Infinite thoughts

A year back, I blogged about the " Mobile Number Portability " and its possible usage in India.  While I was predicting that the customer would still be cribbing, albeit for the new provider, since every provider appears to be providing same quality of service. However, today's news made me aware that I had forgotten about a particular aspect completely. Willingness of the operators to let go of the existing customer - it seems to be playing a key role in making MNP not so widely used in India even after a year. As per the current statistics only about 2 percent subscribers have opted for MNP, whereas in other countries the percentage has been in the range of 4 to 16 percent. Even TRAI was expecting the usage of this facility by about 10% of the subscribers. A quick search on MNP issues, landed me with this page, which is talking of the same issues which TRAI has pointed out in today's report .  I wonder if this is cartel. All providers deciding to keep their...

Amongst many of the online shopping sites, Indiaplaza is becoming my favorite shopping site. User friendliness and multiple payment options being the two most important reasons. Some of the purchases include a personalized Parker Pen and quite a few books. The biggest shopping that I did was just two weeks back - Samsung Galaxy S2 - a gem!! Meghana was eying this piece since February this year. The mobile launched only recently, however, with a huge disappointment on the price front. Our expectation was somewhere around 24-25K given the feature set. The launch price was 33K!! Meghana had almost given up the hopes of owning it in near future and had started looking for other options. With none is site, I was seeing her desperation. And Indiaplaza came in to rescue :) It offered flat 3K discount on the listed price i.e. 30K, still a bit more than what we wanted it to be priced at. And one fine day, I received a discount coupon in my mail box, worth 1K. Net price - 29K. We tried the Sam...

I have been watching the current happenings in the Indian mobile market and have made some interesting observations. Idea Cellular has launched a big campaign about Mobile Number Potability. I blogged about my view on MNP here . Interestingly, MNP can not work without collaboration and n/w-s/w readiness from all the mobile operators in a circle. And even then only one of the operators is investing so much money in the advertisement and others are completely ignoring it. Similarly only Airtel seems to be behind projecting 3G as their USP . While this is a true that almost all the players have the 3G Bandwidth available and would be launching it more or less this quarter (Vodafone and Airtel are definitely launching it this quarter, no clue about Idea 3G yet) Vodafone is just continuing with it's sluggish advertisements of "happy to help" and "wherever you go". No signs of MNP and 3G being advertised. [Interesting Update: While searching for Airtel website, Googl...

Long wait is getting over. Soon all the Indians will be blessed with this fantastic service, mobile number portability , which will enable a subscriber to retain the number while changing the service provider. Being a technical person working in the Telecom domain, I had been part of the system/software upgrade that the western Telecom operators were making to comply with the WNP (wireless number portability) few years back. I was so much in want of this facility in India since then. Now that it is here, I am actually a bit skeptical about it's use to the customers. While I talk to my friends, colleagues or even when I read on twitter, everyone is complaining about their own service provider for mobile service. A vodafone customer, which I am, complains about network coverage and expensive data plans and wishes if I could go to Airtel or Idea, whereas I have seen similar complaints from Airtel or Idea customers too. I am more or less reaching to a conclusion that every provider has...