From The Reliance India Mobile Marketing material (brochures, tv ads etc), I had great expectations from reliance service.
Voice Service
TARIFF
The tariff seemed the lowest even lower then the TATA service which was to debut in the next few months (I purchased reliance phone in April) The Add on features like r-world, free sms , caller waiting etc seemed impressive I got the phone a whole 15 days late on march 28th. But the good thing was reliance had extended free use till 30th april. So I got to using the phone heavily in april. Then came the tariff changes in may and all the low tariffs disappeared in the name that they were not as per TRAI norms also did the 15 sec pulse.
It was all just a lame reason to increase the rates. As to how can other service providers like tata provide 15 sec pulse and much lower rates than them in conformance to the TRAI rules is what makes me doubt their price rise on May 1st. The pioneer plan which I subscribed to earlier promised 400mins free. now it just provided 40p credit for 400mins so I need to pay more than the 600rs committed fee for any calls I make to non WLL providers. I felt betrayed.
Their monsoon plans are even worse.
NETWORK
The network was not good till the mid of may. There were mid call drops. unable to reach certain landline exchanges (28xxxxxx numbers) these were sorted out in the next 15-20days and the performance was good. But then as the no of users increased it is difficult sometimes in the evening to get connected to certain numbers a standard message is heard ’’sorry your call could not be completed’’.
STD
STD tariffs earlier promised 40p STD but May 1st came and robbed the 40p std dream away. STD now costs Rs. 1.99 to 4.00 still cheaper than land line but more expensive than GSM cellular phones.
DATA SERVICES
R CONNECT
In the end of May , I purchased the R connect cable . The cable was expensive Rs1200 (actually worth only Rs400-500 available now on baazee for the samsung phone I have the lg handset). The net service although fast is very difficult to connect to. There are frequent call drops as in the voice service. The dormancy feature which cuts off the link to the internet gateway server when there is no data traffic to or from your PC adds to the problems.Initially I used it as the service was free. So I ended up wasting another 1200 on the reliance internet service. Now I use it as a secondary internet service basically in the night to to use up my remaining plan minutes.
RWORLD
Rworld is not at all what I thought it would be You cant do anything productive through it except view the RELIANCE BILL. The R SURF works intermittently and on complaining the only answer I get is that it is still in testing phase. The other R world features are only show they are not of much practical use on my black and white handset. I havent used the city guides yet so I dont know how good or bad they are. I just saw that they now have facility to create shopping lists etc but I havent used them too.
SMS
SMS initially worked to only Reliance numbers. But I am now able to SMS most numbers in INDIA. I was not able to SMS to dolphin and BSNL mobile numbers the last time I tried. International SMS doesn’t work. SMS to 4 digit services like 8888 6388 doesn’t work This prevents me from logging on to Instant Messengers via the mobile.
CONCLUSION
The service although marketed very well does not live upto all the hype of its marketing.
I would not Recommend the reliance service to people.
Instead wait and watch as to whether the tata’s WLL-M service lives upto expectations. Or if you cannot wait go for a GSM prepaid service in the meanwhile.
Also I hope that number portability is started in country so that we can all switch service providers without changing our phone numbers.