Telecommuting from India - possible?

MartinP

Hi

I"m moving to Bangalore in September, where I'll be working as a freelance copywriter and journalist.


I'd be interested in chatting to anyone else doing this, to get some idea if I can keep in touch with clients and get work done without and hitches.

Some of my concerns are:

I need a good, reliable internet connection – I can't afford to miss same-day deadlines.

I need a good mobile provider, so clients can contact me without the price being too prohibitive. Or if it is expensive, I would prefer to pick up the cost. (Incidentally, does anyone know of services where client rings a local number from UK and gets diverted to your phone in India? I would prefer this, to keep my number local to the UK)

Occasionally I might need hard copy sent to me. Can I get material sent to me, with a delivery guarantee, in a matter of days?

I don't necessarily need specific answers to all of these questions – I don't mind doing some research myself! Just a general idea if my plan is viable and some advance warning of some of the problems I might encounter ahead of time, so I can get on top of them now.

My partner is Indian, so I've no doubt her local knowledge will help pave the way somewhat, but talking to other India-based telecomuters would be invaluable.

Thanks, in advance, for any advice you can give.

Nick-H

Caveat: Nothing, in India, is 100% reliable.

You can insulate yourself from possible failure by throwing money. You can have two landline/internet connections; you can have a generator...

hitanshu

Cmon Nick!

Yes once in a while things may be here or there, but mostly things work.

You can and should plan for redundancy but its not like 50% uptime. More like 98-99% - but yeah, nothing is 100%!

__________________
SMASH!!!!

Haylo

I agree with Nick, internet reliability varies, but over the last year there have been perhaps four or five weeks when it was down for a few hours every day. More frequently than that, we'd find that we couldn't access certain websites such as Yahoo for an hour or so at a time. Also, on a daily basis, we'd lose our internet connection for a short while in the middle of a skype conversation.

As we have assorted means of accessing the net, including an apple, windows laptop, linux netbook and iTouch, and the problems were consistent between them, it was definitely the internet which had the problem.

Admittedly, we could have changed providers, but when we arrived, there was only one broadband ISP in our area, and it wasn't worth the hassle of changing as it wasn't a permanent move to Delhi.

For keeping in touch with friends, it's not a problem, but we we found it infuriating on several occasions not to be able to find contact details for hotels and book flights at short notice.

If a deadline is "sometime in the next few hours" I'd say that internet reliability is not a problem - if the deadline is "right now" it might be.

__________________
The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful - E.E. Cummings, poet (1894-1962)

nikhilsegel

Hi

I"m moving to Bangalore in September, where I'll be working as a freelance copywriter and journalist.


I'd be interested in chatting to anyone else doing this, to get some idea if I can keep in touch with clients and get work done without and hitches.

Some of my concerns are:

I need a good, reliable internet connection – I can't afford to miss same-day deadlines.

Well you can do the following (I do)

a) Get a good broadband connection 512 Kbps from Airtel (has been stable for me)
b) Back it up with a Mobile Dongle From reliance (slow but works when the broadband is down)
c) Back that up with GPRS on your phone / blackberry

you will never ever be down.

I need a good mobile provider, so clients can contact me without the price being too prohibitive. Or if it is expensive, I would prefer to pick up the cost. (Incidentally, does anyone know of services where client rings a local number from UK and gets diverted to your phone in India? I would prefer this, to keep my number local to the UK)

There is a service available in UK at £9 a month that a client of mine is using which uses internet telephony to connect you to a handset anywhere in the world with unlimited local calls you need to check the name in the UK (it gives you a local UK number)You can dial a UK number using the same system.

Mobile Telecommunication is good India (it does have call drops but you have connectivity)

Occasionally I might need hard copy sent to me. Can I get material sent to me, with a delivery guarantee, in a matter of days?

Geez dude any courier company would do that ..

I don't necessarily need specific answers to all of these questions – I don't mind doing some research myself! Just a general idea if my plan is viable and some advance warning of some of the problems I might encounter ahead of time, so I can get on top of them now.

Seriously most of your Q's are simply researched

My partner is Indian, so I've no doubt her local knowledge will help pave the way somewhat, but talking to other India-based telecomuters would be invaluable.

Thanks, in advance, for any advice you can give.

__________________
Click to View My Photographs on Flickr (updated 22nd Aug '09)

MartinP

Thanks, all, for the information.

And nikhilsegel, thanks for the specific suggestions.

By the way, consider my post and your answer part of the simple research.

Nick-H

Did I say 50/50? .

We are having a lot of trouble with power of late. Even leaving out the failure of our own mains supply cable, we have daily power cuts almost.

Broadband, though, I'd agree is fairly reliable from BSNL/Airtel. Reputations of the other supplies vary widely, but I don;t thnk I'd touch them. I had a couple of years good service from BSNL, which went down hill when I moved house. Airtel here now seems very sound. BSNL support is lousy, and consists of a scripted item, "someone will call you within 24 hours" --- which they don't.

I've had BSNL problems lag for four or five weeks, and I've had the service down for a week. If you report a problem on a Friday, don't expect anyone to even read it until Monday (Broadband, at least, phone line can be fixed over the weekend)

I have 8Mb connection from Airtel, by the way, and they have just introduced 16Mb.

nikhilsegel

Woooooo

is this on the unlimited plan ? Or do you pay per tiny weenie byte that you consider viewing?

What is your average Bill per month? If I may Ask

Nick-H

I think it is a 15Gb/month "cap".

I don't watch movies, play games, download much music or software; I think 3Gb was my biggest-ever single-day usage. Against that, my largest ever monthly total was only 6Gb, so I have absolutely no problem with the download limit, and it is very unlikely I'll ever pay excess.

So, why bother?

Even if one never exceeds the speed limit, it is still more fun driving a powerful car!

nikhilsegel

A little lost Nick
I thought you had a 8 Mbps connection. Was that a typo and you ment an 8 Gb cap?
Can we take a step back and rephrase / explain your connection a bit ?
Speed ?
Cap?

Nick-H

Got it wrong!

I have a 2Mb/sec connection with a 15Gb/month data "cap", above which extra traffic incurs a further charge.

When I took it, 8Mb/sec was the max on offer from Airtel; they now offer 16Mb/sec.

You can see the tariffs on their site

nikhilsegel

Ah understood Nick and realized why I am still on 512 .. because thats unlimited usage.

Cheers

AwayFromHome

Don't know about Bangalore, but here in Gurgaon Airtel has been fanstastic.

No downtime at all in over 5 months.

It helps to have a 24 hour power back-up, which is the route I'd advise to take. Many flats/apartments provide this, and it's a life saver in many ways.