I wish to share my experience with Airtel mobile service when roaming internationally.
I must have used roaming in about 8 countries over the past 10 years. It worked reasonably well, until this trip. in June July 2022.
I bought international roaming for the USA for Rs. 4000 plus taxes. It allowed 5 GB of data and 500 minutes of call (either to Indian phones or local USA phones), and 100 free SMS, as I usually do.
This time I was frustrated because the internet connection was so slow, that it is not practical to use that for anything except WhatsApp.
Whatsapp works. Well not as good as it used to work before in USA or India, it is slow but not frustrating.
Why does it works, when other internet websites like google maps are impossibly slow?
Beat me! there must be some commercial consideration between Airtel and Whatsapp.
Phone and SMS worked fine - whether to India or USA.
In 24 days I have not been able to consume even half a GB of data out of my 5GB quota.
Now using Google Maps for directions or finding locations of places, and addresses is impossible. - something you need so many times in a day. Making restaurant / hotel reservations - is impractical. Forget airline booking, even checking the flight status.
I called the helpline - but it was of no real help. They gave some stupid suggestions like restarting your mobile, or taking out the sim and re-insert. Nothing worked. Then they said that you must be in a remote part of the USA, and that is funny because I am in San Francisco, 8 miles from the city center, in the densest population. Besides in 2015, 2016, and 2017 I used the same airtel connection, same number, same city, visiting the same places all over the city.
Frankly, I have been duped.
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