Idea

What an idea sirjee? The catchy promotional tagline of Idea cellular services presents ‘Idea’ in an innovative and attractive fashion. Truly so, because Idea by large is one of the most customer friendly cellular service in terms of the tariff plan offered. This may sound irrelevant, but let’s have a history check of Idea. It began as a joint venture of Tata and AT&T group, but soon was joined by the Birla group completing the trinity. Time passes by, and one fine day Tata decides to back out of this venture for a simple reason of coming out with its own cellular service! Tata’s shares are sold to/ bought by the Birla group for a staggering price and the cellular service now comes in fully to the hands of Aditya Birla group.

The current ‘Idea’ service is faring much better than the ‘Idea’ it was during the Tata’s collaboration days. Today, Idea cellular service stands as the fourth largest GSM operator in the country. Idea isn’t quite making business as much as its counterparts are, but is catching on the growth charts and can be crowned with the title of the fastest growing company telecom operator in India with a massive yearly growth of 306 percent.

There are certain areas where Idea cellular services fare better than other private ones like Airtel and Vodafone, however in most of the areas it can be rated just as good/bad or worse than its competitors. The Mobile call plans offered by Idea are undoubtedly the most economical of the lot and it drubs its challengers effectively in this matter. Out of the various promotional schemes it would be hard to mention few, but check out an year of validity for Rs.49 or 1000 minutes Idea-idea local calls for Rs.149. “Network coverage’ is just average. It is in the same range of Vodafone (which is called ‘bad’!) or maybe slightly better than it. The call quality too is just above the good mark. GPRS connectivity is one of the positive points of Idea, although it still doesn’t make it the best in it. The recent takeover of Spice has given a significant push to its business as it obtained an existing customer base (especially in Punjab and Kerala).

The customer care of Idea is subjected to more abuses than any other one- so to say, all customer care are subjected to abuses! But in case of ‘Idea’ the problem seems to be hovering even in physical stores, where there is clear lack of efficient staff. To the ‘what an idea’ brains in Idea Company, there is one more idea they need to ponder on- why not get some staff who at least know (if not everything about cellular services) about the company they are working for! The website is good and serves as a savior from the terrible customer care.

Idea is doing excellent business in some parts of the country like Delhi, while in some regions it’s just the advertisements that the people like. The brand ambassador Abhishek Bacchan, along with some really creative team have come up with good ads and a lovely tune of Ilayaraja as theme adds on to the charm. Overall, Idea should be a good option for the light-weight pockets. Its like the economical class of the cellular services!