RutSum

Aircel’s 1 Paisa Per Second Connection Is Crappy

After getting fed up with Dolphin’s horrible coverage and not-so-competitive rates, I decided to shift to Aircel which had promising rates and a decent network coverage.

I got the new connection for 150 bucks and got 135 rupees worth talktime. All local and STD calls are 1 paisa per second (pps). Lifetime validity. Where lifetime means till 2019. Feels nice to have an expiry date on your life.

The clever thing with the marketing of these 1 pps connections is that nobody thinks beforehand that for long calls, this rate would come out to be effectively 60 paise per minute. Which is in no way cheap. So if you’re not the kind of guy who calls up his friend, asks straight up, “CP chalna hai ghoomne, haan ya na?” and hangs up, chances are that this connection is going to be heavy on your pocket. Hell, I hate having to start with small talk, and I avoid it as much as possible, but you don’t want to startle the guy on the other end by getting straight to the point. An average call therefore is greater than 60 seconds.

AND FUCK YOU AIRCEL FOR PUSHING EVERY SECOND UPDATES. USED GPRS FOR 10 SECONDS? HERE’S A FUCKING UPDATE. If I use my GPRS connection for like 5 minutes, I’ll get like a 100 updates in between telling me the cost of the session.

Too many fucking spam calls/spam messages. I registered for the DND service over a month ago now. The spam calls/messages have reduced in number, but not stopped completely. They also push ads for caller tunes etc. as notifications. Fucking hardcore spambots.

The cost of a local SMS is 60 paise. And the cheapest SMS package costs 50 bucks. I don’t send a lot of text messages, so I don’t care that much, but fucking 60 paise is a straight rip-off. When it doesn’t even cost them 1 paisa for an SMS.

Network coverage is pretty decent for voice calls. At least way better compared to Dolphin. I can hear out each word the person on the other end is saying, loud and clear, no hiccups/disturbance/noise/loss in signal. Provided, obviously, that the other guy has a good connection too. Still, not flawless. I sometimes get a total outage of network, at places like underground parking lots, or in relatively closed areas (this means the signal strength is weak). I haven’t been outside Delhi/NCR in a while, so can’t comment about coverage while roaming.

GPRS (PocketInternet) network is crappy at best. 1) IRC is blocked. 2) It rarely ever works if I’m moving, like in the Metro, or any moving vehicle. Even if it does, it takes fucking ages. When I’m stationary, and that too not anywhere, at select locations, sometimes GPRS works like it should. At peak performance, I’ve got speeds of upto 14 KB/s. Which is pretty decent for mobile browsing and checking updates on Twitter. 98 rupees a month, unlimited internet, would be totally worth if it worked everywhere in Delhi/NCR like it does when stationary at some places.

Overall, the connection is a great improvement for me, over Dolphin, but Aircel has loads of stuff to work upon.

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