Himanshu Singh

Most, rather all, postpaid plans look useless to me.

Thats a wishful thinking and taking it too far. Any telco can try to sabotage the other by simply not providing enough POIs to the other.Thats what has been happening to RCDMA in Delhi. Try making a call from RCDMA/RGSM numbers of Delhi-NCR to Airtel numbers of Bihar-Jharkhand between 5pm and 9pm and you would know why all routes remain busy. Then try calling the same numbers from Airtel/Idea/Vodafone/Virgin/Aircel/MTS and you get through smoothly.On the other hand if I call BSNL numbers in Bihar-Jharkhand from RCDMA I always get connected anytime of the day. This is something that I have noticed for over 2 years now.

I dnt know if its an old news. If its old please delete this post.Just watched Tv ad which announced per second roaming for international roaming as well..

I agree with MOBILE FAN. CDMA service providers do not provide handsets at competitive prices, moreover they do lock their handsets which are useless if u want to switch to other network. CDMA handsets are high priced BB 8830 is sold for 27k from TATA & Rel which we get for 10k from Sadikk. even samsung corby CDMA will also cost 10k whereas its GSM varient is about 6-7k. Nokia 6275 is still 10K but with much better features u will get a Nokia GSM phone for 5-6k Now if u r not a geek & u dont have friends in US & u cant unlock handsets & u r not a rimweb member & u dont know anyone called Sadikk & u r just a lay man who goes to market & buys a moblie phone just like any electronic item then in that case choices are very very limited in CDMA market. I bought a very basic Samsung GSM phone for Rs1400 (GURU) & I did bought a basic CDMA handset for same price (Huwai TATA) the difference in quality in both the handsets is vey wide. Now if u have a budget of 6k & i ask u to buy a good multimedia CDMA phone then u have no options in the market but for GSM there are dozens of handses in this range too. I agree. You have eloquently summed up the CDMA handset scenario which prevails in India.

At least Tatas made a sound decision by partnering NTT DoCoMo for gsm roll out. Its where they have beaten Rcomm handsdown.No wonder it has been leading in subscriber addition.

I agree and I commented much the same elsewhere in this forum that Vodafone might be able to make profits out of this sms scheme while same cant be said for Rcomm. While Rcomm has reduced its sms tariff to unbelievable levels, other companies are responding in a SUSTAINABLE way. Vodafone has done it. Even Aircel has made the following chaneges in its existing sms packs for various denominations for Delhi-NCR: Rs.9 pack now offers 100 local.national sms, previously it was only 50. Rs.19 pack now offers 250 local/national sms, previoulsy it was 100. Rs.49 pack now offers 1000 local/national sms, previously it was 250. Not a big deal, I am sure, but big enough to prevent customers from going away I guess. And thats the policy other GSM companies are going to follow. They would cut prices to retain their customers but not to as low as Rcomm.

Sorry dude i asked you for calculation. And yes i did score 99 each time i wrote my board exam of CBSE.Although your remark was unjustified.

pack valid only for weekend means friday to sunday. Recharge must be done on friday.

@Sumal, I agree.I guess they would be working on it.

34 pack offers 20000 sms valid for 10 days while 89 pack offers 20000 sms valid for 30 days. No daily deductions.

Incumbent GSM operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular - have upped the ante against dual licence holders Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Tata Teleservices in the ongoing war for airwaves, and said that the latter generated poor returns to the government for the airwaves they hold. Dual licence holders have approval to offer mobile services on both GSM and CDMA technological platforms. All telcos share between 2-6% of their annual revenues to the government as spectrum usage charge. GSM operators say that they hold far lower airwaves when compared to RCOM and Tatas, but pay a much higher fee to use these airwaves. For instance, Airtel says that it holods 167 MHz of spectrum (the airwaves on which all mobile signals travel) across the country and paid Rs 986 crore as annual fee to use these airwaves when compared to Rs 179 crore by RCOM, which held 200.5 MHz of radio frequencies (GSM and CDMA combined). Airtel also says that while it as well as the Tatas held almost similar quantity of airwaves, the latter paid was paid only Rs 179.68 crore as annual spectrum usage charges. Ditto with Vodafone and Idea - calculation by these GSM operators state they shelled out Rs 770 core and Rs 406 crore respectively as the fee to use the airwaves despite them holding lesser amount of airwaves than RCOM and Tatas. GSM operators also add that the Department of Telecom's move in 2007 to overturn TRAI's recommendations, which had said that operators offering services on multiple technologies must pay the spectrum charges on the combined airwaves, is now causing the government huge losses. Incumbent GSM operators also want TRAI to impose a minimum amount that telcos will have to shell out for every MHz of radio frequencies they hold. This is because, they claim that RCOM and Tatas paid only Rs 18.71 crore and Rs 22.75 crore respectively for every MHz of radio frequencies they have when compared to Rs 116.64 crore for Bharti, Rs 98.73 crore for Vodafone and Rs 52.81 crore/MHz for Idea Cellular. In their defence, RCOM and Tatas have said that GSM operators were resorting to misrepresentation of facts while adding that 'the allegations on inefficient economic use of spectrum held by dual technology operators was bizarre and hides their (incumbent GSM players') mala fide intent to hoard spectrum far beyond what is permissible under the laws of the land'.

Lets keep up the good work. Congrats to every member of this community.

@Vinayak your views represents those lakhs of users who use call phones for personal use having 1/2 numbers. I fully agree that one would end up paying almost similar no matter what plan and schemes you opt for across operators.And even if there is a substantial difference in cost structure, the ongoing competition would surely bring that down sooner than later. I predict a Aviation sector-like disaster in telecom sector too.

@Vinayak, you have hit the nail on the head. I have always found Airtel's ad very interesting, inspiring,emotional at various times. Even Idea for that matter has done well with its ads. I have never used an Airtel connection in life.

@Narayan, where did you get this? how much you paid for it? and whats the handset model number etc.?

@dkaile, please do not take this seriously - what follows is only light-hearted banter. Guys, take note. Wherever he is the first customer, the company is dead. Ab Reliance ka kya hoga? :winko: That was a good one.

Buddy, you missed the point. I never talked about throwing the sim. I have only said I wont use it till it is up and running properly in my circle.(Read post 29 in this same thread) I don't hesitate to give the devil its due but at the same time I would call a spade a spade. This particular tariff holds no interest to me. None of my college friends/family members use Rcomm.

Should that not be Spectrum for 2 companies= Airtel spectrum+33.5MHz?

Reliance started operations in 2004. Do you know when Airtel started? And I am sure one cant complain if Airtel/Vodafone/Idea/BSNL/MTNL have more GSM spectrum as the prevailing policy was subscriber-linked spectrum allocation. Now that is being debated. And RGSM surely has start up spectrum of 4.4MHz(I would stand corrected if this figure is wrong) in each circle.AND I am more than sure that the start up spectrum which RGSM has is more than enough to cater to the customers it has.The point being made here is that RGSM has failed to utilise its spectrum porperly atleast in Delhi-NCR.Calls dont get connected after 5 pm in one try. All routes remain busy. Docomo does not even have this luxury of having pan india spetrum. It has no spectrum in Delhi for instance. And if Rcomm had enough subscribers it would have been entitled to additional spectrum. It suddenly can't complain about Telecom policies. Even other companies must not complain. The conditions were set before the companies launched themselves. What point I tried to make was this- Rcomm has been able to corner the largest chunk of national resource by way of floating two separate companies followed by Tata comm.The court had judged in their favour by saying that the policy is technology neutral.This judgment paved the way for dual licenses for these two companies. Why did Rcomm and Tata want to switch over to GSM? And why did no GSM telco ever even think about foraying into CDMA?Therein lies the answer.

I am sorry. I may have read something wrong.

Come on yar, I am sure DoCoMo does not have even 30% of customers as compared to Airtel or even Reliance. So the return for Govt through levies and taxes per MHz of spectrum awarded to DoCoMO is surely lower than Airtel.I am sure Airtel adds more to Govt kitties per MHz of spectrum than DoCoMO.By the way the ET articles means this only when it talks of spectrum efficiency. You know what Airtel says? It says why did Rcomm and Tata not apply for GSM licenses when they were awarded for the first time? Why did they enter CDMA if they found it not lucrative enough? The fact is Rcomm and Tata comm took a conscious business decision to foray into CDMA services and not because GSM spectrum was not available to accomodate them. So to suggest: 1.That for level playing field/comparison the incumbent GSM telcos should foray into CDMA and 2 That low ARPUs of the two companies is due to CDMA technology is far fetched and fails to impress me.

@Ravi, No brother not batting for anyone. Just posted as I found this article a bit interesting.

Thats a great offer. It attempts at having a synergy of all three products from Tata's stable.

Friends, I was right. Rcomm GSM+CDMA holds 200.5MHz of spectrum while Airtel holds only 167MHz. ET has reported this today and I have posted that article "Rcomm, Tatas have lowest spectrum efficiency" in INDIAN TELECOM DISCUSSION.

I am not getting this info. I remember once I crossed my 100 free sms limit and lost all my balance. I was so frustrated and I asked customer care executives also. They said their is no way to know, how many free sms are you left with. Are you sure you are getting this information when you check your balance. If yes, can you tell me how its done ?? Ankur, When I dial 177 for balance check I get an sms from 51111 about sms balance every single time I check balance.