Mobile Lost

The wifey lost her phone on Friday evening, 31-Dec-2010. It was lost at Adyar between the visit to Birla Planetarium, Peryiar Science and Technology Center and visit to JP (Car) Battery center (more on all those in possibly another post).

It was a phone that was passed down to her from her sister via her mom. While the phone was a very old model (0.3MP camera), it was certainly fully functional and carrier lot of sentimental attachment. Resale value of it wouldn't be anything more than Rs.100 to Rs.300.

However, it brought back my attention to the fact that Indian telecom market is in between being ill-equipped and disinterested to handle mobile phone loss. While the service provider will block the sim and issue a duplicate one, they are not at all keen in tracing the mobile phone with the help of IMEI (this does require co-ordination between service providers so that the device can be tracked between networks).

The good thing however is that I remember reading an article in the newspapers recently (within last 2 weeks to a month) that mobile phone tracking (in case of loss, security?) is going to become a reality soon in the Indian market thanks to government pressure, service providers "supposedly" upgrading to required technology and collaborating between themselves. I'm not holding my breath on that one, but it would certainly be interesting and useful if it came to fruition.

We ended up getting an LG GS190 thanks to its support of an 8GB microSD card and an ok speaker phone - key requirements for the wife and kid to listen to music.

Interestingly, Univercell, the mobile phone retailer offered a mobile insurance plan for a year (to protect against loss, accidental damage, etc) for as little as Rs.50 (or Rs.100?), but I refused. I'm guessing getting that refund will be a problem in case of loss - thanks to the requirement of going to a police station to register the loss and possibly getting an acknowledgement! And you know easy (or relishing experience) that can be!

Bill (or sms ?) shock - Matrix Cellular

I use Matrix Cellular services while traveling to the US. In general, I've been happy with their services (just that their billing collection cycle is abysmal). It's actually quite convenient to have a "local" mobile phone at hand in foreign shores. More so in a market like US where phones are locked to the networks and it's not easy to use your own phone there - irrespective of whether it's a quad/5 band.

In view of my recent US trip, I got an SMS a few days ago which said that I'd incurred a bill for Rs.27.7300 in view of my recent usage. I was shocked (understatement of the year) that it was Rs.277300, called up their customer care, registered a complaint, was assured that it will be looked into asap and I would get a call from concerned department in about 15-20 mins. Suffice to say that I never got that call.

And then I got another SMS yesterday which said that a bill worth Rs.27.73 is being dispatched to my residence.

See - Rs.27.7300 Vs Rs.27.73 !!

Now, I'm waiting for the bill to see what it is actually!

On this related note, the situation of US telecom industry where phones are locked to networks, just makes me think that we have the best possible situation in India - at least for now. There is however, a slow penetration of network locked phones coming up in the GSM space as well and it's always been there for CDMA.

My happiness with Indian market is notwithstanding the famous India 2G scam, albeit that is a sad story in itself, not to mention that it's like reading a thrilling novel!

Tata Docomo doesn't like money

As silly & stupid as it sounds, I'm quite inclined to believe that Tata & Docomo don't like to make money. I've been running around a few shops for a few days just to try and figure out how I can get some prepaid phones in the family converted to their new 45p/min plan. None of them in the shops know how to do it - maybe marketing is going overdrive without implementation on the ground.

Also, their damned website has no simple way for me to give them money! I can't just go online, pick a recharge/top-up amount, input a phone number and pay money via credit card/net banking transfer.

Am guessing the top honchos obviously don't eat their own dog food. Nor do their near & dear ones.

You can see I'm pretty pissed off. And, I'm not even getting into those other complaints about bad signal quality, calls not getting transferred across networks, etc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1800 numbers via Airtel Mobile

I noticed just a day ago that access to toll free 1800 numbers from Airtel mobile phones has been working. It wasn't certainly the case a few months ago. Anyone knows since when it has been working and/or whether there's a catch to this ?