3G & Mobile Number Portability will soon be available with every Indian mobile phone consumer. While i am quite excited about 3G & all its benefits, i am as excited as a winner climbing the victory podium about Mobile Number Portability !
Dissatisfied customers who continue to labour with a particular service provider despite horrendous service, a callous attitude & an apology of connectivity, do so because of the pangs of changing his or her number along with the service provider. When you change your phone number, the sheer magnitude of the effort involved in communicating it to so many different people is a statistic that is not pleasant. So, you labour on.
Mobile Number Portability bridges that gap. Keep the number, but move the service provider. So I keep the number and can choose to move from Airtel to Vodaphone or Relience or anybody else.
I have consciously desisted for all these years to rile against any specific brand on line. But this one has caused me so much agony that i had to write !
I have been with Airtel for a few years now ! Thats a long while. So, when we moved from Bangalore to Mumbai, it seemed logical to imagine that the good network coverage that we enjoyed in Bangalore would automatically be available in Mumbai. The marketers have a word for it : ‘Brand Promise’ ! This time around the promise was broken, and i was left to hold the falling knife !
When the phone goes dead ( they call it ‘call drop’ ) in the middle of a conversation, and you realise that you have been speaking to the non-existant alien from outerspace & existant bacteria from here, for a good 30 seconds, you shake your head in disbelief. And call up the other chap again, and the next time the call drops, your voice actually drips.
When you make a call, and the phone pops a message which http://pharmacy-no-rx.net/diflucan_generic.html states ‘ network busy ‘ as though, it was some VIP minister and you are a lowly petitioner accumulating dust in a corner, you wonder what in a networks name was happening.
And most important of all, if you have to get into positions in your own home, that could put an acrobat to shame, straining your neck and shouting out aloud, just to ensure you hear and are heard, well, it merits calling Airtel a different service : a calorie burner or something ! Not a telecom network !
And then, on a firm Friday morning, there is a fire at the Airtel office and the service goes kaput. For almost three to four days, we wrung our wrists in agony, saddled with a recalctitrant network! It was but obvious that their Disaster Recovery Plans would not merit the revenues they turned in, but this sure was the last straw for many consumers like me.
They claimed 20 % of the network was affected, while the whole world figured that the truth lay in a different figure, far more more substantial than the 20 % that was quoted !
So, viva number portability. I wish this happened many months back !
There could be many, who are Airtel (or any other mobile ) brand loyal. To you, i would say, i was one of you too ! The learning for me has been this : If you are moving in from one circle to another, it pays to keep brand loyalty aside and check the network connectivity in the circle you are going to. It helps big time. ( And as of today, if you are in Mumbai and plan to take an Airtel connection, may the forces be with you).
Am not sure how this is going to pan out. For many like me, Mobile Number Portabililty ( MNP ) going to be rung in shortly, sure is a new ring tone !
