Translated it means “Roaming in corners of the world”. My fellow country men who have joined the mobile generation, I am sure you have had amazing experiences with the mobility of mobiles yourselves by now. See, here is thing called roaming. Essentially this allows you to take you cell phone with you as you travel, so that the annoying credit card sellers can call you when your incoming costs around 3 bucks per minute!
But, as it happens, you will be lucky if those credit card sellers can actually call you. Because most of the time the network refuses to roam along with your phone. Recently my cousin came to visit me and I was parked outside the airport (parking fee in airports are sky high) waiting for him to call and let us know he has landed. When it was well past the arrival time, we called and were told by a sugary sweet sing song voice that that “the subscriber is out of network reach”.
Once we collected this hapless soul, after much waiting and coordinating, my cousin used my phone to call the customer care. In followed the instruction –switch the phone on and off, remove the SIM card, try manually selecting the network. Then it degenerated into “are you sure activated your roaming, did you have enough balance” and finally “It’s a technical error we cannot help you”.
Well, that helped a lot. Of course the fact that my cousin is a lawyer means they are going to get skinned when he gets back to his city (he refused to sue long distance). Anyhow, this happens so often then most people know what the Technical support is going to say beforehand and only calls them if the usual techniques don’t work. Yes, shaking the phone is also a technique.
This reminded me of an episode in a comedy show where this guy couldn’t get a reception and was finally asked to stand in a kona (corner) cause as the advertisement says Duniya ke kone kone (corners) mein roaming!
3 comments:
What happened to the old faithful "PCO"s? At least they worked. And as far as roaming goes, i have lived in this house for 3 more than years and just got network a couple of months back. And what exactly is "free incoming calls"??? You don't know how lucky you guys are.
PCOs? Well in here..if I am not in a market area..I have to walk atleast2-3 kilometers to find and PCO. They are like supply demand...if the arae has less population..no PCO..if you choose such a place to stall ur car..its ur problem! And I maintain there is nothing free in life except bad advice and verbal abuse!
I love the "kone kone" bit very much. On a recent visit to Landour it was the best experience though, one could receive all non sense phone calls only under the tower, otherwise one had to go really berserk to be in the line of connectivity dodging the Rhododendrons and the mighty Devdars and try to do the voodoo shaking with the phone to get it going. Actually I usually don't believe in carrying this bit of technology with me unless absolutely necessary and this was one such instance. The only time I had it with me was during the Christmas trip to Binsar and to my great surprise the reception in the forest was crystal clear.
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