About me,
I use two mobile phones, a CDMA (RIM) phone and a GSM (Hutch) phone. Hence I am in a position to comment on both the technologies and their intricacies. I have also used BSNL- Cellone, Airtel and Ushafone and thus possess a unique insight on these telecos.
How reliance made a difference? / How it performed?
I was a GSM subscriber, and I switched to Reliance, because of the following.
1) Free SMS- Under the DAPO, SMS sent within India is completely free. People like me still remember the times when we used to scout the Internet searching of free SMS servers; an anomaly in the complex GSM servers where SMS sent through those servers weren’t charged. We used SMS like there was no tomorrow, some people’s SMS usage was a fantastic 50-100 SMS per day!! Well, those days were long gone when reliance stepped in. Now this scheme, which promised unlimited free SMS, was just too good to resist for the then SMS junkies like me, still in school. Now, would be a good time to confess that this was the only factor which made me switch to reliance.
2) Bulk Usage- Initially, when I had a GSM phone I wasn’t very adamant on making calls. But with DAPO and the 400 minutes free, today I have come to a point where I am only friends with people who have reliance, because I can talk to them free of cost- even friends who now live in a very different part of the country. The pioneer offer is boon to people who have bulk usage and is a bane to the people who just bought the phone because everyone was buying it and did not have much of the usage. My phone shows a lifetime of 290 hours, in a year.
3) Better In City Network- Reliance has a much better in city network and a big advantage for people who don’t go out of the city much and their work is limited to offices and big buildings. The CDMA network is able to penetrate walls, much better than any GSM network and hence, it works in most basements and lifts.
4) Cheap Roaming- Under DAPO, there is no requirement for a ‘Security deposit’ , the call incoming charges while Roaming are just the call forwarding charges i.e. just like calling from my home city to the destination city. Under 400 Minutes. Incoming is practically free; since it is deducted from our quota of 400 Minutes (I am yet to pay for any incoming calls). Outgoing calls are also deducted form the 400 minutes quota. So, if one is careful enough, the bill should not exceed the basic monthly committed account.
5) VAS- Value Added Services until recently were free. I used to check my mail on my phone. I read News regularly on R-world. For a TV lover like me, the television listings are something I can’t do without. The dictionary feature via SMS is something I can’t imagine my life without. Since, I have a Colour phone; I view the news every morning with my corn flakes. MMS until recently was free. All in all R-world was something I loved, until it became paid.
6) R-Connect- I own a laptop and can’t begin to describe what a bonus, the R-connect feature on my phone is! I can connect to the Internet any-time any any-where! I am no longer limited to wires and LAN connections. The R-Connect feature is a bit expensive. But it is sufficient to just do work- check E-mail- that sort of a thing, being blazingly fast, what I would do in fifteen minutes on regular Dial up connection I can do it in five minutes here.
Where did reliance fail to deliver? & why I own two phones?
People think that I am eccentric, having two phones- both a GSM and a CDMA. Here is my explanation-
1) Roaming and Inter city Network- The basic question that one has to ask is, why does one need a mobile phone in the first place? The answer, if we ignore the cosmetic factors is communication- to be connected at all times. I had a Mobile phone, which when I needed, did not work- when I was travelling and because of that I had a few unpleasant experiences, and thus I decided that I needed to buy a phone that actually worked when I needed it! Reliance on its part, worked great in big cities, but had virtually no presence in small cities, towns and highways. So, the whole point of keeping a mobile was nullified.
2) International Roaming- Reliance has a much wired scheme for providing international roaming. First off, it’s not provided in all the cities and the last time I checked with them the figure was less than 7.
3) Expensive call rates for calls to other phones- Calling on GSM mobiles and landline phone is In general very expensive with Reliance
4) Handsets- Till date I’ve changed 3 Reliance handsets, that was within a span of 6 months, but when I got my Samsung colour phone, I decided to go steady. The handset range with RIM initially was very limited and hence impaired its growth. But with the onset of time that did change. This even now remains one of the primary factor working against RIM, even though they have good sets priced at sub Rs. 2000/-
Frankly, the high end models of GSM which have come down in price are now much better than the RIM models. Phones such as the Nokia 6600 and the NOKIA 6230 are too much of a competition for the RIM sets. There is still no Bluetooth or Mp3 compatible handset available, flawless and painless MMS is still a pipe dream, PIM features which looked inviting now look archaic, there is no question for expandable memory- once your phone book, scheduler, memo pad are full- the PIM features in the phone becomes useless and begins to seem like a burden.
The good news is that reliance is working on its shortcomings- its expanding its network and Nokia is planning to launch some great phones.