC/Laptop, one may use *99***1# if Pocket Internet is the first internet profile in the phone, with user name and password empty. iGoogle took close to 90 seconds to load, I tried opening up GMail.com which opened up in about 30 seconds, but subsequently it showed ‘Internet Connection Lost’ message on top of the GMail page.
SpeedTest.net page didn’t load completely for continous attempts for an hour! Finally I decided to load the SpeedTest.net page components using my broadband and then do a refresh to test using Pocket Internet. The initial latency check on SpeedTest.net showed something close to 5800 ms and gave an error after wards, I couldn’t continue the Speed test at all.
Whichever is cheap isn’t always the best – This holds true in this case as well. For 98 Rs one can browse at home, cheap, but mind what you can do in 5 minutes on Broadband, needs an hour or more on Pocket Internet. Are you ready for it? By the way if you are too much dependant on a cyber cafe which uses age old machines and have many viruses in it, safeguarding your email credentials can be achieved with use of Pocket Internet connected to your own PC / Laptop – I am not seeing any reliability score for this connection.
Airtel, why did you stop the 99 Rs Airtel Online? It was much better than this so called ‘Pocket Internet’ !
I think there r network prblm in bangalore cause in mumbai it works fine just as same as nop
Aircel guys are fooling people in my city(Thats in Uttarakhand)they take 98Rs.frm people to activate this shit piece called aircel pocket internet and its gone((i took their lifetime sim, activated it on the same day, got settings from aircel cust care but no help.aircel sim gets online on your phone after more than 5 mnutes. sometimes the sim is not at all actiave(no tower)i activated 98 recharge twcie, but no helps.. called them, still the net is slow and discs frequentluy.i thought i will make it as a back up connection if my bb connection fails, but its just giving beg to a begger… i hate aircel.
Any wireless network will have variations in signals at different places. This fact should not be forgotten unless the operator has provided enough towers to cover up signal scarcity.@WEBMASTER its unfortunate that you are facing issues. Have you tried using Aircel pocket internet in a place where the GPRS signal is strong?
i want to wether it will cost for browsing aircel pocket internet if it cost tell me how much for post paid
I changed my network to aircel few weeks ago and i’m really pissed off with the network problems and the high amount services.As usual like other operators they activates things on their behalf and deductes the balance. Its a complete never buy option. You will regret it for sure. Its not worth paying 19rs. for such a low class network. If you are planning to swtich to AIRCEL then think twice because you will be bound for 3months, if you opted for it. Rest upto you! Best of luck! 🙂
i rechared 14 rs aircel internet plan.the shopkeeper did not gave any pocket internet card to me. it is needed or not.mine is china set.i could not get the net connected in my phone.the shopkeeper said to call to customer care and that they will say how to connect.to my phone.i recharged yesterday. 1 day is already wasted please send me how to connect to net in my phone.
I have been using aircel pocket internet in bangalore for the past two months. Its very efficient and economical. Tell me which service is giving you service at rs6 per day.
I just hate this aircel network they are just looting money in the name of bloddy services for which they dont give any confirmation and just activate it.Planning to change the network and would recommened my family and friends as well to change.They are just fooling people