Mere papa ka ............sabka maal apna. Review on Reliance Mobile Operator

Title : Mere papa ka................sabka maal apna.

Review : Hi friends, I am a reliance india mobile phone user since feb 03. I have made a major mistake in my life by going for reliance india mobile and that too by paying Rs.23,000 at a time by demand draft in feb 03. Well, initially in feb 03 when the advts. of RIM started to pop up in each and every lane of mumbai, a lot of people were curious to go for the RIM service. But seeing the bad schemes and a tie up pf 3 yrs, only a few went in for the RIM service. Actually the reason for me to go for reliance was their cheaper tariff plans, voice calls @ 0.40 paisa per minute, free incoming calls, free sms, and a sleek beautiful handset. In May 03, even the other cellular operators made their incoming calls free. And at that time TRAI announced the interconnect usage charge regime amongst all the telephone operators. So our RIM calls became costlier due to the interconnect usage charge. AND AT THE SAME TIME RIM VOICE CALLS PULSE RATE WENT UP TO 60 SECS. FROM 15 SECS. So the RIM user had to shell out for 1 min voice calls even if he spoke for 15 secs or 30 secs. And RIM excecutives blamed that the increase in pulse rate was as per TRAI recommendations. Next came the MONSOON HUNGAMA offer from RIM in July 03. This was actually done to take over the market and avoid the customers from going to TATA INDICOM mobile which was to be launched within a month or two. TATA had announced the entry package by just paying Rs. 999. So RIM launched the monsoon hungama with the entry package only for Rs.501. And they got around more than 5 lac new customers in Monsoon Hungama. TATA INDICOM launched its CDMA mobile services thereafter with very cheaper schemes and tariff plans. The TATA Indicom 599 tariff plan works out to be much more cheaper than the RIM 600 Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer Offer tariff plan. In TATA INDICOM 599 tariff plan, an outgoing call from TATA to GSM costs just 0.50 paise per min. which is all inclusive of the TATA INDICOM airtime as well as the interconnect usage charge charged by the GSM operator to complete the call, whereas in RIM, the same call costs RS 1.20 where 0.40 paise is the RIM airtime per min and 0.80 paise is the interconnect usage charge of the GSM operator. Now the question arises that why so much difference between the calls made to the GSM phone from RIM and TATA considering both RIM and TATA Indicom are CDMA phones. Thus, if according to RIM, GSM charges 0.80 paise as IUC from RIM, then why is GSM charging only 0.10 paise from TATA as IUC. ( Considering the airtime for both RIM and TATA as 0.40 paise per min.) Or, we can put it in a different way, that is if GSM is charging only 0.10 paisa per min as IUC, ( GSM has to charge the same IUC from any CDMA operator), then where the hell is the remaining 0.70 paise out of 0.80 paise charged by RIM towards a call made from RIM to GSM going??? Obviously in RIM pockets. Again, in May 03, RIM increased its voie call pulse rate from 15 seconds to 1 min stating that it was as per TRAI order. THEN HOW COME TATA INDICOM WHICH WAS LAUNCHED MUCH LATER HAS 15 SECONDS PULSE RATE FOR CALLS MADE FROM TATA TO ANY OTHER CDMA PHONE OR LANDLINE? Except the calls made from TATA to GSM has 1 min pulse rate. Again this means that RIM is looting the customers by overcharging them. Also, TATA INDICOM 599 tariff plan gives you 700 free mins per month whereas RIM 600 plan gives only 400 free mins per month, which is expensive. I enquired about this at one of the Reliance Web World. I got the answer as RIM is giving R- World feature which TATA is not, and also RIM is giving roaming facility which TATA is not, hence so much difference in the rates of RIM and TATA. Thus, the explaination given by RIM executive seems to be very absurd. There is no logic in RIM charging its customers more for LOCAL VOICE CALLS in terms of rate per min, pulse rate, and less free mins per month in their tariff plans just because it is offering R-World feature and roaming facility to its customers. This seems totally unjustified. So friends, the entry package of RIM may be very cheap at Rs.501, but in the long term you end up paying more and more. And people like me who go out of town hardly once a year, have to pay more for local voice calls made in Mumbai just because RIM is giving roaming facility. I would opt for a prepaid Trump card when I go out of town rather than paying reliance so much throughout the whole year.