Does anyone still buy a mobile connection based on reviews? I don’t know. But what the heck!
I did not buy Idea; it was almost pushed to me. I bought a cellphone from The Mobile Store and the salesman was almost begging me to buy Idea (must be getting good commission per new customer). These days all operators have almost same rates and equally congested network. SO it doesn’t matter which connection you buy. You are gonna get fleeced equally badly ;-)
Anyway, I was getting very late for work and so to stop the salesman’s begging I grabbed the free SIM kit and filled the forms. The number was activated immediately.
Idea is somewhat new in Delhi which is saturated by Vodafone and Airtel. So that’s may be why their network is not so congested. Except for the Metro route, its signal strength is good. On the Violet Line of the Delhi Metro however, the signal strength is extremely poor - for most of the route your number will be out of coverage area. I suggest you don’t buy Idea if you stay/travel along this route.
I use this number mostly for GPRS (mobile internet) and the speed is decent. On an average I get 5-6 KBPS speed during daytime while around 8-9 KBPS speed during night time. And considering that its GPRS, this speed is ok. Now one may ask: who surfs internet using GPRS anymore? Well, the reason for this is my Reliance Netconnect+ review on mouthshut. While Reliance’s data network in Delhi (HSDPA technology) is extremely patchy and prone to frequent downtimes, at lease Idea has a stable GPRS network (this is NOT to be confused with their datacard services - it’s a different ball game altogether and I have no clue how good or bad it is).
Call charges are expensive, but I anyway do not use it for voice calls. As they say - you never really like anything that’s pushed down your throat :-P In fact my MTNL-Mumbai number has far lower call charges (even though I am in roaming) than the normal charges of Idea. So I wonder how many price-consious customers can Idea get in this over-saturated Delhi market.
Idea’s Website is bad; I could not recharge online even after 2-3 attempts. Luckily, haven’t had to talk to the bunch of monkeys every telecom player has - customer care.
Overall, I will recommend this only for the GPRS stability and ok kind of network in Delhi.