Hello Everybody,
Please don’t go by the title.......there’s no one provider in particular that has all the good things with them. Same goes for the airtel as well. But I want to bring a few facts that i’ve faced myself with them.
The Cover Story:
India Today’s 50 powerful personality 2004 placed Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharati Group among one of the mighty top 10.
They roped in the likes of tendulkar, shah rukh and kareena to advertise for them.
They’re the giants and the market leader in privately held cellular service providers in India.
But........yes, the actual mobile concept has not been helped a single bit by all this and this is actually based on my experience with airtel for about 18 months. Nobody would actually be interested in Shakespere’s handwriting, its his actual work that we are looking at. So all this ho-ho and the big ga-ga is useless unless the basic thing is fulfilled. Let me come to the point, they also have the most congested cellular network with them.
Inside Airtel:
All the time I was happy to see those big bars showing the connectivity on cell’s display with very little knowledge that actually someone who’s desperately trying to reach me is been forced to hear that all routes are busy or something on the same lines. How am I suppose to know that ? I’ve my cell with me, I’ve the bars showing proper strength of the signal and yet i’m not reachable, disgusting. Defies the whole logic/purpose of being on a mobile.
Sometimes I’ve been informed by my friends that they tried and I couldn’t be reached. I took it casualy and thought that it happens. In the meantime I switched not one but two cities but the story was the same everywhere.
First I was in mumbai, then in pune and now I’m in bangalore. Though I can’t say much about bangalore since I only used airtel here for some 15 days but sure for mumbai and pune congestion was a big problem.
I remained the loyal airtel customer all the while till the time when it was up to my head. The frequency was not bearable at all, if almost one-fourth of the times I cudn’t be reached. I switched to reliance 2 months back. Customer care is another issue, but I feel nobody cares once you’re with them. I had a few bad experience with airtel and the story is same here with reliance too.
Plan Of Action:
When Bharati Cellular is making such a huge profit, why they don’t bother to invest into the upgradation/expansion of their network. With such a huge customer growth congestion is one major bottleneck that they need to overcome. When you’re spending crores on advertising why not on improving the service ?
The Good:
They’ve the great covereage. Wonderful roaming, I experienced it on quite a number of occassions when within a train while on journey I talked when being in interiors and remote areas far away from the adjoining city. No voice distortion while talking, perfect clarity. Good plans ( though I feel they’re all the same with all the providers because they are there to make there own handsome bucks ).
Confusion:
You might be wondering that when I was so annoyed with their service why was I with them for such a long time ? Well, first thing was that I ignored the comments from my friends and all, many a times untill I noticed that this is seriously a problem. Second, when I discussed with others who were not airtel customers everyone told me a thing or few about their provider that kept me away from finally taking a decision as to which one to choose and things got delayed. At that time I was only looking at GSM because I was in no mood to change my handset and all.
Cherry On Cake:
Last week only I heard from my friend that he’s planning to sue airtel. He closed his account all officially with the request being registered into the airtel system some one and a half month back and they actually come up with a bill for him for last month, a wonderful farewell from airtel.
Conclusion:
It is really sad that after having such a good and ever increasing cellular service customer base here in India, there’s no single provider with a wonderful rapport. I heard major stories from trusted resources about each one of them. Experienced a few myself with airtel and now with reliance. At the moment i’m not in a position to recommend anyone of them. But this is what all I’ve to say and remember it was for Airtel-Express Yourself. And mouthshut is the best place to do so - Aisi Azaadi Aur Kahan.