Sunday, August 23, 2009

Tata DoCoMo -- Reviewed.

Tata DoCoMo, The GSM service of Cellualr Network Giant Tata was recently launched in Bombay.
I got my hands on a Tata DoCoMo Sim on Firday and have been using it since and have to say have been impressed to an extent with great voice clarity on it.                                                     

What you get=64K sim, a users booklet,attractive packaging
Charges=1Paise per minute allover india as claimed by tata gallery personel
3G-Ready sim so you dont have to change your sim when it gets activated.

So, How I Got The Tata DoCoMo Sim,  well i went many places to purchase the Tata DoCoMo sim inorder to get a good number in in this quest i came to know a certain fact that great offer on this sim is usually provided by small time sellers who sell on small wooden bakdas anywhere in bombay at various places heres the diffrence between bakda vendore and Tata DoCoMo gallerys.

The Bakda vendor can provide you only the sim for 50 but to get the 1Paisa/per Minute outgoing call charge you need to recharge with atleast 50 or 100 and 200,so this vendor can provide you the sim for free if you make the recharge from him and the denominations for recharge are 120 and 200 well if you recharge for 120 you can get 120 talktime on the card with the 1Paise scheme activated and the Tata DoCoMo sim for free inclusive in that cost same goes for 200 and he promises to activate it within 10minutes and the Scheme within 30minutes.
  But if you choose the other option of purchasing the same Tata DoCoMo sim from a Tata Gallery you have to shell out 50rupess for the same sim and additional 50 ruppes for the recharge to get the the 1Paise scheme
and you get 48ruppes talktime on that Recharge.Now the Gallery people say they will activate the sim within 2mins and the scheme in 30minutes but this doesnt happen atleast in my case i had to wait for 3 hours to get it all going .
  So here I would suggest you do a market servey and try to get a better deal wherever possible
 Additional benefits you will get is that you will have 100sms free everday till 6months but heres a catch your first 3smses everyday are charged at 60paise per sms but my some smses were charged 60paise in between after the initial 3 smses coudnt figure out why.

 Now the service,Well the voice quality is great you can rearely here any disortion or static or crammping f voice as the say its 3G-Ready so it was very evident on this front though this can change later once more people get on TATA GSM wagon and congest it incase Tata have already a plan for this .

GPRS:- Its charged at 1Paise/per KB as told to me by the Tata reprentative from that Tata DoCoMo gallery at santacruz(W) but on the site they say that surfing is free but your downlaods are charged at 1Paise/per KB
so dont know whats the real deal here.The speed of GPRS is awesome as they say the are 3G-Ready and have already put on the 3G Bandwith but still waiting for licencse whihc is very confusing if we get into that so the speed is awesome but i guess they need to have a unlimited plan for this or else such good GPRS would be of any good to be true and on the Tata Docomo site they have mentioned a internet package apart from usuall GPRS which is charged for surfing at 10Paise /per 10KB .my verdict for GPRS is that its amazingly fast but you need an unlimited data plan to do any good with such speed.

There are some added services like free-call alerts which thay claim are already activated by default on your sim and are free of cost then there are paid services like Voice Chat for 2Paise/per minute and caller tunes with usuall charges .

Now,the main attraction in the 1Pasie/perminute charing all are talking about but i found it very useless as i am a BPL GANG user so i can call 10bpl number for 10Paise/per minute and any other local mobile/landline for 50 piase/per minute flat so i found this 1Pasie charging too much because it shooted my call charges

So,the verdict is Tata DoCoMo rocks as the new GSM player but needs to come down on the CALL CHARGES and GPRS CHARGES if it has to invite college goers and the teen population but if you never wanted to feel embarrsed screaming acroos the hall or in a bus or a public places due to voice disturbance on your cell Tata DoCoMo is for you go for it...

Well here are the Post_paid plans layout for the people with deep pockets..