SexyGurl

Thanks, all of you for useful suggestions. I am quite out-of-date in terms of my current knowledge about mobile phones and the mobile world !!!. .. Just the damn hectic job that keeps me damn busy ! @ShaikhSadit .. as for name change - I won't be able to frequent here for timepass on a day to day basis ... just whenever I have an odd actual need such as this. But I don't want the name to be changed without me being told, otherwise I'll have trouble logging in later. .. What's in a name, anyway .. !

I am looking to buy a new Nokia CDMA phone for my father. He's over 75 and I would like to buy the phone with the following features: 1. Large (and widely spaced keys) so that it's easy to dial the number. 2. The screen should display text in a very large font. 3. Looking for a phone in the range of Rs. 5000 to Rs. 8000. (Money is not a problem otherwise, but if I buy a too costly phone, my father could refuse to accept it and it'll keep lying at home). 4. Nokia is my first brand preference ... just because of the name (I would myself just care about the functionality, but others seem to think highly about that name .... and I guess, my father, would be happy if someone else praises the phone). LG would be second brand of choice.. Classic is pretty much ruled out, for the same reason. I also have concerns about the qualily and life of Classic phones. I don't want to be changing phones for my father too soon, because it becomes difficult for him to get adjusted to the new one again and again. 5. FM Radio on the phone is also desired. 6. No harm in having a camera .. but it has no utility for my requirements. My father will not use it .. and this feature may un-necessarily jack up the costs. 7. My father currently uses the first LG black and white model which reliance launched. (The one with the protruding antenna). I don't want to buy a B&W phone now .. only a color one. I have shortlisted Nokia 6585 from the site. It has FM, the keys look spaced apart . .though of average size as other phones. Do think it'll be a good decision to buy Nokia 6585, given my needs ? Second on the short list is Nokia 3125 -- I like the keys better .. the big disadvantage is no FM radio ! Could suggest another phone that would meet my requirements .. even better than the two above.

I got a gross of 69 words per minute (for a 1:00 minute test). 5 errors. So, a net of 64 words per minute.

One thing for sure has happened --> ADA has brought back some EXCITEMENT into the telecom industry ... with this wonderful GSM Fun (Offcourse, equally important to ADA's proposal is DoT looking at it favorably. It does seem, DoT has responded constructively). Looks to be an ace from ADA, in several ways: 1. Brings Qualcomm to it's toes. If it's charing only 2% royalty in China, no way it should be allowed to charge 7% in India. .... else India will wipe out 8% of the subscriber base which uses Qualcomm's CDMA technology. Most likely outcome (.. my gut feel) --> The royalty is coming down for India by a big number. Very likely to 2% (Current CDMA subscribers in India and China are nearly identical, about 30 million in each country .... no reason why Indians should be paying a higher royalty). 2. With the first good effect of royalty being down, in pocket --> ADA is not going to tone down or affect CDMA in anyway. It's runs AS-IS, with the beautiful R-world service (which is infeasibly over GSM networks), Great spectrum efficiency, higher speeds. What's going to happen is ADA will have CDMA + GSM. The advantage --> HIGHER CAPACITY UTILIZATION of the backone optic fiber network .... because of additional Reliance GSM subscribers. The handset costs for GSM is ZERO for reliance. There are already PLENTY of GSM handsets in use by airtel, hutch, bsnl users. They become the natural target for Reliance GSM. It's just a matter of changing the SIM cards from airtel or hutch cards to reliance's SIM card !!! The key and vital cause for success is going to be cost-effective deployment of GSM base stations. (One-third cost looks not too bad ... but it's true, he'll need more GSM base stations than the current CDMA base stations, as the CDMA towers cover the area covered by 4-5 GSM towers). The current CDMA mobile subscribers continue to enjoy the premium data serviced available on the CDMA network. GSM can be thrown away cheap ... plain vanilla voice services. Outcome of the exercise: 1. Qualcomm's royalties go down, under this THREAT of GSM foray. If it doesn't bring down royalties ... focus on GSM will be more (.. at the cost of obstinate Qualcomm's loss). If Qualcomm concedes, CDMA thrives even more than it is now. 2. It is the easiest and cheapest way to attack airtel & hutch subscribers. The key here is, whether ADA has the guts to IMPLEMENT THE "RELIANCE STANDARD" PROJECT EXECUTION !!! The GSM execution needs to be fast, sharp and ... most importantly cost effective. -- Mukesh Ambani gave plenty of sleepless nights to airtel & hutch by the sheer scale of the Infocomm execution -- It's the implementation of GSM that's vital, if ADA is to give the same nightmares to airtel & hutch once again. If done well, the Reliance GSM costs ADA less ... hits airtel & hutch hard. I wonder what those sweet dudes at airtel & hutch are thinking, strategising .... just in case, ADA turns out to be another Mukesh. No one knows, how ADA turns out to be ... a Mukesh or a damp squib @#$#? 3. Higher capacity Utilisation on the optic fiber backbone come free, with new GSM subscribers adding on the the CDMA ones. It's quite immaterial the current CDMA towers serve WLL phones or mobiles ... they key thing is that they continue to catch the telecom traffic and keep transferring it to the backbone. Personally, I don't think CDMA mobiles will be affected at all ... the advantages with data services are too much ... to just switch them off to actually move the CDMA subscribers to GSM. A Seemingly BIG PROBLEM: Some news that DoT may want Reliance to give up the current CDMA spectrum, in exchange for the GSM spectrum. This doesn't make sense to me at all .... A huge investment in those towers .. why would the government want to switch them off .... there is hardly any other claimant for the portion of the CDMA spectrum. Better have the Reliance CDMA towers continue to work as before. My guess, is that is exactly going to happen in the end ... Reliance keeps CDMA .. and gets GSM. My further guess .... LOTS OF FURTHER CRYING, SCREAMING, ABUSING is on it's way from AIRTEL and HUTCH. That's why I said .... we're back to exciting days in telecom Industry again .... It's always fun to see Sunil Mittal crying and screaming and accusing of foul play

I also made it the wallpaper on my mobiile. Strangely .... (and I am amazed by this fact) --> That I indeed started liking the new logo a lot. It's definitely more youthful (as the article above points out). And I personally like the colors Red, Blue (and white) ..... and anything green is generally bad (for me). I am beginning to think, it was a worthwhile exercise for ADA to do .... and there are already signs showing that it has come out to be a reasonable success.

wow ..... it's complete and total condemnation of this new logo, from all at rimweb !!! I must say, I have to join in ... whaaat a sh*t symbol. Only thing missing is the brown color !

I myself feel, we should get out of this reservation stuff fast .... we should have a PURE MERITOCRACY. What needs to be done is that the quality of PRIMARY EDUCATION needs to be boosted. It should be Free and COMPULSORY (by law). Government should give SCHOLARSHIP to promising students from poorer or historically inequitable backgrounds .... so that they can afford the costs involved in preparing for Competitive Examinations. But outright reservations, for anyone who has NOT WORKED HARD ENOUGH to secure a postion, should not be admitted to the IITs. At best, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, as applied in United States is far better than outright Rerservations. There are just some points given with regards to ethnicity etc. .... but MERIT must find a dominant place in admissions FOR EVERY SEAT in IITs, Medical Colleges ... and hopefully also government bureaucracy (i.e. Civil Services)

But this is still a time-based plan - not a Data Plan. I have long been waiting for a "Prepaid Data Card" esp. in a denomination about Rs. 200/- .... giving say 10MB or 25MB of data exchange (but NO TIME LIMITS). ! It'll be a boon for especially old people, who type slowly ... but want to use something like Yahoo Messenger to keep in touch .. (since Yahoo messenger would have very low data exchange in terms of MB, but the current internet plans have time constraints, which make then very costly for such users). .... And one may be ok to invest Rs. 15,000 or 20,000 in a assembled PC, just to keep in touch .... but the recurring charge needs to be really reasonable ... like a Rs. 200/- prepaid data card. I think there is a good market for such prepaid cards .... and will encourage a LOT of aspiring people in lower middle class to invest Rs. 15,000 in a PC and get to internet for basic uses like messenger and text-only emails.

It's a huge difference, in valuations between RCoVL and Bharti: $ 8 BN versus $ 17.5 BN !!!! A fair target for Anil would be to try to beat Bharti at Market Cap. And the match will almost surely be decided by whom-so-ever wins the race for subscriber additions. Till now, Bharti has managed to maintain an edge in subscriber additions ... though only by a small margin. And the difficult part for Anil is, that, Reliance has more or less exhausted it's capacity to challenge the well-set older GSM players ... using heavy dozes of price-wars. It did gain a foothold in the cellular market, courtesy it's price wars ..... but a decisive leadership position has remained elusive. (by which I mean, beating the largest GSM player by a factor of 2 -- which would mean Reliance should have had, about 35 million mobile subscribers). Another news article stated that Reliance has currently 61,000 kms. of optic fiber cable compared to 30,000 with Bharti and 29,000 with Tata (VSNL) -- (I guess, Tata's number includes the lines leased from Bharti for 20 years). But this OFC advantage is proving to be limited, given National Long Distance tariffs have themselves become quite low .... and it may not be possible for Reliance to offer NLD at a significant pricing discount against what others operators offer. SO, WHAT'S LEFT FOR ANIL TO DO ???? 1) Not pricing discounts to competitors in the Voice market. 2) He has a lower brand perception than Hutch or Airtel. 3) Coverage is better than Hutch, but just about the same as Airtel. 4) R-WORLD !!! - sounds like a interesting key. No GSM is in a position to challenge Video-streaming ... as R-world does. But a problem with that is that the mass market just needs the voice services. Data Services are very largely restrictred to english-literate or some savvy local language people for video services. 5) Handsets: A long term weakness, compared to GSM .... but because of too many subscribers .... Anil should be thankful, it's not much of a headache for him. This off course, offers him nothing to take on the competition. 6) It's a retail market .... the fabled "crooked-way-out" out technique doesn't work. (or atleast i can't conceive such a thing). LOOKS LIKE THERE IS NOTHING "POOR" ANIL CAN DO NOW. Ummm.... ok, here's the best I could think of: Anil should: 1. BRUTALLY CUT OPERATIONAL COSTS. -- Standardize products. Reduce or eliminate the reasons why a customer would need to call customer-care. 2. Actually, Airtel's idea of outsourcing customer-care is not too bad -- but, it's quite late for reliance to do, now. What's the Plus???? THINK OF GETTING INTO BPO (call-center) BUSINESS. Use the experience of reliance call center, to earn REVENUE. BPO is the fastest growing industry and reliance is well placed to start earning revenue fast, there. 3. WEBWORLD: Build the reliance brand around Webworlds. They have a very upmarket image. Too posh... and the sunk costs there, should be made to payup. 4. R-world: Is a plus for reliance. But already mentioned, it has some limited use.[ 5. CONTINUE TO EXPAND COVERAGE: Rest all (above) are revenue earning items. This is the only thing that sukks money. But would pay well in the long run.

No, it's 14.6 m subscribers for mobile only. Total subscribers including FWP etc. for Reliance at end of January: 16,593,389 (see url: http://www.auspi.in/search-subscriber.asp ) News says they added 1 million in February ... so total subscriber base is about 17.6 million

Lalu Bhaiya has been much much better than all Railway ministers, in atleast past 10 years. He's much more market oriented than past "Railway CEOs"

i was thinking what theking stated above. though, disconnecting after 1:59 everything in your 2 hour long call is not possible / infeasible. ok, it's something .... but not that about which we could start jumping around. And even then only Rs. 200/- M2M option looks best. Rest are at best passable.

Anil is easily much more money-minded than Mukesh. See how cleanly he withdrew the highly popular 440 unlimited local R2R card ... and all those people (who used to pay 440), are now paying much more (eg. 495 card) .... and still able to talk only for limited period, upto their talktime. He also withdrew the 770 card .... though, there always was a fighting chance to make the courts accept FWP as a landline phone. I do get a feeling that Anil is not going to offer anything cheap, than, what the rest of the competition (from BSNL, Airtel, Tata, Hutch etc.) will force him to. (Needless, all of us RIM subscribers were better off with better tariffs while Infocomm was being fed with huge profits from Reliance's pertroleum business). Now we'll have to pay the tariffs driven by a businessman's profit motive. (and mercifully, we hope, the competition will keep this guy in check).

Yes, unlimited STD should now be offered on mobile phones. I can only hope something like Rs. 600/- per month for unlimited R2R gets offered ! -- though it's more like a wish, than something I think will actually happen

As usual, Ramchi always finds something to crib about :-)