I took my reliance India mobile in March 2003. Paid Rs. 3000 upfront and a monthly rental of Rs. 600, Payable quarterly (Rs1800) as PDCs under the initial DAPO offer. I took it in bit haste, as I needed make lots of call when Reliance was launched. The STD rates were pretty high those days Rs4+/min or so. So I had a monthly bill shooting to 2-3k. I really enjoyed the free calls to all the Reliance mobile and local calls that time.
Though they had lot of connectivity issues initially but never had problem with Reliance-to-Reliance calls. It has a pretty quick connect time than the GSM counter part, provided the recipient is in decent signal zone. So this free story continued till end of May, heard all the gagas of my nephew (1 year old) for hours daily.
Now coming to the ground realities of the Reliance Infocom and I have mixed opinion about them, so I would categorize them in Pros and Cons, the whole review.
Pros:
1. Leader to reduce the telecom tariffs in India
2. First one to take a drastic step of offering call rates of 40paise per minute (very catchy through) to the entire RIM numbers all over India.
3. RWorld nice and small application for getting useful information on the run. Finding ATMs around, picture halls, mobile banking etc. (Alas its charge now since April ’05)
4. RConnet: 140 Kbps Internet on the run, really very useful at an affordable price. Earlier it was for 40paise/min flat. But now it’s 50p/min and 25p/min during day and night respectively. Plus if you are a heavy user you may opt for Rs.650/pm unlimited time and 1 GB limit. (Other plans also available). My point is that its competing well with the DSL providers who are offering the same at Rs.500 on landline. So isn’t it worth paying 150 extra to surf from anywhere. Plus, the same rate applies even when you are in roaming. (In fact I used it heavily when I was in hospital for 2 weeks to kill time). You can get download speeds of up to 16KiloBytes/sec for downloading files, which is 3 times faster than fastest dialup.
5. Roaming: Lowest roaming fare, the closest is BSNL, which offers the similar roaming. Same charges apply in the guest network for outgoing calls. The incoming is as per your plan for outgoing calls RIM-RIM. So if you are under the DAPO offer in which the RIM-RIM calls are 40p (which are actually having 400 free minutes) then the incoming effectively becomes free for first 400 minutes and then subsequently it’s at the rate Rs1.90/min.
6. Free SMS to all mobiles in India. Still free under the DAPO offer. International is cheapest Rs 3 per msg. Otherwise depends on various plans.
7. First to offer unlimited calls to same carrier on FWT. On a rental of Rs. 700 per month on FWT you get unlimited calls to all reliance phones. A boon for the guys who are engaged. Thats a huge savings even if one puts another Reliance mobile (prepaid) for Rs. 200 a month. So altogether Rs. 900/month for unlimited calls to anywhere in India on RIM.
8. On the postpaid account you can pay just Rs. 75 and get unlimited calls in your circle. Good for companies who give reliance phones for their field engineers they can greatly reduce the phone bill. In fact I have seen lots of big companies route their outgoing calls to Reliance mobile through their reliance FWT/E1 to cut the cost of local calls made by their employees from the EPABX.
9. Many companies are adopting reliance for their call centres, as 1600 numbers are only reachable through BSNL/MTNL phones. So if you have reliance phone then you can make calls to the reliance at much cheaper rate Rs. 0.40 or for free to these numbers depending on your plan.
10. Also they have a Rs. 599 on which you can make calls to any number in India for Re 1. Good for heavy STD callers to other carrier.
11. Customer Care: Is usually quite responsive, most of the requests are taken on phone and acted upon immediately, though they say 24 hours. At least I got my RConnect plan activated and deactivated in 5 minutes (for both activation and deactivation) even while you are on roaming. I was facing problem with a particular number in outskirts of Bangalore and they resolved it in 24 hours and gave me a solution to make calls to that number. The problem was with BSNL though, as I tried calling through Airtel it didn’t worked either and their solution worked on Airtel too. I am still confused as how did a 12 digit number worked in India and a BSNL land line number without the 2 prefix. Its problem with all the number in Anekal Taluka, of Bangalore. Once the problem is explained correctly to the Customer care they resolve it very promptly and would also get a confirmatory call from their side 1-2 times at least. Also see Cons:6
Cons:
1. Initialy they advertise the pulse would be 15s but when they started their billing then it turned out to be charging on the per minute basis.
2. They give 400 free minutes but for any local call they would deduct that free minute. The local call to landline is Re 1, and to mobile its Re1.2. So what they do the 400 minutes are converted to 40p and deducted from say 1 -0.40 = 0.60. So its as if you are cheated. If you made the first 400 minutes to Reliance number then you are ok, but if you made it to landline/mobile you get call rate of .60/.80 but that’s worth 1 min of call to another RIM in India. So once your minutes are exhausted you would pay Rs. 1.90 to other RIM (or in fact any other mobile). So I feel its totally a cheating to reduce the minutes for other calls. Or at least the user should have an option to utilize the minutes one wants.
3. They are still charging Rs.4/minute for STD Calls to landline in DAPO offer. Even their pre-paid with zero rental’s call rate is Rs.2.70/min. This is again a cheating from the DAPO customers. I don’t know why TRAI is quiet on this matter still. May be all their DAPO customers have disappeared after realizing their catches.
4. Their current pre-paid are very difficult to understand, unless you are smart enough you would be cheated. The unlimited free calling voucher RIM-RIM is only valid in home circle. In roaming its not valid
5. My phone was disconnected twice even making their payment on time, they had some billing problem. Always use to get calls from them even after paying the bills and very rude person use to call and it seemed very embarrassing and frustrating. But since a year (October 2004) its resolved. Because of which they have disconnected my ISD facility, which they have given for free earlier but now they are asking for a deposit of 2k-3k. I said forget it, its their loss if they are not giving me ISD facility anyways its much cheaper through BSNL landline (Rs1.20/10sec or Rs. 7.2/min).
6. Customer Care: Usually their customer care don’t understand your problem quickly they are dumb headed and you would get different answers for the same question if you call again. So better call 2-3 times to ensure your complaint has been registered properly. I usually do the same.
My aim was to provide the +/- of Reliance and its users discretion to chose it or not based on the above points. My description mostly covers the DAPO offer as I am under the same plan. I use the Reliance phone only to make calls to reliance number to all my relatives and try to keep my bill around (100 - 200) above the Rs. 600 PDC. Else it’s not a beneficial plan.
So my final verdict is that if you understand their fine prints then go ahead and use the phone but be always very cautious as they are cunning Fox. Always check your bills very carefully before paying them. Remember their moto ’’Kar Lo Duniya Mutthi Mein’’.
I would be updating the review as I remember or come across new things. I would rate them as 3.5 of 5.