In the case of Airtel, "upto 16Mbps" means that maximum 4Mbps due to "technical restrictions."
You're lucky that you're getting that kind of a connection. Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata are probably the only cities in India where one can get that kind of a connection without trouble.
Yeah, good luck with that. One would prefer jumping off the top of Burj Khalifa rather than deal with the bureaucracy and the illiterate government officials who control these things.
In my opinion, an ISP startup over here is only possible if either the government wakes up (not gonna happen) or if someone with millions of dollars to spend on infrastructure and bribes is willing to do it.
It doesn't really work in the Lucknow railway station. Although there are ads all over the place that say "High Speed Wi-Fi available here", sometimes your device won't even discover the "Railwire" SSID.
A high-speed Wi-Fi service also seems a bit stupid given the fact that no ISP in Lucknow provides an unlimited 50+ Mbps broadband connection. What do they expect us to do? Take our laptops and sit at the station which is littered with rats, monkeys, their shit, and trash?
You can get an unlimited <50Mbps connection but that'll cost you approximately $500 - $1000 a month. For other "home users" there are shitty plans that give you 30GB-200GB of data with 2Mbps - 16Mbps for approximately $30 a month.
> The same can be said about a "trusted" OS like say Qubes OS, with untrusted hardware, like Intel's. Actually, that's what the developers of Qubes OS and other "free" operating systems have said as well.
If you're really paranoid, go for open hardware supported by libreboot [0] or the Talos Workstation and run a hardened "free" OS.
However, I don't think Intel ME (or similar firmware in AMD and ARM) has ever been used to compromise user security and privacy. The threat probably exists and is real but has it ever been exploited? On the other hand, I suspect that there is no lack of zero-days and other vulnerabilities for iOS and Android.
It is different. I expect Apple and Google to insert backdoors deliberately into their operating systems for three letter agencies (it's easy to do it when you've got either a proprietary OS like iOS or a "technically open but practically closed" OS like Android). They've probably done it before and are part of the PRISM program either way.
However, I don't expect the FSF or Linus Torvalds to do it. They haven't done it yet and they probably won't do it.
I'm not a foreigner. I live in Lucknow, India and this is what my options are right now.
http://www.sikkanet.com/home-users/unshared-plans/
http://www.sikkanet.com/corporate-users/
http://www.techiit.com/airtel-broadband-tariff-plans-lucknow...
In the case of Airtel, "upto 16Mbps" means that maximum 4Mbps due to "technical restrictions."
You're lucky that you're getting that kind of a connection. Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata are probably the only cities in India where one can get that kind of a connection without trouble.