The Reliance Bug

Aha… I have been intrigued by the services (I mean, bad) offered by Reliance in providing the internet connection through their WLL phones. Let me try to be fair and first describe the positives. It’s really a pretty decent connection speed (~115 Kbps) for a dial-up connection and the phone looks really sleek. hmm… okay I am stuck thinking about more positives. Alright, there is one more: by virtue of being a WLL phone, it has an advantage that it can be used in places where the broadband connectivity is still not there.

Now, the actual case: Me and one of my friend – both have taken a Reliance phone each and we both see problems – noteworthy is that both are of different kind. The first bug – the internet connection does not work on my handset while it is being charged and then after that. Though this is intermittent, I couldn’t find the real reason for it. All I need to do to get it working again is to connect to the internet using my phone and some other computer (yeah, we figured it out – the hard way). It is (probably!) not a problem with the software on my computer since another reliance phone works just fine. I could have assumed that it is a one-off case but then my friend sees another problem.

The 2nd bug: His phone gets switched off automatically (no, the battery is not old – we got new handsets just a couple of months back) in some time while it is connected to the internet. I have also tried to call the customer care but found them to be less aware of their own systems. So, the only thing that I will do now is to get rid of the phone as soon as possible and switch to a broadband connection (I have heard some scary stories about Sify broadband also).

Oh, before I sign off – on a positive note – I think that this might be a deliberate thing by Reliance to make the phone un-usable after some time – after all they know that it costs customers money to be connected for long!