Tag Archives: 3G

Indian government is not for you and me

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.

This is a famous quote from Abraham Lincoln. But our ‘democratic’ government does not really follow this definition.

I am going to talk about a specific example here. 3G mobile roaming controversy. There might be some technical inaccuracies here but I think the point would be clear.

When the government auctioned 3G spectrum in India, none of the mobile operator was able to buy a pan-India license. The price was astonishingly high and only limited spectrum was available. This means that bigger players in the market like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea were not able to secure rights for all the major markets.

So what they did to cater to their customers? They formed pacts with each other to let 3G work on roaming. Airtel, Idea and Vodafone were able to offer 3G services in circles outside their own through these agreements.

Now, this pissed the government. They claimed that these pacts were illegal. They said that the original agreement did not allow for such pacts.

DoT made an interesting statement this week. They said that 3G pacts undermined the objectives of the 3G auction.

Now here is the problem. A democratic government (or any sane government) should take steps that makes the lives of their people easy. 3G pacts did exactly that. It enabled operators to recover the money spent on buying the rights to the spectrum by renting it out to a competitor. It gave more options to the consumer as they were able to use 3G from their choice of operator in any circle.

I guess the department of telecom is scared that such pacts might result to cartelization in future auctions. These companies could collaborate and decide on the circles they would bid on. The competition would be less and the government would not be able to generate as much money as they did during 3G spectrum auctions.

They might claim that this hurt the common man because government gets lesser revenues. But the point remains, does it really? It’s not like this government is running short of ways to make money. It’s not like they are actually spending money transparently for the betterment of the people in India.

I mean no matter how much money this government makes, I still pay toll taxes for traveling on roads, I still pay for battery backup solutions because the power supply is erratic. I still pay for water purification solutions because the water supply is not exactly giving me drinkable water. The list is endless.

I am not a fan of mobile operators. Their policies are horrible. They scam their customers on a daily basis. But instead of fixing the problems, the government just is giving them more reasons to dupe customers. Things are pretty messed up to be frank.

Sad experience with prepaid Airtel 3G connection

I have been using 3G on my Airtel prepaid connection for a couple of months now. Here is what it has been like for me.

The service itself is quite decent. I do not check my speeds as it works well for checking mail, tweeting, photo sharing on Google+ and even managing broadbandforum.in from the phone.

The most complicated problem is how Airtel handle recharge.

Unlike the 98 rupee Edge plan, Airtel does not seem to offer any automatic renewal service on the 3G plans.

And they also do not bother to send alerts about the upcoming expiry of my 3G plan.

So, every month I end up consuming a couple of megabytes of data which costs me quite a lot based on their paisa per kilobyte rates.

Sad experience with prepaid Airtel 3G connection

If this is not bad enough. The company makes it annoyingly complicated to renew the plan.

If I send a renew command through SMS, the company tells me that I cannot renew my plan as I still have more than 50MB left in my account. This is inaccurate because the plan I had has of course already expired.

Sad experience with prepaid Airtel 3G connection

So, what I have to do is to deactivate 3G completely on my connection. Then reactivate it. Then wait for a couple of hours and then subscribe to the plan I like. This usually works.

Sad experience with prepaid Airtel 3G connection

But it did not work for me today. Hence forcing me to write this rare blog post. I have added some screenshots to this post showcasing the messages proving the points I am highlighting here.

If any reader of this blog post has any idea about what I might be doing wrong… please feel free to comment below. I really need to fix this monthly problem as I simply cannot switch back to Edge which is horrendously slow in comparison to decentish 3G from Airtel.

airtel has got a new mobile customer!

I have to admit that airtel was the first mobile service I used. That was long time ago in Chandigarh.

Since then I have tried a lot other options including Hutch, Tata Indicom and even Aircel.

Now, I am back to airtel. And it took a lot of effort on my part. I have waited for Mobile Number Portability forever… it still has not arrived. airtel stores in my regions turned out to be awful. They are out of prepaid sim cards pretty much all the time. I had to get airtel customer to do something about it.

And when I went to the airtel store to get the sim card recharged, they were incidentally out of prepaid recharge (amazing! Huh?). Anyways… I am now using an airtel prepaid number with their pretty nice data package that costs 100 bucks for 2GB. And it works on roaming!

Data on roaming was the primary reason for my switch to airtel this time around. Of course, they are one of the four options I have here in Gurgaon for 3G services whenever they are launched. But I am not very optimistic about that. I can only hope that their existing 2G plan would remain available and the company would not temper with its speeds in the future.

Tata DOCOMO is being accused by a lot of folks that they have made their 2G speeds so slow now that they have launched 3G.

airtel is the new annoying Koffee with Karan

If you are watching television for the last 2-3 days, you would have seen the new airtel ads.

They are everywhere. In the newspapers, on the radio and on television.

In fact, they have now become as annoying as the ads for Koffee with Karan on Star World.

airtel needs to slow down. Their new ads are focused on video calling feature on 3G. They have not even launched 3G officially in the market. Majority of 3G device owners are not even going to use video calling (software compatibility, devices lacking front facing cameras and so on).

It is just getting freaking annoying.

Broadband revolution in India by Airtel?

Airtel has an interesting tweet on their official account. It goes like this:


Bharti Airtel to unleash Broadband Revolution in India – To launch 3G in 2010. for more info: http://bit.ly/dv7R2vless than a minute ago via webBharti Airtel
airtelnews

The company claims that the launch of 3G on their network would bring about a broadband revolution in the country.

The same company has utterly failed to do anything with their wired broadband services. 256Kbps is what they believe broadband is.

3G is not going to change anything. Prices are going to be high. Unlimited plans are likely to be out of reach for most of us. And they are likely to feature the famous Airtel Fair Usage Policy.

This PR bullshit is getting crazy. Airtel would do good by fixing the mess they have created on their ‘actual’ broadband services. Get rid of FUP. Launch some exciting pure unlimited plans at competitive prices. Get some shit done. Please.

3G license for Gurgaon?

Last time I checked Tata DOCOMO, Idea and Vodafone had 3G licenses for Haryana.

I assumed that applied to Gurgaon too.

But this tweet from the Tata DOCOMO team is rather mmm surprising.


@Sushubh Yes, we DO have the licence 4 Haryana, but not for Gurgaon! #3GLifeless than a minute ago via webTata Docomo
tatadocomo

Gurgaon is considered part of Delhi NCR above Haryana?

That means Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone are going to serve in Gurgaon?