After days of contemplating the usefulness of a cell phone, I finally bought a good second hand one ( a ericsson R380 ). now for selecting the service provider, I had to enquire a lot. and being unable to spare my work day time/free time to enquire and pay for the bills(sorry BSNL) , I had the option of selecting either AirTel or Hutch.
For the heck of it I went for Hutch. hutch provides both prepaid and postpaid connection options. I went along with the postpaid connection since I can afford one and has some good options.
They activated the connection in 1 day promptly. The call center service is good, though some times you will be put on hold a little longer than expected.
I get my bill to my address promptly, which though itemized is not detailed. if you want a detailed one, you have to pay for it. paying is convenient.
you can avail a whole lot of sms services which come in a user friendly mode in the sim card. you can access your yahoo account, yahoo chat, news, movies playing in your local theaters etc.
you can send a mail to anybody by an sms to the hutch number. you can also recieve a mail to yournumber@south.hutch.co.in. you will get it as an sms msg. ( I forward my mails from my personal mailbox and read them in my cellular wherever I am)
you can avial the voice mail for your id. anybody who is not able to reach you can leave their message and you can hear to it later.
roaming has a charge, but you can activate it and deactivate it as per your needs and you will be charged for that usage.
sms is I feel a little costly (at 1.50 per msg).
they have a lot of other services on charge, like call conferencing, UMS, group messaging, fax and data services..
finally about their website. hutch hyd., has online bill information, but bangalore doesnt. the website is simple and to the point and for everything else you can reach their call center(which is better).