Mar 26, 2003 09:33 AM
2423 Views
(Updated Mar 26, 2003 09:33 AM)
Dear Friends
I have been doing product reviews for a long time now and one thing I have learnt with experience is that ''only time will tell''. So my advice to all those contemplating moving from ''A'' GSM cellular service provider to Reliance Mobile is ''please wait for a few months before you junk your GSM SIM card''. I am actually following my own advice.
While the Reliance CDMA service is comparatively much cheaper, it will really become much cheaper only when many more (lakhs of them) people log on to their service. For now, the 40 paise STD is only for Reliance to Reliance calls (Amit Khanna please correct me if I am wrong.
I am not sure if SMS works on their service. Secondly will SMS work (when it starts) internationally. Do you know something - I can send SMS messages to all parts of the world even Ukraine, Dubai, and to some of my girl friends in Seattle and Khabaroskv(far east of Russia), today for just a rupee. (from your home zone of course, roaming SMS is charged differently)
There are a few technical issues too. Like when you make a call using a Reliance handset, you are not sure if the call is connecting. You don't hear the ringing tone.
An important thing (at least as of now) is that you don't have a choice of handsets. Which means 10 lakh (when they reach that number) subscribers would be using the same 2 or 3 handsets and that gets pretty boring.
There are a lot of issues involved.. As of now the plus point for Reliance is price... But if I am not mistaken, M/s Rajiv Chandrashekar, Sunil Mittal and Azim Ghosh have vowed to match Reliance paise for paise when it comes to price.
Hang for a while and lets see which way the wind blows...We have to check out their quality of service when loaded, their customer service (I am yet to see customer service galleries or centres), their billing systems(for now all the gooddies come free..), we will only know how reliable are their billing systems after a few months....
