Discussion Which was your first telecom provider?

[manu85]

Airtel 2006VodafoneIdeaRelianceTataDocomo(ported to Idea, Ported toairtel Now
Jio Second sim(disconnected)

 

[Jai Sankar]

Airtel(2009)
Ported to Jio 2022
Jio(2016)

 

[Msingh]

Escotel
1998

That was my first connection with Motorola device, later moved to Delhi in 2001 and switched to Essar

 

[Star NXT]

My first cellular phone experience was on my dad's Ericsson phone with Escotel Let's Talk prepaid around 1999-2000.

I don't remember exact model of the phone. It may have been this: Ericsson SH 888 - Full phone specifications

 

[saketk11]

1) BSNL postpaid after waiting for almost 2 months. Rs325 plan
2) around sep2002
3) my cousin had recently joined/employed by DOT, in bsnl, so infused by him. although my other mind , may be influenced by some other person was having strong inclination to go for AT&T,(erstwhile idea cellular) but found bsnl plan to be cheaper

4) as docomo, relaince and aircel re able to attract me for incredible low tariff, but tata and reliance were not build upon strong Operational culture required in as per Indian market. Aircel was another problem of over leveraged in financial co cover atleast thin margin profitable telecom business. I wish those promoters/entrepreneurs/director/senior employee should come and reenter telecom business provided DOT/ telecombill/ Mr Ashwini Vaishnav make strong foundational policy to run MVNO to make Bharat digitally connected at best competition level

As we can see BSNL 4g network will be underutilized for 1 year till roll out completes, thus can opt for MVNO to boost revenue by giving excess capacity

Same with jio, 100/130mhz+ 10Mhz+ 1000mhz is going to underutilized for next 3 years

Vi stilling idle on 900/2500 and even 2100 at some circle/places, which can given to interested mvno

edit : soon after 6 month we took decision to stop using bsnl postpaid and shift to idea prepaid, because of coverage issue. later in end of 2003, almost year after i requested for prepaid to postpaid migration, but franchisee denied by giving some xyz reason and ask for take new postpaid sim by paying SIM+activation+deposit of rs 750. this sim was still having used by my father, idea network from 2003-2020, now airtel

 

[Aniruddha Dhar]

Tata indicom CDMA back in 2007.

 

[Sushruth.V.H.]

BSNL back in 2008, then Vodafone in 2010, then Airtel till 2018 and currently using Jio.

 

[Aniruddha Dhar]

Tata indicom CDMA back in 2007.

Then Tata docomo, Airtel, Vodafone (current number) then this Vodafone number ported to Airtel, then ported to aircel, then ported to idea, then ported to reliance communications, then ported to bsnl, then ported to again Airtel and finally ported to jio from 2017 which is continuing till date.

Hence used almost all the mobile operators available in our circle.

My current number is continuing from Vodafone back in 2011 and presently at jio.

 

[ssjambla]

Aircel. Then airtel and now jio + bsnl

 

[kanagadeepan]

What a day! I was thinking about creating a thread about Mikey McCleary awesome Vodafone jingles on DreamDTH today. Than I saw Hutch trend on twitter along with that were post of some old sim cards of almost all old operators. I got bit nostalgic. So I decided to create this thread.

Please answer the following.

1) Which was your first telecom provider?

2) In which year did you got your that sim?

3) What tempt you choosing that operator over other operators? Knowing that we had way more than Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL back than.

4) What's your opinion about defunct operator like Aircel, Docomo, Reliance etc? How would market be today if they still existed?

1) Airtel
2) May be 2003 or 2002.
3) They were considered Youth operator and I was 22 at that time. I fell for their marketing at that time. But they gradually improved their network and zero regrets.
4) They were just Passing Clouds. Perform or perish is the Law of Telecom Business. If they were even now, there will be spectrum scarcity in Telecom. Say no operator will be having PAN India spectrum of any band. Frankly speaking, consolidation in Telecom has done more good than bad, imho. Even though competition is good for we end consumers, Hyper-Competition is never a good thing as well.