Why are there no proper review of the Bharat Telecom (Mauritius) internet?

Following an initial setup fee of RS 1150 + a refundable deposit of RS 1000. Bharat Telecom teams came to my place. First for the fibre optics cable that takes from the CEB pole and then a second team for the Optibox ( Bharat Telecom's router made by Broadcom ).

I subscribed to the Bees Performance ( 2 Mbps Unlimited, no capping ) For infos about other offers limited or not, please consult www.bees.mu.

The Optibox is very straightforward to customize. Full access to all sections. Freedom to edit the LAN and WAN settings,port forwarding, DMZ, SSID, WIFI channel ( using the latest 802.11n by the way ) and other lots of other customizabled features that will look straightforward to you.

About 3 months ago the download / upload speeds and latency results were unstable depending on the time of the day but following an email to sent to their technical team, I can say these particular issues were fixed successfully by the NOC ( their network operation center ) . There is now almost no difference in download speed, upload speed or ping variations, be it at peak time ( evenings ) or in the morning.

As many might be unaware of, speed is not everything in the quality of a broadband connection. There is also quality measured usually by doing a latency test. Both speed test and latency tests should be done to INTERNATIONAL servers ( Europe, Asia and America ) because that is the purpose of paying a fee for broadband access, not only for local use. Especially for those who might use Bharat's FTTH technology for gaming should know latency tests will be needed.

Finally I actually did test both MyT ( Orange / Mauritius Telecom ) and Bees ( Bharat Telecom ) side by side. MyT 2 MBPS ( ADSL ) that I had since 6 years and Bees from Bharat Telecom 2 MBPS unlimited that I just subscribed to. Download speed was more stable for Bees and almost no variation in the results all day, except a very slight difference at peak hours. ( evenings )

Concerning the ping side of things Bees still wins at around 50 to 70 ms less than MyT ( ADSL ). Tests done on many locations worldwide ( USA, France, Asia and Australia ).

Even had surprising results: 282 - 294 ms to New-York, USA, 213 - 230 ms Paris, France and 191 - 215 ms to Perth, Australia. ( Sometimes very slight difference at peak time, evenings though, and needless to say depend a lot on the international routing through Mauritius Telecom ).

Not perfect latency results ( to international servers ) obviously compared to FTTH offers in other countries but indeed superior to: the 255-315 ms ( Paris, France ) or 375 ms ( New-York, USA ) average that I had with MyT ( ADSL ) And these MyT ( ADSL ) latency tests were done to the same servers as with Bees.

Of course these tests were done via www.speedtest.net or www.pingtest.net

Now concerning the more practical way of things, I noticed that with the FTTH of Bees, I stream movies and do online games more easily. Especially on my Xbox 360, Xbox Live. I find online servers way more quickly, and the better pings make me play more comfortably online. The servers rejected me often when I used MyT ( ADSL ) since the Call of Duty servers for example automatically reject people with bad pings.

Concerning the upload side of things Bees still wins: about 900 KBPS to 1 MBPS local and about 700 to 900 KBPS international. Yet again superior compared to the 384 KBPS to 400 KBPS MyT ( ADSL ) gave me.

Bees FTTH is indeed superior compared to MyT ADSL.

I had maybe about 7 downtimes in almost 3 months and they happened only at about 2 a.m or 5 a.m. The downtimes lasted like 3-4 hours. The reason was upgrades on the network.

Concerning customer support, I wasn't very much satisfied as there is a lack of communication between the hotline and NOC ( technical team ). But I was informed that customers can directly contact: crm@btl.mu to inform about any issues and the technical team shall report back ( the NOC fixed several issues with success).

I heard rumours that MyT FTTH ( la fibre new offers ) has a special routing done for online gamers, meaning better pings. But I wonder would it be better pings international or local... we shall know soon. But what is sure is that the internet broadband quality competition is finally ON in Mauritius.

For the appreciation of some readers, lets see a traceroute using Bees of Bharat Telecom, which clearly shows that their international routing go through Mauritius Telecom and not Belgacom:

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TO NOTE:
This was a review done back in 2013, and what is stated in my review is no longer fact. There have been several issues... extreme slowness, crap ping so unable to do online gaming, random disconnections ( sometimes lasting hours or days )... crap customer care, no fixing of issues for months which lead me to cut off the service back in 2014. The same issues I had back then that people are still obviously having now in 2016 ( as seen on the 2 Facebook pages of Bharat Telecom Bees ). I'm happy now using My T Fibre of Mauritius Telecom.

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Is it better than Orange. I wish to Subscribe but i'm not really sure about their 512k. Orange 512k is very tortoise slow but i still get connection and 8902 is 24/24 customer service. As for Barat, I don't know how is it.

bharat telecom has worst customer care.they do not care about the customer , once they get money they will say all new rules,and ones they get money they never attend your calls.waste waste waste............

Customer service is very poor.. They never revert back to your problem if they need to come and check at your place... I have an unlimited plan and I have been reporting for slowness. But they are not able to solve it even after 3 weeks of time. They dont even bother to come to customer place and check for the issue..

BT is looking for a buy out similar to the last company with the same name. This time no one is interested and BT finds itself in an uncomfortable position . They are out for a big loss unless they come out with what they promised I.e fast internet connection and Two scores of tv channels. At present it seems they promised ostrich eggs but are delivering pigeons eggs. Have you heard of the feat of a bombaywallah feeding 25 persons with a single egg omelet. Seems BT is out to do the same.
Potential client of BT

That's because Bees internet is only available to residents of Quatre-Bornes at the moment. They are offering the service to those in Beau-Bassin and Rose-Hill soon but as you can see, there are not many users as subscribers of Mauritius Telecom.

Until the service is offered on a larger scale, you will not be able to get an accurate review of their service.