mobile phone in my name

i have had two friends get service for me postpaid through reliance, and i am sick of the company's incompetence, and waiting for friends to pay my bills or call about problems or bring the bills to me when they get to their address.

all i want is a phone i can use as prepaid with vouchers or sim cards or whatever they are, and i dont want a bill to go out in the mail. i want it in my name, and they ask for proof of residence, which i dont have because i have been either in hotels or staying with friends.

is there any company that i can use on my own as a traveller with no residence? oh, i forgot it has to work in madhya pradesh, bangalore and delhi and also have international service.

reliance is out-tata doesnt have service in madhya pradesh. airtel insists i have to have proof of address.

any ideas?
salima

Hi Salima,

I give my resort address where I am staying and have an idea sim and a bpl sim. they have international service. Had to show my passport etc. but didn't have a prob. Don't know if they work where you are though. Reliance is a nightmare. I'm in Goa, maybe it is more relaxed there, used to western people.

Good luck

Carol

i was shocked the the documentation requirements even for pre-paid cell phones. In Bangalore, a Rep from the Hutch center actually came to my resident to verify the address, plus they needed to see my passport and a passport photo on the application.. Post-paid would be sorse, is my guess. I was told it was govt requirements to prevent Terrorism.. whatever..

salima - try shifting from post-paid to pre-paid on ur existing mobile no.. this may be possible . this way u will retain the same no but u will den be using ur mobile as pre-paid. call *333 from ur reliance mobile to speak to customer care n ask them abt it.

i bumped into a young man in a store who helped me-he uses hutch and a nokia phone, and it turns out all i had to do was show my passport as id proof. there will never be a bill sent anywhere-roaming is totally free. he said the service was good, and he calls out of station as well as uk, and he said the customer service was good. i know i read something on this forum negative about hutch, but it has what i need so far, i will let you know if any problems surface later on.

hutch is one of the best mobile operators in india.. i would rate airtel,idea,hutch among the top three in india (not in the order)

.. Is Reliance really THAT bad ?

I was hoping to hook up to their 'R-CONNECT' mobile internet service when I arrive in November ..

I found this forum which might be somewhere to vent you frustration on Reliance !

no no..reliance isnt that bad .. i hv been using it since april last yr.. infact its cheap and doesnt demand roamin rental charges also..
dey hv jus introduced worlds' smallest CDMA phone.. for jus 3000 indian bucks.. dats includin a pre-paid connection and a smart sleek handset (jus 13mm wide!!)

.. I think I'll need a Samsung phone - if you read post 8 on this thread, as I'm a Mac user, this might be the only way..

bb

butterball I have tried em all .R-connect is the best if internet connectivity is a must.

i had a reliance postpaid deal, but they arent clear on what they charge for. their customer service was horrible, and i had to go to the showroom about a doawn times. they kept cutting off my service because they said i was a 'high user' and within two weeks they were sending me messages that money was due on the account. finally i gave them a 10000 rupees credit advance line so they quit shutting me off. of course now that the phone is cancelled, i am waiting over two months to get my money back.

also, i always have trouble calling bangalore-maybe the trouble is on their end rather than reliance, i dont know. i get bad connections, echoes, lots of time no connection at all.

the r connect was fine, it always worked. right now all i am interested in is a phone...but i find no one seems to know what they are paying for. the boy in the shop told me he didnt pay any roaming fees with hutch, but looking at the brochure it seems there is a huge fee. also you pay 324 rupees for the recharge voucher, but only get 150 minutes of talk time. the roaming can be as high as 60 rupees a minute international in certain countries which they dont list.

i am not clear on whether the roaming is charged for incoming as well as outgoing, but it looks to me like it is charged for both. i am only just learning about these phones. also the brochure said i needed proof of address, but the store took my passport so maybe they dont care if the proof of address is in another country.

shortly i will be leaving delhi, and relocating somewhere in madhya pradesh but i dont know which city. i guess the thing to do is to change to idea when i have found my home town and see what their deal is like. it seems i cant find out the real charges until i buy the sim card. but i plan to look up idea on the internet, i think they are the ones that advertise 'real talk time'

hi,

I had no problem getting a Reliance pre-paid phone in my name in Pune. I just had to show them my passport.

I have been inquiring about changing to a post-paid phone because the internet connection would then be a third of the price but I think it will be too much bother to deal with Reliance's poor billing procedure (extra bills and being cut off for no good reason as I have heard). With pre-paid you don't have to deal with this. Also I will be moving every few months and notifying reliance of a change of address and coping with potential billing problems does not sound like something I want to do.

Have found that R-Connect Reliance's internet service does not work if your phone is in roaming mode! I had to change my phone no to a local number ( no charge ) to get my internet connection to work.

Jamie

Interesting Jamie..

How much do you use the R-Connect ? Is it a realistic speed for surfing ? Roughly how much do the pre paid bills cost you ? Is it a pleasant alternative to cyber cafes or do you end up back there anyway ?

I'd be interested to here an 'on the ground' assessment..

PS I've heard of some horrible overbilling on post paid

bb

I'm using R-Connect right now to upload files to a new web site I'm setting up hindiwallah.com which I'll be working on over the next few months, it will be a site with flash based interactive excercises games etc for learning Hindi.

The connection is great for surfing. You might want to use the hack I mentioned above to stop the phone going into dormancy mode - this will increase your phone bills but otherwise the phone will disconnect after a few seconds of inactivity and then you will have to wait 10 seconds for it to reconnect - this will often time out your browser so you lose stuff that you submitted in a form such as an email you have been working on.

The connection is 1 rupee a minute.

You will want to use an email client such as outlook express to type all your email and then go online for 5 mins to send it all out and check for anything in your inbox.

I think Reliance is the best solution for internet connectivity for many places in India. If you will be in a big city for a while then you should check out Dishnet DSL though.

I'm waiting to see when reliance release there home cable service because that should be really fast they have laid all the cable to allow fibre optic connections to homes but they seem to keep on delaying the release of their service. I read in the paper the other day that they are buying up Indian and foreign films to sell through a video on demand service they intend to bundle with their internet service.

Jamie

Thanks Jamie, that all sounds really useful.

Do you know anything about macs ? I think I need a Samsung phone which will bypass the need for the driver software. This was posted on another thread :

reliance mac secrets

The only way that I know of of hooking up a mac with a reliance phone is to get a samsung phone model and a samsung usb data cable. For me, this meant going more than a few hours out of my way by bus to Kottayam, Kerala, the only office still carrying samsung products. Once you've got the phone and cord, you don't need the CD at all. A macintosh will automatically recognise that there's another modem option. Go into system preferences (note: this is all for OSX), click network...
Go to the network port configurations and you should see a new option "Samsung CDMA Technologies" Use that for your modem. Configure using PPP. Your account name and password are your phone number without the zero in front of the area code. The telephone number is #777 (this part would have been set up by the CD that's not mac compatible).
When you buy the phone, they'll give you the number you have to dial to activate the modem in the phone.
Now, back in your network preferences... under "modem" you need to choose SUNTAC U-Cable D3 (PDC)... Now you should be able to go to Internet connect, click on Samsung CDMA technologies and dial up.
Recently, Reliance went to a pre-paid plan. This is probably your best bet,rather than having to deal with bills that never come and the hells of indian bureaucracy. However! If you're not quite so middle of nowhere as me (meaning a city the size of Kottayam, Kerala... or bigger) they're going to be starting up a cable modem service very soon, so that should be checked into before getting a not so fast WLL phone connection.

Hope this helps!
Julie

Also, do you think the hack will work on Mac OSX ? Also, I'll be based in Kerala - Kollam / Varkala / Trivandrum.. any idea of Reiliance's 'reliance' down there ?

I see you website is not yet up - but I'll keep an eye out..

bb