Purchasing prepaid SIM for mobile phone

eff

I have been told that I may be able to purchase a prepaid SIM for my mobile phone once I am in India. Have the following questions:

o Can someone give me particulars as to what I need to do, and if possible the name/location of a store to purchase in Mumbia (near Colaba)?

o Does it matter what kind of phone I have?

o What are preferred service providers if I am going to be mainly using the phone im Mumbai?

o What is a good Rupee amount to purchase?

Thanks for your responses.

sunilg

hi there,

Prepaid mobile SIMs are widely available in all the mobile/mobile accessory shops across the country; it won't be any problem finding such shops, try to visit your local market, you'll find one.

All you need to have is the identity proof like the driving licence, PAN card, etc. etc.; but in your case, a photocopy of your passport will do.

No it does not depend on the type of mobile instrument you have.

not sure, but i guess "Orange" is the preferred service provider in Mumbai.

Once you've bought the SIM card, you have to buy recharge coupon (the SIM card may or may not credit some money to your prepaid account). The price of SIM ranges from Rs. 10 to Rs. 3000 (depending upon your service provider), each having different "TALKTIME" and validity.

depending upon the duration you use the phone, its upon you as to what amount of card you need to buy..

There are lots n lots of attractive prepaid plans running throughout the country by almost all the service provider, have a thorough chat with your shopkeeper before buying any plan.


happy talking

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Indiafan

Nowadays you need a copy of your passport and a passport photo.

sunilg

oops forgot that.........you also need a passport size photograph of yours

Yogesh Sarkar

it does matter what kind of mobile phone that you have!

first off the mobile phone should be a GSM 900/1800 one (for CDMA connection u will need to purchase new mobile phone!)

also i have heard some cellphones are locked by the service provider who sell them, if thats the case u will have to either get it unlocked or get a new one.

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TYP0

eff, who is your provider back in the States? I'm assuming that you're using your phone there and just swapping out your sim card. Verify with your provider whether you have a tri ban or quad ban phone. Most tri ban phones in the states will not work overseas. Regardless of which they tell you ask them to advise you of the frequencies on your phone; this information can also be verified online with the manufacturer or on your provider's website.

Many quad ban phones phones (V600, RAZR etc) will actually work overseas without needing to be unlocked. I used my old V600 all over the world and never had a problem. And it has never been unlocked. My father is actually using it as a prepaid phone in Canada.

Remember, asking to have your phone "unlocked" is not a win-win situation as some people think. You will lose certain functions like your browser and, in some cases, your ability to get OTA updates from your provider. I don't recommend it.

john.sw

I have unlocked many UK mobile phones for myself, my family and friends, and have never lost a single function!

There are various types of unlocking, and the one we are discussing here is the SIM Lock.

All the SIM Lock does is prevent you from using a SIM card from a different phone company.

If you remove the SIM Lock you can use a suitable sim card from ANY company. It will not change any settings, your phone will work as before, and you will still get $200 if you pass GO.

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TYP0

John, the way phones are locked the States is much, much different (and more archaic) than in the rest of the world. Eff listed his location as being in the States therefore the information i provided was based upon that.

Phones are "locked" in the states to prevent you from taking your phone to other providers. The phones are sold to the providers with certain information already preprogrammed within them. While most companies have agreements to allow their customers to use other companies towers they don't actually want that to happen.

So here is an locked phone from company A:

It searches out a tower belonging to A
If it can't find it it goes to company B
Then C and so on.

These are based upon the agreements and costs they have with their competitors.

Once you unlock your phone the phone doesn't know where to look. It just goes to any old tower to get its signal. It just goes to find a signal. Consequently if you don't live in the vicinity of *your* company's tower you may or may not get the updates you need.

As for the connectivity for features... The agreements that the companies have for voice singal also specifies which features it will make accessable. Phone Internet is usually the last of these to be agreed to and often is not included in the agreement with certain competitors. That's why a former B customer to moves to A with their unlocked phone can encounter problems that their friend with the locked "A" company phone isn't having. Even though they're using what seems to be the exact same phone, same company and are pulling off the same tower.

ETA: i forgot to explain the main reason behind locked phones in the States. MONEY. When you get a phone (non prepaid) from company A, chances are that you got it for free... with a 2 year contract. It takes the company an average of up to 1.5 years (depending on your price plan) to get their money back for the phone let alone make a profit. They don't want you to be able to walk away to company B with their free phone. After all a $150 cancelation fee on a $500 phone is no biggie for the customer if they didn't pay for it in teh first place.

sunilg

It doesn't matter as long as you are buying the cellphone instrument from India; but yes, if you are bringing the instrument from States, then there might be some technical complications, as mentioned by some of other members here.

and CDMA chips are not sold separately, so there is no question of buying them mistakenly.

Anders

Unlocking a GSM phone enables you to use any SIM that you want. It does not in any way change how the phone actually works.
What you want is a GSM phone with GSM900/GSM1800 ( preferably both). If you only have one of them you could still be OK if you don't move around to much, but then you have to figure out which companies uses the band (900 or 1800) where you are located before you buy the SIM.

pezworld

I just did this.

First, I have T-Mobile in California, and have had this account for a while. I also have a tri-band phone (Motorola v300). I called T-Mobile a few months ago, and they happily gave me the unlock code as I've been a customer for a while.

I believe the only other American provider that will be able to do such a thing is Cingular, though I'm not sure what their rules are for unlocking it. Basically, your provider wants to recoup its investment in your handset before they let you use it with another provider.

In Mumbai, you'll see signs everywhere for the various providers. Airtel is everywhere, and it was pretty easy to get service. Bring a photocopy of your passport/visa and spare passport photos.

Then the tricky part is deciding how much to buy. I was calling the States once a week or so for about 16 rupees/minute, and of course local/within India calls are much cheaper. If you do the math and come up with more than $20ish in calls, you might want to get the fairly new 999 rupee deal. This will give you a sim card that will never expire (cheaper ones have limited validity, meaning if you don't top up within the validity period, your sim card will ultimately expire). I'm not sure if 999 rupees includes the sim card or just the minutes. Still, you get more bang for your rupee -- meaning when you top up with more rupees, you get a higher rupee calling value (vs. fees, etc.).

Of course, I didn't catch on to 999 rupee thing til too late. I think I spent something like 200 rupees for my Airtel sim card, giving me 49 rupees in talk time plus a phone number, then bought a top-up card for 300 rupees, giving me maybe 200 more minutes of talk time. I forget the actual numbers. I actually bought my Airtel card in Kerala.

I can't imagine you'd have to go far in Colaba before hitting a store that sells Airtel service, or any other provider's.

Yogesh Sarkar

if u get the sim for 999 bucks, it will be valid for lifetime (companies, not urs ). But u will only get Rs. 25 worth of talktime, how ever when u top up u will get the full value of the top up amount – service tax.

In case u get the normal sim in which u would hav to buy both validity and talktime.

It will be Rs. 300 for the sim

On a top up u will get topup value – service tax – service charge (usually 150 bucks each topup)

For more info check out

Orange

Airtel

Nick-H

Don't get the Rs999 'lifetime deal'. You are paying for non-expiry, you get very little call-time and it costs more.

I wish I hadn't! I used to get free local SMS, now it costs.

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aadil

Sorry Eff, I don't own a mobile phone so can't be of much help here!!! Was great talking to you today on the landline though!!! Hope that helped!!!

Cheers,
Aadil.

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soulfood

I bought a Sony Ericsson T616 triband (the specs are exactly like T610 which is popular in india, except for 850mhz frequency instead of 900 mhz of the former) phone from US which was locked to Cingular. Got it unlocked here in Karol Bagh and was told T616 works only with Idea cellular. Anyway, the unlocking wasn't smooth because if I turned it off and on, it'd get locked again. I had to go to a authorised sony service provider to get it fixed. It's been working flawlessly since then. Has all the features and tho GPRS wasnt working initially, it's working now.

Usually unlocking isnt this complicated and Nokia phones are a breeze to unlock.