Monday, May 25, 2009

Sorry for the interruption!




As a school going kid I remember sitting at home with the television switched on waiting for the Doordarshan broadcast to begin. The screen would have colored lines screen saver like this.
We would wait eagerly for the transmission to begin and watch even the most boring programs with interest. The tall antennae towering over the house would help us see images that were quite distorted most often than not. Very often there would be a problem at the broadcasting end as we would immediately get a sign on our screens that said “Sorry for the interruption”.

Well, the advent of cable TV and then Direct To Home (DTH) services had reduced this problem. The cable services are sometimes very moody and the DTH signals disappear at the slightest hint of a cloudy sky. While we used to get a “sorry” message before; we just get a no-signal message these days.

While I can live with both these interruptions today, the one that really gets my goat is the interruption of the mobile networks. It’s impossible to have a decently long conversation without glitches in the transmission of sound bytes. In most cases the signal just drops off forcing us to redial. Here we are forced to apologize for the service provider’s failure. It used to be embarrassing before but these days everybody seems to understand that signal drops happen!

In most residences the signals are so weak that we can see people stepping out on to the road or precariously balancing themselves on balconies to talk. I wonder if the next insurance policy in the market will be tailored to cover for injuries arising out of long tern posture related stress injuries or accidents (may not include vehicular accidents) occurring due to weak mobile signals. But then the insurance company will make it your responsibility to prove that the mobile signal was weak and will not take ownership for any interruptions in their service as well.

Any written request addressed to the service provider regarding signal strength goes unanswered and a call to the helpline also is useless. At the same time it is surprising to see them advertise about their network reach. I just read a friends blog where he expresses that maybe we should take mobile calls only in remote locations like the ones shown in the advertisement as the quality of signal will be better.

Finally to add to our woes we have the constant telemarketer who makes it a point to call you at the most inconvenient moment. He does not even care that your number is listed on the “national do not disturb registry”. When you tell them that your mobile is DND registered, they just bang the phone on you without even saying “Sorry for the interruption”!

2 comments:

  1. hello, hello, can you hear me?? hello?? helllooo?? wait, will call you back from the landline :D

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  2. Wish we could have lived in the past. We had so little back then yet lived our happiness optimally. now, we have so much but who cares about happiness; we are all concered about how to distant ourselves from it. And that too, effectively.

    ReplyDelete