…Clueless

Airtel has started redirecting traffic from dead links, non-existant domains and typos to a website of its own where it displays advertisements and a search box surrounded by some categories.

The search box is just a dummy form element because if you type in another term it yields no result. Airtel is in partnership with a website called onspeedsearch.com for this and a quick search on Google revealed that many other ISPs have also partnered with onspeedsearch to display advertisements for erroneous traffic on their networks.

Here’s a screenshot of the said redirected page :

The DNS currently in use are :

• 202.56.215.55
• 202.56.215.54

Seems Airtel is trying to earn from it’s customers’ mistakes. Sweet.

Update : For further discussion on this subject, check out this thread on IBF.

1. Airtel Broadband still redirecting traffic : The last time I reported, Airtel Broadband was redirecting the erroneous traffic to a partnered website (onspeedsearch) where they displayed...
2. Using OpenDNS with Airtel Broadband : These are instructions to use OpenDNS on an Airtel ADSL Connection. I have the Beetel 220BX modem. My domain expired...
3. Is Facebook.in a scam? : I use AirTel as my ISP. Sometimes, I forget to add the domain suffix and prefix and just simply enter...
4. iPhone 3G Indian Pricing and Launch Date : One of my friends went over to the Vodafone store in Sector 19, Chandigarh yesterday. He wanted to book the...
5. Defeating the block : I think most of you know about the Indian Govt.'s blog block. Blogspot, Typepad and Geocities have been totally blocked....