Reliance & Aircel SMS blocked on Airtel
It's Diwali season in India and that means big bucks for all the telecom network operators. Indians get obsessed with sending and forwarding the "Happy Diwali" SMS to each other without really knowing that each SMS costs a lot more than the regular charge. I'm not sure if it's really ethical to hike the messaging charges during the festival time; but that's what every operator does. But the latest development in the Indian telecom markets is quite interesting. Airtel has blocked SMS from Reliance and Aircel saying that these two networks are flooding their networks with free text messages resulting into poor quality of service to its customers.
Both Reliance and Aircel have a different stance. They say, Airtel being the largest telecom operator in India (it's even 4th largest in the world) is using the pressure techniques to make them pay more for the SMS termination charges. The companies allege that Airtel is misusing their dominance in the market totally ignoring their customers.
I'm sure we've several CEans who're on these networks. If you're facing inconvenience with sending messages there's an alternative! Use 'WhatsApp'.
This free app is available on most of the mobile platforms. Plus I'm quite sure that most of your contact list will already be using this app (you can see who's using it once you register on WhatsApp). You will pay for just one message (the regular data charges apply) but it will get delivered to all your WhatsApp contacts all over the world.