India to get mobile numbers starting with 8!

Cross-Posted from Saurabh Minni’s blog with his permission

Well its was well known that mobile numbers with 8 are going to start soon. But it so happened that my dear friend Daaku took a new Tata Docomo connection. Now the amazing thing was that it starts with 805xx-xxxxx. So now if I try to call this friend of mine, my Vodafone network tells me that its an invalid number. I was confused and so I asked my friend daaku to call me. I got his number in caller ID but calling it was again not possible. Obviously its not mistake in dialing the number, rather its a stupid things that Vodafone and possibly other networks too have done.

So here is my guess what has happened. Vodafone, takes the number +91805xx-xxxxx as 91 for country(that India), 80(Code for Bangalore) and 5 would be Tata Indicom as they provide landline with that series. Interestingly Vodafone seems to have not configured its network to this change which happened for mobile numbers starting with 8.

I tried contacting Vodafone customer care, they seemed to be unaware of the issue and they said they would get back to me soon(24hours it seems).

But the point here is, whats TRAI and DoT doing. Have they not informed the operators of this change or are the operators at lax. Who ever it might be, the fault must be found and it must be ensured that in future such stupid things do not happen.

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Recently, from almost a month SMSs from Banks, Service Providers, Companies have started prefixing something like ID, AT, VK…etc. What’s all this after all!!? Here I am to explain you what it is! Normally these SMSs originates from a Bulk SMS provider where you can use 11 digit Alpha-Numeric characters as "Sender". But there were some security risks in this method. I was able to give a phone number as "Sender" & it appears as that person at the recipient end. Basically there was a chance to send SMSs as a different person! I was actually using this to fool my friends.

But the new TRAI regulation insisted bulk SMS providers to restrict the "Sender ID" to 8 characters. Other three characters should be used to specify who is the service provider & where it’s originated from. Say for example: HDFCBANK sends an SMS to you using bulk SMS provider located at Tamil Nadu which uses Airtel. You will receive it as AT-HDFCBANK. First character specifies which service provider the message is being originated & the second character specifies from which location it’s originated. Here is the table which has details of these SMS codes:

Service Provider Codes:

So, combination of these two constitutes the first two digit of ?Sender? followed by an hyphen (-) & actual sender name.

This is similar to USB internet data card provided by Reliance & Tata Indicom on CDMA technology. But this is from Vodafone on GSM platform through EDGE technology . You have to insert a SIM card into this modem & connect it to your laptop or desktop to have internet access. Vodafone website has not specified anything about speed, but they claim “speed that?s three times faster than your wired dial-up connection”, anyway I don’t believe in that! In India it connects to Vodafone EDGE network, so you can have access to internet wherever Vodafone network exists. Vodafone says “Gives 3G Broadband speeds when you travel abroad” as 3G is not implemented in India.

Charges & Tariff:

Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem will cost you Rs.6,499. Aw! that’s too expensive, HCL Laptop is available for 13,990! There are two monthly plans:

Overall this service is too much expensive . But if you don’t worry to pay for enjoying mobility, then this is the better one to go for. I heard Tata Indicom & Reliance data cards are extremely slow even in Bangalore!
More details on Vodafone Website

Blocking unwanted calls from people you hate or from unknown people is the feature I think we should have on our mobile phone by default. I personally tired up with lot of promotional calls from tele-callers. Though many banks & services offers you to register for “Do Not Disturb”, you still receive many calls from other tele-callers. Vodafone was the first to provide “Call blocking system” to help it’s consumers avoid such calls (but at Rs.99/month). But I have not yet heard of similar service by other providers.

Fortunately there is an application which blocks unwanted calls on any network. Epocware Handy’s Blacklist is a series 60 application that blocks unwanted calls. In first run options will be provided for blocking calls from your contact list, recent callers or unknown numbers. It also provided with an option of adding rejected calls into black list automatically. It also keeps log of all blocked numbers for 60 days.

The dis-advantage of software is, It will not notify you when a call is blocked. You have to check your log to know which numbers are blocked. The application is priced $19.95 (Rs.785), I think is the better option to go instead of paying monthly rental to service provider for same. Purchase this application here.

SMS Gup Shup is a free group messaging service by webaroo. SMS Gup Shup is a feature rich service when compared to local player Activ Mobs. You can create a free account on SMS Gup Shup and add up to 100 friends (mobile numbers) into a group. If you send a message to group, it will be delivered to all members present in that group!

Group Creation:

Everything is easy with SMS Gup Shup. To create a group you can either create an account online at www.smsgupshup.com or just send CREATE GROUPNAME to 567673434

Adding Friends:

To add friends you can invite your friends by inviting them through web interface by giving their mobile numbers or email IDs. Your friends will be instantly added & start receiving your messages. You can also add friends through SMS. Send INVITE MobileNumber1, MobileNumber2….to 567673434.

Sending Messages:

Again you can use web interface after sign up to send messages to your group which is absolutely free . You can also send your messages to 56767343, which will automatically delivered to your group members. Messages to 56767343 may cost you up to Rs.3/msg depending on your operator.

Despite of you adding your friends to your group, anyone else also can join your group through online or sending sms JOIN GroupName to 567673434. For example: I have created a group TECHB for Tech Bangalore to update users about new posts. Anyone can join group by sending sms JOIN TECHB.

Group creator will have rights to remove a user from the group. You may not want your father inside your group . Currently you can create only one group with one login (one mobile number).

I never imagined whether this kind of web site will be launched. I am talking about www.YourBillBuddy.com which fetches your bill from your service provider & gives you complete analyses. Web site is capable of fetch & read your mobile bill. It even gives you an option to upload your mobile bill & it even reads that! It gives you graphical analysis of Number wise call distribution, Bill Break up which gives break ups like SMS, Local Calls, STD etc. Following are few

After analyzing your bill, you can check Bill Buddy’s recommendations of plans from other service providers which best suits you. It also gives you data on how much you can save if you switch to that plan & how much could be your average monthly bill.

The website is still in Beta stage, but working pretty good.

Just browsing through my friend Deva’s Blog & found this cool free stuff.

• To get free cricket alerts send sms START CRI to 9845398453.
• To stop this alert send sms as STOP CRI to 9845398453
• To get astrology daily to your mobile send sms START ZODIAC SIGN to 9845398453.Ex: START CANCER.
• To stop this astrology message, send sms STOP ZODIAC SIGN to 9845398453.

After digging a bit I got to know that this service is provided by MyTodaySMS & not limited to only above things. It also provides Jokes, Health tips, poems, Gandhiji thoughts, Budda thoughts, City Alerts & much much more for free!
Hope you enjoy these free services, as many service providers are charging about 30 rs/month for same service. This works with all service providers.

I had written posts on accessing email on mobile.But this post will explain you all email services that are available via mobile phone.All these services need active GPRS connection.Only Yahoo & Rediff works on free GPRS & others need full GPRS(Airtel & Spice is giving this service for Rs.99/Month).

Yahoo Mail:
To access Yahoo Mail on your mobile, in goto address of your wap browser type in
http://m.yahoo.com/start then select Mail.
You can read,compose,reply…with this interface.

Gmail:
To access Gmail on your mobile type in http://gmail.com/apps
and login to your gmail account. You can also download an application to get faster gmail.
You will need a GPRS connection that have full wap access.
For some basic handsets the above link takes lot of time to load.
In that case there is another wap site that provides gmail interface,
http://gmobile.sayni.net which is not official gmail.But loads faster than of official gmail.

Rediff Mail:
Rediff Mail & Messenger can be accessed through any GPRS enabled mobile phones. Type in your wap browser’s goto address as http://mobile.rediff.com/index.wml and click on Mail or Messenger, whatever you want. Unfortunately this is not a free service. Rediff will charge Rs 7 per 30 min. Rediff wap portal also provides News, Astrology, Live Cricket scorecard…etc for free!

Related Posts:
Activating Airtel Free GPRS
Activating Airtel Online GPRS (99 Rs/M)
Hutch GPRS
Spice GPRS
Wap on Tata Indicom

I never thought Tata Indicom is providing such a great service. If you buy any wap enabled handset from Tata Indicom, it comes with wap connection instantly! I had checked in my cousin’s mobile (Haier 1200) it was providing access to all wap sites. As I checked, there were no usage or airtime charges. They may charge you only when you download any content from their wap portal (am not sure). Many stuffs explained in this site can be done with this connection (ex: gmail ).