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...

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...