Newer Perspectives in India Telecom...

Newer Perspectives in India Telecom...

Thanks to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), previous year, BSNL brought in its entire network of numbers beginning with 2 for uniformity. It was then Reliance was also asked to streamline its numbering system.

This year, it is the turn of Airtel (Bharti Televentures) and Tata Teleservices to regulate thier numbering strategies.

To recap in an easy format for the readers:

BSNL/MTNL: 2<number>
Reliance:93<number>
Airtel:4<number>

Only the first number is being changed. Perhaps a reader could update the number system that is being adopted for Tata Teleservices also as a comment for the benefit of other readers. Perhaps, if you check out http://www.trai.gov.in/ website, there are innovating research projects going on, even to bring Number Portabiliy in India. This is still in nascent stages and still a long way to go in India. But once this would be implemented, it would be promote a more healthy competition here in India. Check out this URL from BSNL website for more info.

But currently the competition is quite very childish. Some of the very immature fights that Indian telecom operators adopt are:

1. Blocking each others calls and messages for a delayed time. There was a salient example of a girl in Chennai sending a SMS to book food for her in hostel to her roommate for the dinner. The former sent via CellOne network and the latter was in Airtel. The message arrived punctually in just 18 hours.
2. Lazy Customer Care: Some of the reputed operators have good advertising but they fail to notice that their customercare is very lazy to work.  Some of them even work only if you grease thier palms. Airtel Chennai may rank on top for both these points, if at all, we organize a contest for the same.  Perhaps if you would like more discussions on this topic, just click to http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/consumer_voice_india/ for stories live from many customers.

I think TRAI should also strive to bring in some form of discipline for these indisciplined lots.