When I woke up today, I found my mobile phone wasn’t catching any signal, checked again after an hour or so and saw the same status. Surprised, I restarted my mobile phone, only to get another shock, now I was getting the error, “sim card rejected”.

I tried it on my dad’s phone and got similar error, while his Idea SIM card worked perfectly in my mobile phone. I decided to call Idea customer care (4444) and found no options to reach the customer care, got on their website, found the number of Idea’s Delhi nodal officer and called that number. According to the lady at other end, there was no issue with my connection and probably my sim card had gone bad and needed to be replaced.

Another look at Idea’s website for their local office and I was off to their office in Rajori Garden, though thanks to fantastic directions given on their site, it took me some time to locate the office. Went in and told them about my problem and was asked to submit a copy of my id and Rs. 75 to get the sim replaced.

When I submitted the required document, they had another shock in store for me, it turns out, that submitting documents in 2007 really was a hogwash (Verifying mobile phone subscribers: a whitewash?) and my mobile phone connection was still in name of some one else!

It turned out, the good for nothing Idea Cellular people hadn’t actually made any use of the documents I had submitted to them in January 2007.

Infuriated I asked for an explanation and was offered none, apart from that, maybe Idea Cellular’s Jail Road office failed to submit the documents! Now I would have to once again submit ID proof and photograph and hope that they will get it right, even though they haven’t been able to in the last 5 years that I have had been using this connection for!

Disgusted and without choice, I had no option apart from complying with what they were saying in order to get my mobile phone connection working again, even though I have absolutely zero faith in Idea Mobile Phone company to correct this mistake and make the changes this time around, to ensure I am not faced with situation like this ever again.

Companies like Idea Cellular blame government servants for inefficiency and dereliction of duty, while their own employees are even worse and their management, shady (remember Satyam). At moments like this, I can not help but wonder if it was a good idea to allow private players in the telecoms arena, which can possibly be a national security threat, considering how they are operating.

Based on this experience and the fact that there is virtually no idea mobile phone coverage or even agreement for roaming with other providers in remote areas, I would likely be switching my idea mobile phone connection to another operator, if and when the number portability becomes a reality in India!

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