Airtel Broadband – Speed On Demand

Recently Airtel launched a broadband service called as Speed On Demand (SOD). This service was started by Airtel to help people who can’t afford to subscribe to 2mbps Unlimited plans even though they would want to.

I came across this offer when I was going through my monthly bill. I didn’t know then, that it would really come in handy. The service quite literally means Speed On Demand. It lets you to increase your speed for a period of 1 hour to any of these four options:

• Airtel Bandwidth on Demand 256 Kbps @ Rs. 10/hr

• Airtel Bandwidth on Demand 512 Kbps @ Rs. 20/hr

• Airtel Bandwidth on Demand 1 Mbps @ Rs. 50/hr

• Airtel Bandwidth on Demand 2 Mbps @ Rs. 75/hr

How to Use Speed On Demand:

Firstly, you need to call Airtel Customer Care number; 121 and find out your Airtel Speed on Demand Username and Password, to login into Speed On Demand and use this service. Remember this service doesn’t charge you based on the amount of bandwidth consumed. The service tariff is based on each 1 hour of use and at the 57th minute it will ask you whether you want to renew the subscription or not. Here’s a step by step preview on how to use this service:

5 simple steps to use Speed On Demand:

1. As previously mentioned, call Airtel Customer Care and keep your login details ready. Open your browser (Internet Explorer works the best because sometimes on Mozilla FireFox it only shows the 2mbps offer) and type the following in your address bar; “http://airtel.in/sod”

2. Once the page loads, Select your city from the drop down menu available. It should open another page which will ask you for your login details. Fill in your login details and click on Login.

3. If your login details are correct it should take you to the next page which shows the services. Select the service you want to use and click on confirm.

4. After you click on confirm it will take you the next page wherein you’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions of this service. Click on Agree.

5. Once you confirm, the service will be activated and to deactivate it you’ll just have to click on the deactivate button on the page. Don’t panic if you close this page accidentally. You can login, and it will directly take you to the same page.

Tips ‘n’ Tricks for Airtel Broadband – Speed On Demand:

I decided to experiment with this service. The first month i tried, i downloaded a lot using different ‘speed on demand’. I finally got my bill at the end of the month, i was shocked! It said in bold: INR 3654.65. That day i decided to see if there were any loopholes in the service. I found out a neat little trick which reduced my bill drastically over the last 5 months.

There is a small trick to it:

1. When you start the service note the time. This service charges you for every pulse, which last for 5 minutes. For example if you’re using the Bandwidth On Demand 256 Kbps, then it will charge you INR 2.15 for 5 minutes of usage.

2. Keep this in mind and calculate how much data you can download in 5 min, with Speed On Demand 256 Kbps, you can download approx 8 MB in 5 minutes.

3. Deactivate after 5 minutes and then try some other service if you want.

You can actually download more by spending less, here’s how you do it:

It works best with Bandwidth On Demand 2Mbps as you can download up to 15Mb every minute, depending on the speed. The rate charged is only INR 6.2 for every 5 minutes of usage. It is advisable to use the service for 10 minutes at a time, to get the most juice from this service.

Note: It would be safe to deactivate the service at about 4.5 minutes of usage or 9.5minutes of usage, on any of the 4 offers, to be on the safe side.