Phone

I wanted to report on my experience getting cellphone service in Mumbai.  If you don't like rants, this may not be the post for you...

Before I left for India, several people had assured me that it would be very easy to get cellphone service in India, that it would be a simple matter that would take only a couple minutes.
This turned out not to be the case.  When I asked around at TIFR, I learned that the rules had changed, and that foreigners would need to bring a passport, and a photocopy of their passport.  Evidently some terrorists had used multiple cellphones for one of their plots, and so all foreigners had to supply extra documentation to get service.

Now if I wanted to get a cellphone in the States, I would use the Internet to find out where a suitable store was, and what documentation I would need.  That doesn't work here; instead you have to "ask around".  Back in monsoon season I was told that I should use AirTel service, and that I could find an AirTel-wallah somewhere along Colaba Causeway, the main street in the tourist area.  I took this literally, and walked from the Regal at the northern end, all the way through the gauntlet of pushy vendors until quite far to the south where things were getting sketchy.  Finally I found a small stand run by a small boy and presumably his mother.  The mother didn't speak any English, and the boy was maybe ten and spoke just a little.  It was a struggle for us to communicate.  Unfortunately, it being monsoon season, my passport photocopy had gotten wet and unusable.  So, I wound up giving my passport to the boy (!), for him to run over to a xerox place and make a suitable copy.  He came back in a few minutes.  Then it turned out I needed a passport photo.  Everything formal in India seems to require giving someone a passport-style photo.  So he took nimbly across the street to get a quick set of photos.  Then I bought my phone and my AirTel plan.  He went through some motions of trying to explain some formalities, a lecture which it would have been useful to understand.  I returned to TIFR with my cellphone.

As you can imagine, cellphones are almost essential to have in India.  People often make impromptu plans, or impromptu changes of plans and use cellphones to tell you about it.  The first week when I was filling out forms at the Establishment, they were baffled that I did not already have a cellphone, and asked that I give them my phone number as soon as I obtained one.  If you want to buy a train ticket for an intercity trip, you need to get an account with them, which involves having a code texted to your cellphone.  If you want to book a taxi, they need a cellphone number.

The cellphone was confusing to use.  I constantly got spam texts, or automated calls in Hindi.  When I got a call I would usually push the wrong button and hang up, and so wound up calling everyone back until I figured it out.  If I wanted to call someone I had to guess what the proper prefix numbers were, which gets confusing with office phones.  Of course if I typed something in wrong, the automated operator would speak Hindi.  Text messaging was tedious, using the ten numbers instead of 26 letters, and the phone was set to guess which word I was trying to type, given the numerical input.  (Later I found I could disable that.)

After a week or so of phone use, I started getting regular text messages saying that I needed to go back to the phone-wallah and give my proof of address.  A friend suggested that this was not quite right, or obsolete information.  I made two attempts anyway to revisit the small boy, but the store was closed on both counts, probably for holidays or weekends.  This was a nuisance because it took me a long time to find it again, and I'm a busy guy.  So yes, after a month of phone use, AirTel turned off the service.
I found the boy again, and he impressed on me that I had to give him a proof of address.  He also had me fill out some forms, with confusing language (am I the "referrant"?).  I wound up paying for registration again.  For some reason I got AirCel service instead of AirTel service.  I had assumed he had a good reason for this, but discovered later that AirCel doesn't cover the TIFR campus.  Actually I tried using the AirCel phone during a trip to Pune, but couldn't make it work then either.

This was frustrating.

I asked around and heard other horror stories from the other expatriates.  I thought that the best thing to do would be to go to the company store with one of the grad students, with a specially ordered proof of address from the Establishment.  So Shiv and I made a lengthy trip to try to find it.  By the time we found it (it had moved), business hours were over.  Unfortunately the business hours coincided with many math conferences that were going on, in our area, at TIFR.  So, I waited until they were over.  Well, then came my vacation with my Okie friends, so I waited until after that.

Finally towards the end of my stay, Arnab, who had been going to cafes with me, took me to a store right off of Colaba Causeway.  I let him do the talking, although the vendor's English was fine.  Finally I got a working plan.  (Although I did get an obsolete text message saying I needed to submit proof of address again.)

So:  the short of it is, if you're a foreigner and want a phone in India, you need to:

•  bring your passport, a photocopy of your passport, extra passport photos, and an official proof of residence.
•  bring an Indian friend to help find a professional place, and do the talking. 

Phew!