Tata Docomo has grown up to become one of the top cellular service providers in our hugely populated country, but they certainly gave up too much to reach this huge customer base. I picked up a GSM connection as soon as the service was released in India and have used it since then. The sole reason of picking up was the expertise of DoCoMo (japan) in providing class leading voice and data services.
Initially, the service was great. Voice calling has never been much of an issue with Tata Docomo and is still quite fine at its price of 1p/sec for any complaints to be made against it. Coming to Data Connectivity, it was also a smooth experience due to the small number of customers that Docomo had. Years passed, new customers came, demand increased, smartphones started staying connected 24×7, but Docomo seems to have forgotten the need to upgrade the network infrastructure. Data Connectivity was still working admittedly fine, but since the advent of the 250 unlimited 3G pack which provided too much at the cheap price, the service kept on worsening and is now at a stage that you should be the luckiest person in the world if your data connection gets established in the 1st try (sarcasm) 😀
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You’re Lucky… If you are connected
As of today, the network stays so busy that it takes over 10+ attempts to make a Data Connection (20+ at peak hours) and yet it’s no surety that it will work. Sometimes it works and at other times it merely sends data, but is unable to receive anything more than a few bytes. And in case you are lucky enough to connect properly, don’t be too happy because the data call/connection is suspended every 40 minutes. So you need to wait and watch for it to somehow connect again. The more you try, the more frustration builds inside you.
Customer Care has no answers
In such a situation, surely the voices are raised and then the Customer Service has no better answers than to put it back to your phone or dongles (whichever you use). They are not ready to admit the inability of network to serve the huge customer base and the blame will be pushed on to your phone. Okay agreed. Maybe just our phones don’t like Docomo, because the moment you put in a sim of Airtel or Vodafone, everything gets fine immediately 😛
Tata Photon also on the Same Track
For the time Indicom was related to the Photon service, it used to be better. In fact, I picked up a Photon after dumping two Reliance Netconnect Broadband+ connections. Reliance service had poor network reception (don’t know if it was my area or faulty dongles). Ever since the CDMA service was shifted under the Docomo brand, it’s on the same track as its GSM cousin. It connects fine, but at times won’t transmit any data. So it’s not that the pages load slower, but they don’t load at all. Another issue is that Photon Prepay (haven’t tried with Postpay) cannot upload files above 200 Kb on most of the sites, except Google and Facebook. Again the customer service has the same answers to reinstall the drivers, or to reconnect. Nothing helps though.
Don’t just Choose Tata Docomo
If you are looking to buy a new connection for internet purposes, please do look at the alternatives and try not to fall the Docomo’s trap. In case those catchy TV adverts are tempting you to buy Tata Docomo, think again because neither their network is well-built (poor connectivity even in a level 1 basement and rural areas) nor is it reliable (dropped calls are there too).
If you are a present Tata Docomo customer, I’m sure you too have experienced something similar. Please do let me know your views in the section below and if you are using a different operator, tell me about your experience with it. For now, I’m feeling that a BSNL connection would provide better dependence than this 😛
