Hi Guys,
The year was 2004 and as many of you would share the feeling :
"The probability of the numbers in your landline / cell phone bills is directly proportional to your having a girl/boy friend, as the case may be."
Also, when you are in the age of 20 - 25, your parents have no reason not to blame you for the ever increasing slant height of the bill payments that they have made especially in the recent months.
2004 here is significant since I was doing my Masters and happened to have a girl friend. So, there was an urgent need to look out for alternates to control this phone expense. The only options were:
- Stop talking, or
- Get some thing "free"
Considering the fact that first is impossible (somehow the hours succumbed to the words that we had to share...hmm..another sign of being in love, ehh), there was a movie which came out :
HUM TUM.
Saw the movie, but this article is not about it, but the inspiration that TATA Indicom derived out of it. They introduced a HUM TUM promotional pack that had 2 colour mobiles Nokia 3105 at a price of 6.5k each. the best part was that these mobiles had
free 
, and when I say
free, it means
free calling amongst them. Just remebered the old saying :
Bhagwan ke ghar der hai andher nahin.
That was the way I joined the CDMA bandwagon bidding adieu to my long mate Nokia 8310. So, here I was with no radio, not a very good looking handset but like Red bull, love gives you wings, and do you care of the speedbreakers when you are flying????
There were options from Reliance, but personally I didnt want to join that network...wasnt impressed with my dad's cell connectivity. It jammed for most of times due to congestion at that time.
After the year was nearing the end, the same quest for looking for alternates started, but somehow I wanted to remain with this network. So, the miracle happened again. Tata came up with a pack that allowed one to call other TATA mobiles absolutely free by paying Rs.99/month. We were happy again. Seems like Mr.Tata was hell bent on retaining us as their clients as an ode to our love
.
Well, the story has been good throughout these 3 years. Connectivity has never been an issue. Tata has one of the best connectivity, thats what I feel. The Customer Care is great. The bills are reasonable. They attend to your concerns giving feedback calls. What else could I desire?
Year 2006 , Month December and I got what I desired..Got married, guys
Now the free factor wasnt that important but it was time to upgrade the phones considering the fact that they had been used for 3 years, and when I say free, it means they were expolited to the max. But they are still in great shape. Sadly, my company doesnt permit the use of camera phones. So, i am still using the same phone.
Wifey got a new one, though. Looked at the options and MOTO Razr V3C made a good choice given the fact that in 8.5k, they are giving Bill and warranty for 1 year along with bluetooth of Motorola worth 2.5k (thats what they say). Looked a value proposition to us. Went for it. CDMAs are better in voice clarity than their GSM counterparts, and considering the relation that I have shared with Indicom, it has been great.
My observations for CDMA are :
- You do not have the option of a memory upgrade, like a data card in the handset which means you have to live with the phone memory of 35MB, unlike GSM Razrs.
- No inbuilt Music Player. You have a Demo player which you can purchase over the network but they are limited by time.
- Razr wont allow you to store games indefinitely. You have to purchase them over the network for a fixed period of time, following which they expire themselves.
- You cannot trade your handset elsewhere, unless of course grey market.
- However, the Nokia handset allowed me to store games, etc
To sum it all, the initial reason why I switched to CDMAs and precisely TATAs was the value proposition, which to date has kept me with them. Dont go for CDMA if you are the one who updates his phones more than often.
Thanks everyone