Category: regular

Airtel, once fairTel, now unfairTel – shortly finishedTel

Its was winter of 1999. JTM was one of Karnataka‘s best networks. Outgoing call rates were Rs.10/- per minute and incoming about Rs.3 a minute if I am not wrong. I was one of JTM’s customers at that time. Slowly JTM was taken over by Bharti Teleservices. That was the birth of AirTel, a company which would grow to be one of India’s most admired telcos over a period of a decade. They were the best when it came to customer services, while the nearest telcos Spice and Hutch (what is Vodafone now) were by no standards near airtel be it in infrastructure or in customer treatment. Airtel pioneered many a revolution down the line and its venture into landline services made it even more popular.

Spice’s mismanagement and Hutch’s troubled history of having bad networks and bad customer services only made it better and better for Airtel quite inorganically. Over the period of the last couple of years though, India and in particular Karnataka has seen a flurry of entries from many a new telco who are all vying to take a share of Airtel’s pie. Airtel’s troubles have started very recently, and they are compounding it by not brainstorming on the potential failures that are waiting to happen. Some of the key things about Airtel that are beginning to go wrong include and is not limited to the following:

  • Peak hour call jams rendering the service useless

  • Call drops that occur very often leading to frustration amongst users

  • Caller tunes and the amount of agony it has been able to cause for people not really interested in them

  • Ineffective blocking of Telemarketing calls and SMSes that disturb thousands of people day in and out

Of late some more laurels can rest with Airtel:

  • Airtel’s mismanaged and inexperienced customer service centers

  • Don’t care attitude that has set in among the franchisees managing these centers

  • Low level executives making a mess out of technical situations which they are unable to understand or explain

  • Higher level managers who do not follow up on these technical problems that people have

  • Erosion of brand value due to the way these executives perform

  • Airtel’s arrogance in maintaining the same call rates even when competition is eating into its flesh day by day

So then why are people still putting up with Airtel or for that matter any other operator? The answer is very simple to say the least. Its because they want to retain their mobile number without changing it.

For a moment lets then dwell into the case with other operators. Spice has gone one level up in capturing the youth market with a flurry of dual sim based phones and real low calling values. They are also busy fighting with their nearest and best rival Virgin mobile.  Airtel’s arch rival Vodafone is now one level ahead with its famed ZooZoo advertisements addressing the core values of branding in an effective way drawing huge crowds towards the service. Not to forget to mention their Pug ads were also so adorable. Vodafone’s prepaid plans now give you full talktime without any rentals or taxes even sometimes. Their low call quality and tower quality are now replenished to cover most of karnataka state.

Most of Vodafone’s calls don’t drop like before and their connectivity is at an all time high. Vodafone’s takeover of Hutch has only fuelled their appetite for competing with anyone coming their way to maintain their customer base.

With Aircel, MTS and Uninor into the picture now along with Tata Docomo, Airtel’s chances are only slimmer and slimmer day by day. Already Tata’s aggressive pricing plan has forced Airtel to realize its diminishing customer base though very late, and they have also launched the same per second billing plan to save their skin. With MTS being even more aggressive at 1/2 paise per second along with Uninor, Airtel has some serious competition breathing down its neck.

On the CDMA front, Reliance and Tata are ruling the roost and will continue to do so. The only thing then comes back to how to save your mobile number. With number portability in the offing at the year end, from TRAI, at a mere 19 bucks for a switch, its now very easy to retain your number and give your old operator a boot. This only spells more bad news for Airtel who are likely to lose their coveted tag of 10 million customers on India’s no more preferred network. Is it time then for Airtel, who were once FairTel, now unFairTel to go into history as a finishedTel ?

Only time will tell. And it will tell well enough.

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30000Km drive report for Swift VDi DDiS

Its been a momentous achievement for me personally with any car I owned. I’ve cleared 30k kms with a vehicle which I can deem an asset. While most fuel inefficient vehicles and uncomfortable ones end up being liabilities, I can atleast feel proud to say that this car is every Indian’s asset for a long time to come. Before I proceed further, thanks FIAT for the wonderful engine, and thanks MARUTI for the great service that you have been known for all this while.

If you have read my earlier 10000 and 15000 kms review, by now you would know what the car is all about. The car still feels like showroom condition after 2.5 years every time I switch on the ignition. Generally the car is rugged to handle roads well as long as the roads are not too undulated. My car has gone through some real rough road patches but handled well, mostly due to the great Michelin tyres I’ve added onto the car. The car has been scratched on the mirrors and the underside of the bumper a few times. While the mirrors are too large to avoid getting scratched, the visibility issue while we sit within the car is another reason for misjudging a few manoeuvres.

Being a single user, and driving alone most times, sometimes with one or two other people, I must say this car has reasonable amount of power at the tap for a city user. The continuity in the accelerator response and the eagerness to pickup which occurs at all gears uniformly has made this beauty the darling of many a car owner in Benglauru. Just with the help of the torque of this car, I was able to negotiate the car upwards a ramp from the basement to the ground floor of the building, while in first gear with my foot off all pedals. Shows how much we can utilize the car to the best extent in city traffic to give some rest to those weary legs.

The front row comfort is good, cabin feels involving, dashboard soothing, and its generally airy. I would have felt great if the Swift VDi was a two door version. The back row is good so as not to cause too much body roll, but as far as space is concerned, Maruti will have to work quite hard to get to the level where TATA is currently with its Indica and Manza offerings. Generally I would include claustrophobia as one of the features of the Swift 🙂 The boot is good for not-much-luggage drivers and there ends the argument. If you want to transport truck loads worth of baggage, well – then buy yourself a truck! The rattling windows are a gift from Maruti for the Swift and I might just end up spending another 6-7 years more with these rattles. These rattles are like extra noises within the family life. 😀 Just got to put up with it. There is a lot of dust accumulation over a period of time on the dashboard but hey that’s part of growing old of any car isn’t it?

The mileage has dipped over time, and each time I service it to change the engine oil, it bounces back to a healthy 16kmpl. So this is a car that satisfies the FE hungry junta of India. I can stretch it upto 19kmpl but with normal tyres and mostly higher gear driving the latter being an impossibility in the city. The tyres seem great even after 30k of driving, and Michelin knows its business better than anyone else out there. It should be good for another 20k to go. I am you customer one more time after that Mich!

To summarize on the drive, the car has been extremely well mannered where required, has displayed enthusiasm required for a rally mood where required. Its agile, easy to manoeuvre in the city, good for two people, sturdy, great engine, FE and service and it will rock the Indian Car Scene for some more time until newer more well designed comfortable cars come up at this price. Till then enjoy the drive!

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Citibank starts its new tantrums in India

Many of you might have noticed an email sent from Citibank very recently where they have increased the minimum account balance for non salary accounts that one has to maintain in order to be receiving the services of the bank. Citibank was known to be the pioneer in India to introduce online banking, and also for utility bill payments among other useful services. The bank’s image merged well with the minds of young engineers who adopted Citi as a part of their daily life since a decade.

There was also a point in time when Citibank was the new face of banking as against banks such as Canara Bank, SBI which our parents were accustomed to. While salary accounts of Citibank had the zero balance scheme, non salary accounts started off with a minimum account balance of Rs.1000/- in 1999, and grew to Rs.5000 and Rs.10000 subsequently. The email that most of us received a while ago, gave us nightmares when we saw that the new minimum balance for non salary accounts has now been increased to Rs.25000/-. While this kind of amount is perhaps the salary of many engineers across the country and perhaps the savings of a few wealthier folks, the mail also reflects the way Citibank is headed if they continue such tantrums.

Its about time that nationalized banks have increased their image in front of the public, and at a time when Citibank just came out of crisis in the USA, tantrums like these are bound to make people reject Citibank for banking and move to much more reasonable banks in the near future.

I happened to check out on Bank of Baroda, and was pleasantly left surprised at the kind of service they offered though they were still a bit naive to internet ways of banking. What mattered finally was that I could open an account in no time, and was a happy customer of theirs sooner than later. Canara Bank has lately restyled their logo trying to connect more to people as they continue their dream run forward. IDBI has now introduced banking for all to shed their image of only being a loan disbursement company. ICICI is already in the list of the not so good banks to deal with. HDFC and AXIS Banks have retained their image through tough times due to their consistent policies. SBI and its sister banking divisions have enhanced their images through beneficial loan schemes and exchange rates. ING Vysya is about to launch FD products giving 12% interest even in good economy upswings.

With all these banks vying hard to woo people, one wrong move that Citibank has done can start denting its Indian image pretty seriously. Today’s youth connect well with nationalized banks yet again and its only sooner than later that it will be the good old golden period of nationalized banking to the fore yet again.

As for me, I’ve decided to log off from Citibank for obvious reasons. Your choice is not yet made! Think for the longer term and make a wise choice.


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YeddyGaddy, ReddySteady goto sush’amma’

The last fortnight of political parleying around Delhi by the BJP has been nothing short of showing off gloriously, the filth inside the party. Money doing the rounds, resorts getting business, MLAs on their ‘fitness’ regimes and a bullied crying CM on the TV. Well what can I say, its enough to beat the TRPs of any soap on TV. Add to that the decoration, music, lighting and thrill that TV9 adds to all this, and you have a real box office hit.

Give the opponents some reason and they are always available to whine away and bite more of the CMs flesh than they can chew. Also seated on the knife are cool headed, least bothered stalwarts from the chaddi wearing RSS. Throw a brick or a boulder at them and they still do what they do best. Laze around. Citizens always do what they have been doing. Crying hoarse over infrastructure instead of asking for some better governance in the first place. Any development whether literal or metaphorical can happen only when the game is played right. What we have are the politicians from the 50s and 70s era who are experienced at mud slinging rather than any developmental politics.

What did not take a Sadananda Gowda or a Venkiah Naidu or a LK Advani or a Rajnath, took one Sushma to solve?  And must we all believe a mining baron of 5500+ crores of income will listen to a matrushri rather than his own intuition? This has not only shown that no one in the top level of the party is capable of handling a crisis and unless these are all laid off  (corporate management rejig if i may call so), one can say a goodbye to BJP in the next elections as well. This notwithstanding the ‘success’ they have had locally.

Sobha is out (she deserved to, didn’t she?). Why would a revenue minister managing revenues of a mining department owned by his brother take easily a lady of rural development ministry questioning the ongoings between the former two ministries? Not only did she interfere there, but also managed to say ‘cheese’ in every photo having the CM leading to some ridiculously obvious rumours which were all unwarranted. Whatever the stature of the RSS lady, the final verdict is there on the wall. The IAS officers can never escape a transfer in their lives. It will be news if even one completes the full term in one place.

Now to the speaker (how ironical!). How many times have you heard Shettar actually speak? Or for that matter how many times have you heard about him in the newspapers that otherwise crow about Yeddy and Sobha beside him? Not even once. There is a serious problem in understanding that he actually holds any clout at all in the present scenario. Finished is the turn of the Reddy’s in gunning for Yeddy’s head. Now common opposition, its your freaking turn! Enjoy.

Who won this game? There is only one answer – the media. They enjoyed making a mockery of everyone including the public (yes us!). All the way upto showing on TV Yeddy and Reddy eating cake after cake shamelessly without any explanation.

Alright now enough of this masala movie. Get back to your favourite soap on TV guys!

Museum road dug up, 220v underground supply provision within city starts off this way

 

Alright, we do understand that the BJP wants to do something useful in the city in the five years they have got, so as to come to power again. One must appreciate they are atleast receptive to what people’s need maybe, whether they are able to fulfill them or not.

So here goes, currently the city is being strategically screwed up in the name of development. And alas, one must bear with this infrastructure torture for some more time until either they run out of any more ideas, or until they come with something more ingenious and decide to undo what they did in the first place.

The entire museum road stretch is now screwed up and this is causing atleast an additional 10 minutes to cross up this stretch by car every morning.

 

I did think, perhaps its atleast easier to come back home via the Palace Road stretch, but thanks to the great Airtel Championship Trophy Cricket, the entire cubbon road, mg road and surrounding stretches are completely screwed up during evenings. Manual signal handling only means more delays, and I now reach home atleast half hour to one hour more than usual. I think seamlessness is still a far fetched goal for Bangalore to achieve. The thought of avoiding a drive inside the city and using the ring road was saner, until the government decided to put a spoke in many a wheel there too. Two new flyovers which must statistically be over in six months from now, are hogging everyone’s time as I found out the hard way round.

Took a bus from North Bangalore at 6:15pm and reached HSR layout at 8pm. Reached koramangala at 9:30pm. Need I speak more? Add to this the entire 27th Main in HSR now serves dust and dirt on your face at any time of the day, with haphazard parking here and there. Makes me wonder why people still dont realize that a good walk for shopping or eating upto 1km does make wonderful sense rather than zipping by your cars. People please stop driving your cars for such small distances. If you think you cannot walk even less than a kilometre, then you perhaps cant eat too much either! Think twice!!

A month of two of ridiculous driving timings, has taken the toll on my free time. Sometimes I think buying a smaller laptop might help me atleast blog more regularly as I can lug it around more than usual! 🙂

 

 

 

Manyata Embassy Food Court – a good occasional place to be!

 

If you a regular at the Manyata Business Park in north bengaluru, you would know how irritating it can get to have the same food for years together with the fact that it also degrades over time. Once in a while our palates need a different kind of treatment and for those in this business park, they know that the hotels around are hardly worth a mention.

 

This is when the first of them, MTR started up at Esteem Mall a good 4km away from the park. While the food here was really good, it used to come in from the center of the city every day. Also, the thought of traveling 4kms for some good food was not a great proposition on a day to day basis. Also, this is not like other restaurants and its more of a self service type of stuff. Though nowadays they have realized that lazy bums like us need help even to get ourselves food and for some tips, do this for you. MTR is a pretty small place and serves you some hot and nice karnataka dishes such as dosas, idlis, meals, all baths (including yours truly – chowchowbath!) and a variety of juices and ice creams and some sweets. If you are not on time the place could get filled up and leave you embarassed after having traveled 4kms.

  

Today I had the opportunity to visit the food court within Manyata, a really huge place for the ‘inmates’ of the complex if I may say so! 🙂 Its a good ten minutes walk away in the scorching sun thanks to no trees around (the crorepati’s of SEZs must have thought better). Past the IBM compex on the first floor is a food court that hides it size until you get in. You are greeted by no less than 3 ATM kiosks, some 20 odd shops all around and lets just say thousands of chairs in the large enclosure. No matter what these chairs never get filled at any point!

The lifts are at the middle of the hall and present a nice touch to the whole construction. The AC ducts are by and large bare and visible, but who cares! The food is on the expensive side, but definitely tasty to say the least. Nice Punjabi food, Andhra meals, Baskin Robbins ice creams, Chung wah from china, and Ruchi Sagar from our own city – these in essence act as attraction points within the court.

  

The wash rooms are decent, the cleaners present themselves in uniform, place is kept tidy all the time and at a corner is a feedback book in case you care about telling something to someone. To sum up, a great place to go, say once in a month, and indulge your heart and stomach out 🙂

 

Big 10 Circle – going in a loop!

There was one thing missing in our local transport system, and that was a connectivity throughout the entire outer ring road or PRR or whatever they call it by now. There were buses from Banashankari to Hebbal, or from Hebbal to Mysore road, etc. But there was no Big 10 linking the points where other BIG 10’s deviated outside the city.  This is when I noticed the Big 10 Circle.

While I was wondering how different it is from the usual 500 series of buses (volvo and non volvo) that loiter around the ORR, I could only imagine that this Big 10 Circle might actually link all those roads where the other Big 10’s would intersect at. So now, I can always take a Big 10 to enter the city, and exit the city with yet another one, and just in case I decide I need a circular detour, can pick up where I left on Big 10 Circle. More information on Big 10 circle is available here.

So the link says 500 series is to go and about 200 odd Big 10 circle buses to operate. Now thats quite a lot, and one can expect a Big 10 circle bus every something like 10 minutes at this case. 200 buses on a 77km road mean something like 1 bus every kilometer at any point? Wow those figures will surely do a great deal of good.

But one last thing. I can get down from a Big 10 at Mayo Hall, but to catch an outgoing Big 10 towards north Bangalore, I would have to catch another at Shivajinagar. And hey people at BMTC dont be dumb to assume everyone can walk that distance. I request BMTC to please please move the buses coming in to shivajinagar further to Mayo Hall to just give that desperately needed connection which would make Big 10 a success Story.

Ok then, looking forward to a Big 10 Circle in front of my office every 10 minutes! 🙂

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Why I love my webhost . . .

 

Hosting is a tricky business. Especially for people like you and me. Not because we dont know how to host, but because we dont know when the host will run away overnight making you host all over again. Then again this is why there are websites that help you compare a plethora of webhosts who offer webhosting

I read as many reviews as I could and I saw that there were a set of famous five who turned up in every result of webhosting reviews. While all these were more or less of the same cost, it then all boiled down to just the features and reliability of a webhost especially with respect to them sticking around for a long time as well as their techsupport timeline. I found two webhosts who were worth mentioning.

Fat Cow – www.fatcow.com and JustHost – www.justhost.com .

FatCow was a bit more expensive but at that price did not offer the feature set that JustHost was able to manage at 20% lesser price than the former. Unlimited webspace, unlimited FTP, traffic (bandwidth), unlimited emails, subdomains, databases – and if you decided to withdraw from them, they entice you with a 50% off for another year, meaning you pay only for six months to be with them for another year.

Page loading times were fast, their control panel was added with more features than the usual.Tech support was an area where they were lacking. But then so did others. I found FatCow the best in technical support, they went that extra mile in what they offered to the customers. But Justhost was a near second and I have never really had any problems with them either. Offering one year of hosting at about $40 with all these features mentioned above, its then only natural to be with them.

I am loving JustHost and I believe they care for their customers a lot. Keep up the good work JH!

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Blackberry Curve 8520 smartphone detailed in depth software and hardware video review

As promised, I am here again with an extensive, exclusive half hour Blackberry Curve 8520 smartphone video review. This phone has been recently launched through Airtel in India at a price tag of 15,990. So does this phone deliver on what it promises, are the features worth buying the phone for ? Most of your questions must be answered by this review, which will help you decide whether you would own this smartphone.

The battery life of this phone is about 2 days, which is similar to other smartphones. Extensive Wifi and screen usage, will bring that down to about 1.5 days, but for any normal scenario (you know what I mean, its a 2-day phone!)

So here it is, the full detailed review. Its about 25+ minutes, so don’t tell me I did not warn you 🙂

Untitled from Srik Eswa on Vimeo.

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the 8520 is finally mine!

I finally own a blackberry 8520 Curve. Its a nice mix of technology and looks. And there is no reason why BB will not make inroads into the low cost high feature mobile market sooner than later.

There is already lot of information on the internet on this new phone and I will cover more details about this in a seperate video review later on. However what is important is the fact that there is finally an affordable blackberry at our reach.

Before I end this small post I will leave you with some pros and cons of this device so that you can make your decisions!

The good points of bb 8520 :

– great screen with very good resolution
– new menu system which is very slick and quick
– all expected business features are nicely packaged in the phone
– sweet pricing this will attract lots of hitherto missed out customers
– very nice trackpad does what it says on the tin
– nicely packaged keys all around the phone
– very loud audio, clear and nice

And now the cons:

– typing not the best experience
– slightly hard keypad nowhere near N97 from nokia
– some options are hidden and only professional users can locate such features.
– wifi and bluetooth connectivity configuration not so straightforward
– camera is nothing to talk much and while its not pathetic its not great either

I hope you liked this small review on the blackberry 8520. If you did, watch out for the more detailed review on video soon.