starnet

Isn't Rs 6000+ too high a price for a 5 year old model? That too when latest EVDO sets are available at a slightly higher price.

Why can't you download the form online and submit it to the passport office yourself? Giving copies of documents like ID cards etc. to someone you don't know very well is a very bad idea. Just visit the place of that agent and take your documents as well as money back.

MTNL has lowered the ISD rates to sweden to Rs 3 per minute. Hope BSNL will follow the path of MTNL.

Way back in 1995, we used to pay around Rs 100 per minute for calls to USA. And in those days Rs 100 used to have much more buying power than today. This is a good example of what brute forces of competition in capitalist economy can do for the customer. Long live competition!!!

Blackberry 8520 price at around Rs 12000 is a good option. I am using one at the moment. You will have to pay Rs 299 per month for unlimited email and that is the downside plus it doesn't have 3G. My mother has hearing related problem and she is able to hear the person on the other side of the call on BB 8520 without any problem. Nokia can't beat blackberry when it comes to built quality, voice clarity and ability to make clear voice calls and use email even in low signal areas. I own a Nokia N95 also and it has hanging problem. You have to take battery out and put it in again at least once a day and that is not acceptable for a phone that I bought for Rs 25000. I think phone hanging in the middle of a call is a feature and not a problem in all costlier models of Nokia.

I have Samsung N148 and I like it. It came without OS and I installed windows 7 Home Basic on it. Whatever you buy make sure that you buy netbook with Intel Atom N450 CPU only. A lot of netbooks selling for cheap on ebay have older CPUs. Most netbooks in markets come with 1GB RAM only. Upgrade the RAM to 2GB as soon as you buy a netbook. Some netbooks have soldered memory modules, so it is not possible to upgrad memory in those netbooks. Beware of such models.

A. Raja is the most incompetent telecom minister that we have had in last decade. I wish Mr. Mittal had succeeded in kepping A. Raja away from cabinet. A. Raja will be known for 2G license scam for a long time to come.

So I am thinking of buying a Blackberry Bold that will enable me to check my email at anytime without using a PC. I am planning to subscribe to Rs 299 for unlimited email available with Airtel prepaid (Blackberry Personal Mail service). At present I'm using a Nokia N95 (8GB version) and answering even a small email on that phone is a time consuming job given the lack of Qwerty keypad. I sometime check the websites such as moneycontrol.com also on the phone when I'm out of my office/home and have URLs of such sites bookmarked on that Nokia N95. Right now I pay per KB for GPRS usage. I have been told by Airtel customer support that I must subscribe to BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) plan for Rs 899 per month to be able to check the email as well as browse the sites on Blackberry. There is no option to pay flat fees of Rs 299 for email and pay further for browsing depending on usage with a prepaid connection. I further asked him if it is possible to open email attachments with the Rs 299 per month mail service and he was not sure about that. In general, I have found that Airtel prepaid customer support guys are not well trained at all when it comes to answering even simple technical questions. They can tell you about latest tariff plans or STVs but not much beyond that. Now the question is can I use a blackberry and pay Rs 299 for unlimited email PLUS further amount based on per KB usage for checking the general sites in the browser of the blackberry on GPRS? Further is it possible to open email attachments (like PDF files) with Rs 299 per month blackberry personal mail service? So can anyone here please clear my above mentioned doubts about Blackberry Personal mail service.

So the closure of Reliance GSM has been postponed by a few more months. Their (RGSM) network is so bad that almost every customer in right state of mind will like to move out of Reliance network. Among the existing companies only Reliance is going to lose the customers on net basis. Conspiracy theory is that they are the ones who don't want MNP.

Here in Delhi, Aircel pocket internet has very slow download speed, so much that it is not at all usable in most areas. Airtel is also not very good during the working hours of 9:00 AM to 7PM. Reliance GSM is the worst of the lot, but then the RGSM was always a dead-on-arrival kind of service. Vodafone is a bit better among the lot. I guess these 2G networks are just not meant for regular data usage particularly during the day. In Delhi nothing beats MTNL 3G. On a Nokia N95, I get speeds of about 1 mbps with good pings to servers in the USA. On prepaid I pay about Rs 1/MB (i.e. 1 paise per 10KB) download. So it is a bit costlier compared with Aircel or Airtel but once you get used to it, you will not want to go back to a 2G networks for data. I think MTNL also has 3G network up and running in Mumbai. So that is worth a try.

Quality of both GSM and CDMA is falling every day and here we have a CEO making tall claims. This is going to be yet another disaster for RCOM. RCOM is no longer a tier-1 player in the market like it used to be in 2003-2005. Now it is nothing more than a second grade player in the market with a third class network.

More than 15 months after launch, RGSM is still in the bad state. There is no improvement whatsoever. RCDMA which used to have best voice quality is also giving problems of frequent call drops and poor voice quality. Calls drop within 2 minutes even when there is full signal on the handset and I am sitting less than 100 meters away from their tower. Now a days it is impossible to call Bangalore from Delhi for even 3 minutes without a call drop. What is the use of 50 paise per minute STD on Simply Reliance? I guess they should rename their plan as "Simply BS". With so many competitive offers available from likes of Airtel now a days there is no reason why paying customers should tolerate crappy service. I have more or less moved from RDMA to Airtel. I have been paying over Rs 1000 per month to Reliance every month since launch in May, 2003. I guess they are no longer interested in providing service of decent quality to the customers like myself.

So many new operators are launching their services at almost the similar rock-bottom tariffs with nothing else to differentiate between them. Why can't one of these guys innovate and offer something new? How about offering free voice mail service as is offered by operators in other countries? Why not offer lower rates of GPRS services? Why can't MTS the new CDMA operator offer lower prices for Ev-DO service for customers using USB dongles? Otherwise what is the use of Etisalat or S-tel or Swan or Loop or Videocon or MTS etc. etc.

Airtel recently disabled call waiting, conference calls, STD and ISD on my postpaid mobile connection for which I have ALWAYS paid the bill on-time and have never used more than 40% of the credit limit. So I had to call them to get all these services enabled. Once these operators start charging for calls made to customer support, I guess these kind of mistakes will start happening more frequently just to milk the customers. What an IDEA Sir Ji !!!!!

One can buy Tata Indicom Plug2surf USB modems from any second hand handset dealer for Rs 700-800 only and start using it with a Tata Indicom CDMA SIM card without any programming or without searching for any cable. Similarly second hand Reliance netconnect CDMA2000IX modems can be bought at even lower rates. Buying a handset for internet access only doesn't make a lot of sense now a days.

The thing about 8520 and 8530 is that they are priced to be entry level handsets. One can even buy the original boxed pack handset by paying a bit more and be certain that BIS will work without any problem. What is the use of a BB if one is using it without BIS or Blackberry email?

Companies like Hindustan Lever are making a killing with shampoo packs priced at Rs 2 or Rs 3 only. One of my relatives has a mobile store in a small town of U.P. Recharge coupons of Rs 10 to Rs 25 are the best selling items in his shop. About 75% of the customers get e-recharge for Rs 50 or less than that. So there is certainly a market for low denomination vouchers and plans. May be not in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, but this market certainly exists in small towns and rural areas.

Now Delhi is the only major market where DOCOMO is still not available. Waiting to see some competition in Delhi also.

I am using 8520 which is GSM version of 8530. Bought it for Rs 13600 from Big Bazaar in Delhi and it is the best handset I have ever used. Built quality of all BB handsets is way ahead of a typical Nokia. Software is stable unlike the Nokia N95 which used to hang once or twice every week in the middle of calls. Moreover my home is in an area where Airtel doesn't have good coverage, so calls made by using Nokia N95 used to drop at any time. With BB 8520 I have not faced problem of dropped calls even once in 1 month. Moreover this series of BB works with wifi. Put it in simple words this series of BB handsets is worth every rupee of what they cost. I guess BB 8530 is even better because it has 3G EV-DO, while GSM version (8520) lacks 3G.

Bandwidth is not the problem but download quotas are. Given the current tariffs of DSL services offered by BSNL, one can expect these services to be priced at unaffordable levels for a small and medium size business, leave alone a residential customer.

This one has HSDPA. Will this be the cheapest 3G GSM phone in the market?

Now if only they could offer free 10000 minutes of talktime to any network along with free SIM card, their sales will rock. and for those in this thread, who are waiting for RGSM network to improve, your wait is going to be endless. RCOM is a poorly managed company now. Besides the CDMA service launched in 2003, they have not done anything right in last 5-6 years. Be it their broadband service (both wireline or wimax) or GSM service, everything has been a total disappointment.

In Airtel it takes long hold times of upto 15 minutes to report even a small problem. Looks like hold times will get even longer. "Welcome to Airtel! Please hold the line for 15 minutes to enable us to make MORE money before we listen to your problem. Your call is now really valuable to us. Thank you."

What is the possibility of using imported Blackberry (like BB 8830) or HTC handsets with EVDO on BSNL network?

I am sure people are aware that should the cops want, they can reach the home of person asking for crack by tracing the IP address he is on and arrest him for piracy. Those who are assisting the OP can also be arrested for aiding and abetting the crime. :NOTriste: