The story started in 2001/02 when I bought myself a mobile handset (These were very expensive in India those days) and chose Orange as the cellular provider.

Just to give you an idea, in those days the call rates on prepaid were about Rs.3.60 per minute for outgoing AND incoming calls. Additinally, a Rs.325 refillvoucher would give you only 30 days validuty with a talktime of just about Rs.180

But the network and service was great! I don’t remember dropping even a single call in those days.

Come to 2005 and Orange become Hutch. The call rates were dirt cheap and the competition in the market increased. The complaints of call drops and network problems started going up but still Hutch held its ground. In Mumbai, Hutch was still the most reliable network.

And now in 2007, Hutch became vodafone. And the service level has gone down drastically. It is in fact worse than even Airtel. (Airtel, by the way, is the worst ever mobile connection you can ever buy in India)
The network is bad, the customer care doesnot exist.

Another interesting factor is now this. I have 2 mobile numbers: One is company owned and the other one my personal. The network is obviously bad for both. But whenever I dial the customer care using the corporate connection, my call is serviced within a minute. But whenever I dial using my personal number, I have to wait for atleast 15 minutes before someone picks up the call. Double standards, cheating? Well, you decide. (In both cases, I am paying the same monthly charges)

The newwork has really become bad in the following areas:

Railway Line between Dadar and CST
Eastern Express Highway near Sion, Ghatkopar
Bandra to Andheri

The attractiveness of their advertisements has definitely gone up regularly. Unfortunately, the same can not be said about theiur network.

Branch Visited:	N/A
Plan Name:	Super 499
Plan Type:	Post Paid