Photo Courtesy: http://www.gulmiresunga.com/

Deerwalk Services (DWS) is the second biggest software company in Nepal in terms of number of employees according to the latest survey done by the Everest list. It has more than 300 employees working together. DWIT News did a survey with 40 of the software engineers from different departments of the company about their preferred ISP. They are experts in this field and here’s what we found out.

First of all, here is the picture of what the 40 surveyed engineers use to get an Internet service. [caption id="attachment_4319" align="aligncenter" width="581"] Photo Courtesy: Amun Kharel[/caption]

Again, ADSL tops the list in terms of highest number of users with a majority of 17. Worldlink has 5, Subisu with 4 and surprisingly Netmax has made it into the second place  with 11 users.  It speaks a lot about the ISP because 27.5% of the surveyed engineers use Netmax as their ISP.

In the previous article, we briefly discussed about the pros and cons of ADSL, World link and Subisu Internet services. We had received really poor reviews on ADSL services and some good reviews on World link and Subisu. In this survey however, we got some poor reviews on Worldlink and some average remarks on the Subisu network.

11 of the users were found to have switched from one Internet service to the other. 9 of them had switched from ADSL to Subisu or Netmax or Worldlink, and 2 of the engineers had switched from Worldlink to Subisu considering the frequent downtime and disruption of service maintenance in case of Worldlink. As software engineers, they want consistent speed to work with. But the engineers found the Internet service really slow at the peak working hours. Hence, its fluctuating speed led them to change  the Internet service.

When summed up, we received totally different reviews from the engineers in comparison to the Computer Science students at DWIT. Subisu didn’t get away this time either. They received some average reviews in terms of reliability and customer care. ADSL started from where it left. The engineers, in the similar way as did the students, left the ADSL’s pro segment of the survey blank.

Out of the blue, Netmax landed in the 2nd position in the list of most used ISPs with 11 users in the survey. To those who do not know, Netmax Technologies was founded in the year 2009 and serves as an ISP in Nepal. Netmax provides three kinds of Internet services. They provide Wi-Fi Internet facility, Wireless Internet and Optical Fibre facility with speed ranging from 320 kbps to 1mbps. Wi-Fi Internet facility is the cheapest while Optical Fibre facility is expensive. Most engineers, when surveyed, were found to be using Wireless Internet service rather than Optical Fibre facility. You have to pay Rs 7500 to purchase outdoor wireless unit for the Wireless Internet service and Optical Fibre worth 300m for Rs 10,000 at first. Then you have to pay on a monthly basis. Engineers found it quite simple to setup by calling the technician of the service providing company.  They said that the technicians can reach the customers in any parts of the valley as it has resellers all over the valley.

Well that was about setting up the ISP. Let’s talk about the pros of the ISP. The ISP is very reliable in terms of speed. Users seem to be satisfied with the bandwidth purchased and speed provided to them. The download speed and video streaming speed of the ISP is reasonably good compared to other ISPs used by the engineers. And they found that the customer care of the ISP “the best of the best.”  They take action against the complaints really seriously and fix the problems as soon as possible. The best thing about the ISP is that you can pay your bills from wherever you are. They send people to receive the bills anywhere in the valley and engineers seem to be reasonably satisfied with the Internet service.

Its correlation with loadshedding and bad weather (poor sunlight) seems to be its prominent disadvantage. During loadshedding hours, continuously for 6-7 hours, the internet service totally loses its speed and reliability. The speed of the Internet service is fluctuating from time to time.  Further, it sometimes gives limited access to the users.

In conclusion, Netmax seems to be the Internet service you should be switching to in the upcoming summer. Loadshedding will reduce significantly in the summer and hence such problems might not arise. Until the next winter, they might even solve such problems. So you are good to go with this ISP. After all, it is the engineer’s choice.

Happy surfing people!