Cell Phones. One area where India rocks. No questions.
Ok, lets see the differences :
- In US, first of all, its very difficult to get a cell phone connection!. You need to have a good “credit history” to get a cellphone. If you don’t have a credit history, you need to pay some deposits. And guess what? I was told that I need to deposit $750 to get a cell phone connection since I did not have any credit history!!! In India, almost everyone can manage to get a cell phone service. No major deposits etc!
- In US, almost all the providers ask you to sign a 1 year or 2 year contract. In India … “What contract?? Are you kidding?”
- In US, you get a mobile phone with your plan. This is good one way, but then you will have to sign a one year contract for sure (and pay some money for the handset…offcourse less than the market price - but this depends on the plan and the phone in question)!. In India, you have the freedom and flexibility to select your phone, based on your budget, from Rs 500 to 25,000! And you can change your handset anytime (except CDMA providers)
- In US, the airtime charges (or the call charges) are way too high!! There is air-time charge for incoming calls too!. In India, incoming is *free*, and the outgoing calls tooo are hell lot cheaper compared to US. Infact, I had almost forgot the term “air time charges” !
- In US, some plans charge you for receiving SMS !.. Nice way to get screwed!. In India, I don’t know of any plans where you get charged for receiving SMSes.
- In US, sending out SMS is pretty expensive (from 4 cents to 40 cents!!!). In India…….its 1/10th the price!
- In US, prepaid SIMS are contract free, but are way too expensive. i.e., the postpaid plans them self are expensive, but prepaid is more expensive. In India, the call charges on pre-paid and post-paid are almost comparable.
- One more point is, in US, with most of the plans, you get some free minutes. If you are within the limit, then you are safe. But if you exceed, then you will be charged like crazy. And the minutes are used even if you call a Toll Free number! Most plans count the minutes for incoming call too!
I also noticed that in US, Nokia handsets are not that popular. I haven’t seen many people use Nokia handsets. I found more people using Motorola handsets.
Clearly, India is far ahead! Hope to see similar progress in other areas too!
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March 15th, 2006 at 08:22am
Update - Oct 25, 2005: Finally my GPRS is working on BSNL Prepaid. Check update number 4 given below.
Does anyone knows how to activate the BSNL’s GPRS service for prepaid connections in Mangalore, Karnataka (south) ? Please leave a comment if you can help.
Here is what I have done so far (I use a Nokia 6600):
1. Sent a SMS to 3733 with the text ‘ACTGPRS’.
2. Received a SMS within a few minutes saying my request is received, and the message asked to wait for a confirmation SMS.
3. Confirmation SMS from +444 received tell me that GPRS and MMS service has been activated.
4. I called up the customer care for the configuration settings. They SMS’ed me the settings. (You can get the settings from : This Place too. Its available on the BSNL site too.)
5. Installed the settings. Its as simple as saving the SMS.
6. Tried to connect to the net using opera/netfront/services (built in browser), using the access point created by the configration settings.
7. It tries to connect, but so far no success. The GPRS signal indicator (the little “G”) blinks for sometime and then disappears. No specific error message.
9. Sent a SMS again to 3733 with the text ‘ACTGPRS’, to which I got a reply back saying, ‘GPRS and MMS services are already enabled’.
Has anyone successfully set this thing up ?
I have called the customer care, spoken to them ‘n’ number of times, but its of no use. Typical government stuff.
Any pointers to success would be really helpful.
Update 1 (Around Sept 19th, 2005) : BSNL customer care folks told me that the GPRS service is down for a few days and should be back online withing couple of days.
Update 2 (Sep 26th, 2005) : Called up local customer care center at Mangalore. The person says that Nokia 6600 handset has some problem with BSNL GPRS network! - Can anyone confirm this ? Cant directly trust these folks. Everytime you call them, they give you some new reason. If I get a chance, i will check it with an different handset. BTW, the solution suggested by the BSNL local guy is to upgrade software (firmware to the latest version - costs around Rs. 500).
Update 3 (Oct First week) : Spoke to one more person at the local exchange. Could reach that person after getting redirected atleast 5 times. Almost always, the person at the enter end, conviniently gives one more number saying that the next person is ‘the’ person who can handle this!. Finally, I end up talking to a technical guy (I think!). Now, this person doesn’t say anything about Nokia 6600 problem. He says even he wasn’t able to access GPRS for a couple of days. Asks me to call in a couple of days. I call back after couple of days. He says some settings have been changed just a few days back, and he doesn’t have the settings. Asks me to call back after 20 mins. I call back. Says, settings are too lengthy. Says, he cant tell the settings over the phone (WTF???). Points me the BSNL webpage mentioned above to download the settings. I downloaded the settings again. No change. Still no GPRS. Anyone from BSNL with a decent knowledge of whats happening … reading this ?
Update 4 (Oct 25, 2005) : Finally got my GPRS activiated today. The endless calls to the customer care turned out to be a total waste. Yesterday, I called up the local customer service center in mangalore. They refered me a the number of JTO of mangalore. JTO inturn gave me one more number. It was kind of endless chain. Finally I landed up with some technical person. The person confirmed that all my settings were fine. Then he checked the system (HLR) and told me that my GPRS wasn’t activated at all!. WTF!!!!!!!. He told me that at Mangalore, he wont be able to activate it, and he gave me the contact number of a person in bangalore. The person at bangalore told me that I need to call him up again today. It seems this is happening all the time and that he is fed up. Some how, the reporting system says that the GPRS is activated, but in reality (switch) it isn’t.!
So, I gave the same person a call today. And finally, he enabled my GPRS access. Now, I am able to browse on my phone. But its quite expensive. Only in emergency!
Update 5: For the benefit of all everyone, here are the correct GPRS Settings for BSNL south users for Nokia 6600. These settings work for me.
Navigate to : Menu -> Tools -> Settings -> Connection
Select GPRS (Second item on the screen)
GRPS Connection -> When needed (if you select when available, GPRS will be always active, and you would be charged. So, use with caution)
Access Point -> gprs.cellone.in
Click on ->Back
Select Access Points (first item on the screen)
Option -> New Access Point -> Use default settings
Connection name -> bsnl-gprs (can be anything)
Data Bearer -> GPRS
Access point name -> bsnlwap (not bsnlsouth)
User name : ppp
Password : ppp123
Authentication : Normal
Homepage : http://localhost/home.wml
Then….
Options ->Advance settings
Phone IP address -> Automatic
Primary name server : 0.0.0.0
Secondary name server : 0.0.0.0
Proxy server address : 10.31.54.2
Proxy Port Number : 9401
Done.
If you want to browse the net using Opera, then you must set the proxy server address and proxy port number mentioned above in opera settings too. The same holds true for other browser too.
If the above settings don’t work, then clearly, your GPRS is NOT activated by BSNL. Call up the local BSNL exchange, and ask them to check if GPRS is activated in the HLR.
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September 16th, 2005 at 02:19pm