Not surpringly this bit of news hardly received any media coverage because the one on the receiving end was the small guy who is nobodys votebank.
Reliance Communications CDMA service (of which Yours truly and his parents were subscribers but out of some premonition of sorts I had made a switch few months but unfortunately my parents were still using) had been discontinued from May 2016. Subscribers have been “asked” to upgrade to the 4G LTE service on the GSM network. CDMA is technically a superior and a reliable network from my experience. GSM, with the advent of 4G might offer higher speeds but is unreliable as the device constantly goes “off network” and one has to switch off the device and switch it on for it or go and come out of the “airplane mode” to re – register it.
My father had to shell out ~ Rs 200 even for the SIM. CDMA only handsets would have to be junked along with whatever balances (Talktime / data) it might contain. There would certainly be cases of people buying brand new CDMA handsets (expensive ones as there were anyway very few available off the shelf) or recharging their talktime / data balances just before the company discontinued it CDMA service. RCom has even discontinued the data offer of 10GB for Rs93.
I think the way the company has handled the affair was unprofessional. It could have intimated its customers 6 months back regarding the discontinuation, re – imbursed balances of people for talktime /data and offered subsidised handset upgrade.
Midnightbreakfast 