Chirag

wow.. this is like some Fantasy coming true! 6-8 grands is cheap man !

Yeah whtever, but the quality of ringtones as compared to other polyphonic ringtones is pathetic!

Well Arun, What i have mostly noticed is that if u have a number saved in international format (009198****) and if ur phone doesn't have a STD facility, mostly u get error msgs frm Reliance that "this facility is not available on your phone". To overcome this problem i've seen some ppl save all three types of a no. in one NAME Entry. Like saving the Local,National as well as International Format in one Entry itself!! such that u can call on local format, get an incoming call on national format and an sms in international format!! That largely is tiresome to do. But its better than finding whose SMS it is!

yeps, R-World is chargeable after March 2004. and i guess, the charges are 40p/min. Wht contents are chargeable are not known to me... That should come up soon...

well this problem is pretty common... reasons could vary. In my case, since the bills are not generated i get that msg. Even until now i get it. Maybe the service in your region is down, and hence RBILL is not able to load the application. And maybe, the previous dues of ur mobile have been cleared and hence there are no dues, meaning no new unbill information. So it might not show up for a day or two. Coz we've noticed that it doesn't really get updated just at the same moment. Keep complaining on Cust. Care but i guess in a day or two u might get a clearer picture. In my case, i kept complaining that the RBILL application is not loading, I got the phone reseted from a LG Service Centre so that there is no glitch in the handset. I verified with the Cust. Care that the application is switched on for me. But after all this, i came to know that no bills since Oct 2003 are issued for my phone. And hence this simple problem coz all the earlier bills are already paid !! wait and watch!

Flag Telecom Amalgamates with Reliance Gateway · Shareholders vote to approve deal at Special Meeting · Reliance Group's first international acquisition Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City, Navi Mumbai and London, UK Jan 12, 2004 FLAG Telecom, a leading provider of international wholesale network transport and communications services, today announced that the company has amalgamated with Reliance Gateway. At the special shareholders meeting held in New York today, over 88.8% of company's shareholders were represented, and the votes cast were unanimously in favour of the proposal to amalgamate. With this positive vote, all conditions for the closing of the Amalgamation were satisfied allowing the amalgamation to become effective immediately following the meeting. Speaking after today's meeting, Patrick Gallagher, Co-Chairman and CEO, FLAG Telecom, said: "The outcome of today's vote is highly significant for both companies. For Reliance, it marks a major step towards its vision of establishing the Reliance group of companies as a world-class global telecommunications player. For FLAG, it brings a strong base for future growth and opportunities to drive forward its strategy while contributing to the Reliance Group vision." "FLAG brings both a unique global network footprint and a wealth of international experience, while Reliance already provides a state of the art telecommunications backbone throughout India. As a Reliance company we will continue to deliver customer value through the leverage of our existing network, supported by focused strategic investments that maintain our competitive advantage," he added. Amit Khanna, Reliance Infocomm, said: "FLAG's global fibre optic network will complement our existing next generation digital network in India and enable us to serve our customers worldwide more effectively by offering end-to-end solutions. FLAG has an excellent reputation in the international marketplace and will retain its own brand identity going forward. FLAG's people have shown unwavering professionalism and enthusiasm. By sharing the best practices, processes and experience between the Reliance Group of companies we will become the carrier of choice for all international, as well as domestic, services." Advisors to Reliance on this transaction are Davis Polk & Wardwell, legal advisors and Deutsche Bank, financial advisors. Advisors to FLAG Telecom are Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, legal counsel and Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (Europe) Limited, financial advisors. About Reliance Infocomm Reliance Infocomm Ltd.,.India's largest mobile service provider, is a part of the Reliance group founded by Shri Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002). Reliance Infocomm has established a pan-India, high-capacity, integrated (wireless and wireline) and convergent (voice, data and video) digital network, to offer services spanning the entire Infocomm value chain - infrastructure, services for enterprises and individuals, applications and consulting. The Reliance Group is India's largest business house with total revenues in the financial year ended March 2003 of Rs 800 billion (US$ 16.8 billion), cash profit of over Rs 98 billion (US$ 2.1 billion), net profit of over Rs 47 billion (US$ 990 million), market capitalisation Rs 974 billion (US$21.7 billion) and exports of Rs 119 billion (US$ 2.5 billion).

Quo vadis, Reliance? Reliance Infocomm has crossed the five million customer mark in 18 months. What were its mistakes and what's in store for it? Josey Puliyenthuruthel :: BUSINESS STANDARD Published : January 14, 2004 The new year is a good time to eat crow. In a column last year (August 7, 2002), I expressed my scepticism over Reliance Infocomm’s ambitions of achieving a five million subscriber base for its wireless in local loop (WLL) telecom services (which has now morphed to a full blown mobile offering, thanks to some policy blessings) in 18 months. Although my cynicism was aimed more at the company’s fifth year target of 25 million phones that I said would require some major structural changes to Indian telecoms, I have to admit that I am surprised by its customer achievements. Reliance Infocomm, according to insider reports, has over five million subscribers and continues to grow at a decent clip. These reports, I believe, are credible. It is some balm to my bruised ego that I was not the only one wrong. Now that the ‘unified licence’ fiasco is behind us and wireless in local loop companies have been allowed to offer full blown mobility, the question on the lips of other telecom watchers has changed from “Will Reliance Infocomm make it or not?” to “How is it doing?” Vice chairman Anil Ambani gave some hints at parent Reliance Industries’ last quarterly results conference. He said the telecom venture would start making profits later this financial year. This raised sniggers among the analyst community, especially among the overseas teams which view Reliance’s P&L accounts with suspicion. Even discounting for sceptical analyst expectations, the Ambani forecast is quite astounding; it will be a record of sorts for a telecom project to break even so soon. There is precious little other information coming from the conglomerate on Reliance Infocomm. In the absence of company briefings, it is impossible to put together an accurate picture of what’s happening at Reliance Infocomm. Yet here are some salient points – warts, accolades and all – pieced together by talking to various sources. First, the mistakes. With hindsight, the earlier tiered and franchisee distribution model conjured up by Reliance Infocomm was amateur and flawed. To make it worse, there were problems with the supply of handsets. This was not entirely surprising given that the telecom project was the group’s first sortie into a retail business. It was not built to scale up and handle the numbers the top management was pushing its foot soldiers to achieve. Having said that, it was admirable how the megacorp changed gears quickly and plugged holes in its distribution and got its supply chain fixed. The climb of the Reliance Industries share on the stockmarkets is testimony to the upswing in the fortunes of the telecom business. The second mistake that Reliance Infocomm is still grappling with, I’m told, is that of its customer billing and collections. If sources are to be believed, the company will have to write off crores in unpaid bills sooner or later. Finally, an error that will cost Reliance Infocomm dear, I believe, is the lost opportunity to capture consumer mindshare as being actually the cheapest telecom services provider in the country. That would have been a solid foundation for a powerful brand, but as informed analysts have argued, the Reliance service is not the cheapest of the land and is behind Tata Teleservices – and, perhaps, even Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s cellular service – when it comes to affordability. While high-usage customers like corporates benefit from the Reliance offering, the same can’t be said about the millions who shudder at a telephone bill of more than Rs 500 a month. Consumers are beginning to realise this, particularly in the southern India states that I tour frequently, and that is not good news for the Ambani company. So what’s going in favour of Reliance Infocomm? One, it has chosen a technology with potential. Cellular companies using GSM (global system for mobile communications, an European standard) are not going to like this, but I think the technology – CDMA or code division multiple access – deployed by Reliance has a slight edge, especially when it comes to data use or migrating to a 3G scenario. (A CDMA killer in this instance could be WiFi-based voice and data applications, though.) Next, most important, Reliance Infocomm has in its owners, Reliance Industries and the Ambani family, virtually ‘lenders of last resort.’ The oil exploration-to-petrochemicals-to-fibre parent generates a few thousand crores of rupees in free cash flows every year that it is desperate to invest in yields better than those delivered by treasury desks. Telecom – with the exception of software – offers it the perhaps the most optimal risk-reward trade off among service industries in India. Further, the Reliance group has the least pressure among Indian telecom promoters when it comes to return on capital. There are several risks – surviving with a lower revenue per user in the days ahead as the company expands its customer base, new destructive technologies on the horizon and competition from resurgent rivals like BSNL, to name just three – ahead for Reliance Infocomm. But, it may have crossed the Rubicon, as it were, and could well be on its way to the 25-million mark if it keeps at it. Josey Puliyenthuruthel works at content company perZuade. His views are personal and may not be endorsed by his employer, the company’s investors, customers or vendors. Comments may be sent to josey@perzuade.com

LG in India-specific plan BUSINESS STANDARD :: Our Corporate Bureau in Mumbai Published : January 15, 2004 LG Electronics Inc (LGE), a $16 billion electronics and telecommunication conglomerate, plans to leverage facilities of its group company LG Soft India to design and feature applications and software which are specific to Indian needs on its code division multiple access (CDMA) handsets. LG Electronics has tied-up with Reliance Infocomm to provide CDMA technology-based mobile handsets in the country. It has also provided a “limited number of mobile handsets” to Tata Teleservices for the latter’s foray into the mobile telephony. Speaking to Business Standard, Tom K Baek, country head - CDMA terminals, LG Electronics, said, “LG Soft India will expand its R&D activities at Bangalore to develop software for mobile phones which are customer specific. By developing software applications in India, the response time to apply them will be quick.” LG Soft India (LGSI), is promoted by the third largest Korea conglomerate, the LG group, with equity participation from AIG. It has two offshore development centres in India and offices in San Jose, London and in Seoul. At Bangalore, LG Soft is planning to more than double its manpower from 300. Research has helped LG to launch LG RD 2130, a moonlight phone which is bilingual, capable of sending short messaging services in English and Hindi. KK Kushwaha, vice-president - CDMA terminals, LG Electronics, said, “LG intends to continue being a market leader in the CDMA handsets market in India. We already enjoy more than 50 per cent market share within two years of starting operations here.” Including the LG RD 2130 handset, LG has three models for the telecom service provider Reliance Infocomm and one model for Tata Teleservices. Baek pointed out that the company has lined-up several models from the LG stable for the market here in the first half of 2004. In the CDMA global market, LGE supplied a total of six million mobile phones, recording a 23 per cent market share. It outperformed other players such as Samsung Electronics and Motorola which supplied 5.1 million units, covering nearly 19.6 per cent market share.

Reliance Info Ethernet to go on stream in 7 weeks Kripa Raman THE HINDU BUSINESS LINE :: Mumbai , Jan. 14 RELIANCE Infocomm's much-vaunted metro-Ethernet broadband project is likely to be launched with "a complete suite of broadband applications," across all the major cities in six to seven weeks. And with this, Reliance Infocomm — which initially procured fixed service licences, but does not have a single live wireline in the country though it boasts of 6 million mobile subscribers — will launch its wireline telephony services as well, Mr Prakash Bajpai, President, Reliance Infocomm, told Business Line on the sidelines of a recent seminar on Communications Convergence in the city. This network will carry voice, data, interactive services, television material and videostreaming, and offer the end-user a minimum capacity of 1 Gbps that can go up to tens of Gbps, said Mr Bajpai. Should the project go according to expectations, other Reliance officials felt it could squeeze out all other television cable, Internet access, videoconferencing and such businesses. Pricing was still being worked upon, they said. Reliance Infocomm's metro Ethernet consists of fibre going right up to clusters of multi-residential or multi-office buildings (more than 1,000 of these clusters in the first phase), with Ethernet switches connecting the fibre to users in the buildings. The company plans to target around 1 million buildings, both commercial and residential. "When all the phases are complete, it could be the largest such metro Ethernet network in the world, said Mr Bajpai. According to the President, broadband penetration in the country is just 0.02 per cent and Reliance's broadband project would tap this unexplored market at a much lower cost than existing broadband suppliers do. One of the key kind of applications lies in the interactive variety. Videoconferencing and multi-branch office interconnectivity would allow the all-India offices of one company to function like one office, telecommunications-wise. According to Mr Bajpai, 8,000 developers have already produced around 1,500 applications for Reliance Infocomm.

now thts cool!!

Though this article is old enuf now, and as salil pointed it here, there r somethings tht shud be known to all of us... RELIANCE EMERGES FIFTH LARGEST ISP with R-CONNECT TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2003 01:58:40 AM ] HYDERABAD: If Reliance Infocomm is to be believed, the group now operates the fifth largest ISP in the country. Though not officially registered, what is interesting is that the group achieved the status purely on the back of its wireless-mobile connectivity service R-Connect that the company sells as a value-added service on its Reliance India Mobile (RIM). R-Connect has logged over 2 lakh subscribers since introduction, Mr S P Shukla, President, wireless products and services, told ET. This would make it the fifth largest ISP after BSNL, MTNL, Sify and VSNL, going by the latest available Trai numbers. Though the four metros, along with Bangalore and Hyderabad, account for the largest number of subscribers of R-Connect, surprisingly, it is subscribers in the cowbelt states of UP, Bihar, MP and Orissa who have clocked the highest internet airtime on R-Connect. Subscribers in these four states have logged upwards of 400 minutes of R- Connect per month on an average, far higher than that in the metros or mini-metros, Mr Shukla said, though he was reluctant to share the exact numbers. Reliance Infocomm offers three packages, gold and silver for internet access through its CDMA mobile service on R-Connect which, respectively, cost Rs 1000 per month and Rs 500 per month for unlimited access but with download limits of 250 mb and 100 mb, respectively, and a standard package at a monthly rental of Rs 200 and 40 paise per minute airtime charge. “While marketing for R-Connect has been low-key with the target mostly being the corporate sector, its use by individuals has surprised us,” Mr Shukla said. The two lakh subscribers that it has attracted are clearly above the industry norm and its usage too, has been encouraging, he added. “Our objective has been only to provide mobile access to the internet and not necessarily sell internet services”, he said. From the operational point of view, most browsing has been observed in the non-peak hours which is not taxing on the network, he added. The CDMA 1x network promises internet access at speeds of up to 144 kbps without tying a subscriber down to a landline or a slower access technology, Mr Shukla said. In the coming days, the company plans to get aggressive on R-Connect adding new devices such as WAN data PC cards that allow users to surf the internet without the bother of having to buy a mobile phone. “Test marketing has already begun and we will commercially launch it soon,” he said.

thnx for the update buddy...

being in mumbai, i am hearing this thing for the first time! wht is it after all?? can someone throw some light on this!!

i got this thing confirmed today... bills till September only have been generated for my no.!! No bills after this!!

they **** anyways..!! so better not!

well, neel gets it at 24 during day and 10 during night becoz he's on the 1500 plan of FWP where the unit charge is 0.90!

i need to find time to bloody visit the Webworld now before 7 to get this done... lets see.. btw, just today i got my phone Reset, and that problem with msgin is resolved... but for RBill i now get an error "Please try after sometime"... tht meeans its just a network busy error i guess... hopefuly i should be able to view my bills soon... These days, i have not been able to connect to RBil at the website at all... the login servlet doesn't open ... anyone experienced this?

check this link out for more... look at the bottom of the page.. http://relianceinfo.com/Infocomm/html/fwt-...riff_plans.html

were any s/w upgradations done for Samsung phones?? let me know

nothings really sure as of now... Or maybe Arun wud be the right person to talk abt this...

oh alrite... i have too payed quiet some amt on STD deposits which i think i should also claim now... let me know wht all u've done... Just came to know frm my dad, tht since quiet some months my bills haven't come!! i think i'll have to ask them to bill me!! hehe... they'll be so delighted to see ppl coming to them to get their bills!

yeh such things have been seen at most of the places... even with the same company handsets too.... No answers found yet !

the very basic technology of CDMA gives the user access in only one SDCA... so for example in Entire Mumbai there would be some 20-40 receiving stations(cell sites) of Reliance. So if my call was transmitted by 1 cellsite and i am travelling to another area and am out of reach of the 1st Cellsite then my call would be lost. and i'll have to redial to establish the call on the next cellsite... The same thing would happen when i am out of Mumbai and travel to New-Bombay. We get those leaving service area followed by entering service area msgs every now and then even when being in mumbai!!

no... ur no. cannot be that... coz there r tonnes of ppl who might have 3108579 as their no. For example a person in Pune can have 020 - 3108579 as his no. also!! so it will happen as to wht Arun mentioned earlier... check his post at http://www.rimweb.com/forums/index.php?sho...=findpost&p=154

wht deposit??