Being one of the early adopters of GPRS in Kerala, I thought I knew what’s going on with BSNL GPRS. Time and again I was proved that my knowledge is limited. I wanted to change my GPRS Plan to Plan 199 and had thought that required a letter. I had suggested to BSNL employees and customer care how easy it would be if that was possible through SMS. In fact it was possible for Prepaid customers and I was told Postpaid users are less and the feature is likely not to be implemented. For me to give the letter to customer care I have to travel around 80 kms in total and wait for the activation. Now with my friend in BSNL office I was confident I could get it done fast. To my surprise I was told it can be done by sending an SMS.

So the procedure is as follows.

To deactivate BSNL GPRS on postpaid connection

Send an SMS to 53733 (3733 was the suggested number but with the new numbering an from the reply SMS no that I got it should be 53733) with the following message.

GPRSD

For activating Plan49 send GPRS49 and for Plan 199 send GPRS199 to 53733. You’ll get a reply SMS asking for confirmation to which you got to reply with GPRS49Y and GPRS199Y respectively. The activation seems to take more time than deactivation and it could take upto 24hours.

The important thing about the service was that it was notified by BSNL officially and it will probably work for only customers in the south zone.

A search with google lead to this doc http://www.ap.bsnl.co.in/mmsgprs/Portal%20link%20documents/Manual-Device+Settings.doc Why can’t they summarize the information and present it decently ? Looks like I got to do it, with all major mobile service providers, their data plans, APN names, activation and deactivation procedures etc would make good blog post.

Yesterday I happened to go to Calicut BSNL office. I had an issue with my mobile connection where call forwarding didn’t work. I tried changing the mobile and trying various options, but no luck. Called customer care and they asked to do the usual stuff, turn off the mobile, remove SIM, blah blah. Its really difficult to convey the message that you are technically competent and don’t want to try stupidities ordered by them.

The best part of yesterdays’ trip was that I had a friend, who solved my problem. He made a call and they admitted there was a problem with my no. and after 2 minutes, said it was solved and it just worked. While I was sitting at my friend’s office, I found somebody sitting behind me trying to get GPRS working. Being one of the first customers of BSNL’s GPRS I knew the solution, except for the fact the laptop to be configured was in Vista.

So here’s the important information that you need to know for configuring GPRS on laptop,desktop for BSNL post paid connection.

1. Install and ensure the modem driver for your mobile is installed.
   (Once everything is done, you’ll find an additional COM port in ports of device manage and a mobile under modems)
2. Create a dial up connection entry,
   Username : Mobilenumber (don’t put a 0 before the number)
   Password : Mobilenumber (don’t put a 0 before the number)
   Dialup Number: *99#
   UPDATE: replace the above dialup number with *99***1#
   In the properties of the new connection entry, ensure that the modem selected is the newly created modem.
   (If you try to connect with these two steps, the connection will progress till authentication. After that you’ll get a PPP link error. The next step is important to prevent that)
3. Go to device manager select modems, and right click for options of the mobile modem. Click on Advanced and add this to the extra initialization settings.
   AT+CGDCONT=,”IP”,”bsnlsouth”
   UPDATE: replace the above with AT+CGDCONT=,”IP”,”gprssouth.cellone.in”
   Click OK
4. That’s it, now connect using the new connection and you should be able to browse the net and do whatever.

Side Note : BSNL officially has not acknowledged that it supports EDGE, but it supports EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)) on select towers, mainly in big towns and cities. The speed is dependent on the network traffic and can have high speed, when the network is not busy. The problem is there’s no way in most mobiles to differentiate between normal GPRS (speed less than 44kbps) and EDGE (can be as high as 236Kbps).
Go in for the unlimited plan if

1) Your area has EDGE.
2) You are using Internet from a laptop or desktop.

Feel free to ask and comment on your success or failure with the above steps.