The fact that the MTNL coverage doesn’t even reach most parts of Thane is only the start of the problems. The coverage is so weak that even within south and central Bombay you don’t get coverage indoors in some places while Orange phones are on full strength. I had a pre-paid card from MTNL - Trump and really liked it in the beginning because the SMS was free (it seems the computer couldn’t track it) . But now that they’ve worked that out it’s only 10 paise less expensive than Orange for Incoming and 10 paise more expensive for Outgoing. Suddenly after some point in time by balance started to erratically decline sometimes by more than 20 bucks in one day even if I made just one call. Repeated calls to the helpline yielded no results - typical sarkari behaviour. Finally I gave up. The fact that now its equally priced with the other cards and Orange is offering a 50p number as well I’m thinking of ditching this card and going for Orange. In any case pre-paid cards are a big cover up because you pay say 300 for a refill and the talk value you get is only 182. So that’s 60% of your money gone there. So when the say 1.85 inc/outg you have to add 1.20 for the local call multiply that sum by 1.60 to get the rupee value. So it turns out you spend about 5 rupees for a single call from a mobile - that’s very expensive !!!