received their license in 1994 are valid only till 2014, which is less     

 than 10 years from now. In contrast, the 'Lifetime Validity' product 

of  Reliance Communications, is valid till 2021 which is almost 15 years 

from now. 

To further supplement its already superior offerings,Reliance is launching

a new 10 year incoming product to offer customers more choice.

The new 10-year validity product from Reliance is comparable to the

 'Lifetime Validity' product offered by most other mobile operators. 

This new product at Rs 795 offers a 10 year incoming calling facility. 

This is almost as much as the Lifetime validity product of most operators.

  And in conjunction with the flexibility to choose any tariff rather than 

  being tied down to any high tariffs, this product offers superior value to  

Reliance's subscribers.

This Recharge option of Rs 795– currently available with

 E-recharge -  comes with Rs 25 talk time pre-loaded. Customers needing

 to make outgoing calls occasionally can recharge with top-up

 micro-recharges starting from  Rs 10 and make outgoing calls at the calling

 rates of Rs 1.99 for a local   call and Rs 2.99 for all other calls in India

Technorati Tags: lifetime validity, network operators

But one thing about the whole episode stunned me:

According to my friend, when she called up the call centre with her problem the operator was not overly shocked by her problem as such and within some time of talking confirmed with her that there was some fraud and she was the original owner of the number promising her that the other card would be deactivated very soon. This means that my friend’s was not a one-off case and there must at least significant frequency of such problems for the operator to have been so cool

Or maybe she was a very good operator, but looking at Hutch Mumbai’s past record in this I don’t buy that Another story about that some other day.

Technorati Tags: hutch, cellphone operators, cellphone networks

In fact Airtel had stated at the time that they were adopting this technology and that things were in place. That was more than a year back and there has been no further word on this from either Airtel or Mobiance Technology (the company formed by those IIT guys). However a visit on Mobiance Website throws a light to the fact that this product is already being used in ‘corporate versions’ for fleet & workforce tracking and that ‘consumer version’ of these products are also available.

Let’s first talk about the ‘corporate version’..

..the website states that “Corporate users can specify a list of mobile numbers, belonging to their mobile workforce, and obtain their location on a map through a web interface.” effectively meaning that if you are one of the ‘workforce’ whose number has been registered your boss can see exactly where you go at all times (there being a mention of ‘history feature’ too).

And the  only respite for privacy seems to be this single statement, “To avoid misuse and to secure privacy, the Corporate Tracking product asks for a one-time permission from each mobile subscriber being tracked through SMS.” Now, since this is a one time permission it is so highly likely that the companies can buy mobile connections, activate this feature and then give it to the workforce as a fringe benefit.

Among the ‘consumer services’ there are two products, “Location based dating” where one can find dates around your location. A smart idea, with sufficient privacy barriers (the number is not disclosed until both parties agree, etc). This can in fact be quite a hit if companies adopt it.

The second one, ‘Child Track’ is the one which again could be subject to lot of privacy issues. While no way of how this is to be implemented is mentioned on the website, some idea was given the in article mentioned earlier, quoting from it “The tracked mobile user has three options and may give permission for one-time usage or unlimited access. Though the third option allows the tracked mobile user to deny access it will not be a permanent one. The same service can also be accessed through the Internet.”

In such a case imagine how hard can it be to activate the “permanent access” even if he has physical access to the victim’s phone for as little as 2 minutes.

While the ‘corporate versions’ of these programs are already being used by quite a few companies, the ‘consumer versions’ are not seen out yet, and there need to be some serious modifications in both the cases to make sure the privacy of users is not invaded.

Technorati Tags: mobile, cellphone, invasion of privacy, privacy

A good friend of mine recently found her friends acting cold with her and herself receiving lot of wrong numbers. She could not understand why until someone complained to her about she rejecting the calls and not replying to SMS messages.

She was really puzzled because she did not receive either any call or messages from that person. Then others told her of similar problems. Suspecting something she tried calling her phone from her landline and guess what.. when she dialed the number it was not her phone which rang. Some guy picked up the phone and she confirmed with him that he had the same number that she did!!

Even more puzzling is the fact that there apparently is no specific pattern to this, when called either of the two phones ring at random.

This is an ongoing story will keep you all updated as the info comes.

Technorati Tags: hutch, simcard, weird problems