For long, I was stuck on CDMA. Until my Nokia handset went kaput finally and I had the “hobson’s choice”; I shifted to GSM because my folks had free outgoing calls within the group. Reliance has over priced handsets and I have no love lost for LG.

Spice. Among the first few mobile operators. It had licences in Punjab,Karnataka and West Bengal. They subsequently sold off the Calcutta circle to Airtel and concenterated on Punjab and Karnataka.

Priyanka Chopra is the current mascot for Spice. Despite her awful acting/ screen presence, she stares and smiles from bill board hoardings where street dogs pee every day. Including some species of humans. (Humanicus Indicus). This isn’t saying much for a company whose service levels have seen a massive nosedive in recent times. It is often joked that Spice is turning in another Cell One (the “sarkari cell phone service”). It is nothing to be proud of!

Hutch has consistently been showing a good performance. While it definitely trails behind the other operators, people have been sticking on to it like goo on the wall. In other words- loyalty to the company. However, their charges for GPRS access are atrocious which makes it a joke to call it as an access anyway. Rest all, it heavily advertises for it’s value added services and as a result need to re coup it’s ad spends. Stupidity? Or increased ad spends leading to higher usage? I have no firm answers.

However, there was a refreshing change from Spice to Hutch. The customer care numberwent in through the first attempt- a rarity otherwise in Spice. This happened a couple of times. The “executives” or the glorified idiots knew their work anyway. So, less of glorified idiots or higher up in the evolution scale.

Now, the initial impression with Hutch was good. They had a slick welcome booklet and obviously, they have taken great pains to communicate their product.They do have an website- however, painfully slow to respond to any queries. It’s been over 50 hours I sent a mail which hasn’t been replied to. That isn’t saying much for a company at all.

Spice was in the pits. With network congestion becoming worse day by day, it became a routine to see “Error in network”, “No network” et al. It almost reminded me of crashing Microsoft Windows. Just like it gave “fatal errors” and refused to budge. Of course, Linux is class apart….

I hope the impression with Hutch stays good. I d keep you informed