Tele-topia!

The enormous strides made by the Telecom Industry in India in the last 20 years are phenomenal to say the least. We need to applaud the industry on having become truly global and competitive today. Here is a “Before” and “After” comparison of what it was in 1988 and today

Before

• You would get an irritating “Beep-Beep” or the engaged tone when you tried calling a number. 
  
• You would need to shout at the top of your voice, making a conversation difficult. 
  
• You would get disconnected once in a while.
• You could build your biceps lifting those heavy ebonite handsets. Your fingers could drill holes in trains, like Mithunda, from all the heavy dialing.
• Customer support was some guy taking 5 hour lunch breaks in a local telephone exchange. The security guard would inform you that “Saab abhi lunch pe hain”. [Sir is on his lunch now!]
  
• You would need to wait 30 minutes to see someone in the local telephone exchange for your complaints.
  

After

• Now you get a prompt message on your mobile screen saying “Network Busy” 
  
• Now your voice breaks making conversations really spicy. “Hello, how are you?” goes like “Hell … ow … ae … ou”. Films like “One Missed Call” showcases the virtues of such calls. 
  
• Now almost all your calls get dropped, but thanks to speed dialing your problems have a workaround. 
  
• You now have a wireless handset that keeps your ears hot and sweaty and helps your brain produce lots of abnormal nerve cells, thus improving your IQ. 
  
• Customer support now is a guy armed with a headset and a computer system that takes 5 hour lunch breaks. They now politely inform you that their “System is down”. 
  
• Now you get to hear “All our executives are busy attending to calls” followed by music-that-can-trigger-epileptic-seizures during your 30 minute wait.
  

This kind of progress is unprecedented and unanticipated. We have come many a mile since the bribe-happy-friendly-neighborhood linesman. We have truly entered an era of tele-topia.