Reliance signals unsettle Spice customers

CHANDIGARH: Spice customers were atthe receiving end recently on account of the seamless travel of cellular signalsacross the boundaries of neighbouring cellular circles.The customersmay end up paying for roaming services while remaining within the boundaries ofhome network.Aditya (name changed), a Spice subscriber, who was inPanchkula on Saturday evening, was taken by surprise to find the Reliance signalon his mobile phone.‘‘I was totally confused to find mymobile getting hooked on to the Reliance network,’’ hesaid.Similarly, Manorama Singh (name changed), another user, alsoreported a similar problem at her home in Manimajra at 9 am on Sunday.‘‘I reached for my mobile and was taken aback to find the Reliancesignal.I was reverted to the Spice network only after anhour,’’ she said. During this period, Spice customers were logged onto the Reliance cellular network in Himachal Pradesh. This otherwise happensonly when a customer is travelling in Himachal Pradesh.Thesubscribers fear that they would be charged the roaming services tariffs duringthis period for no fault of theirs. Spice assistant general manager Mukul Khannaagreed that customers who had used their mobile phones during the period wouldbe charged roaming tariffs.Khanna said that the problem occurred onaccount of the wireless nature of the cellular medium. ‘‘It is atemporary problem. There is no mechanism to prevent spilling over of signals tothe neighbouring circle,’’ he said.He maintained that anelectrical disturbance could lead to such a situation. Interestingly, the usershad their mobiles on the automatic network selection mode when the problemoccurred. While selecting a network among those available, a cell phone in thismode goes for the network with the strongest signal at that place at aparticular time.Khanna said that as per the guidelines of theTelecom Regulatory Authority of India, the designated cellular operators foreach state define the wireless signals within the state.However, toensure seamless roaming into another circle or state, there were signal overlapsin the border areas. He said that to avoid this kind of situation a subscriberought to keep his mobile on the manual selection mode to ensure that the phoneremained logged onto the home network only.