Call quality into India has been significantly affected by an undersea cable cut off of Egypt. We are attempting to route our traffic around this affected cable, but there are restrictions on bandwidth into and out of India. All of our international carriers are reporting issues with call quality and a decline in overall completion rates.

The four undersea cables that got cut include the SEA-ME-WE-4, IMEWE and EIG cable systems. These cable systems carry international voice and data traffic from India to Europe. Operators including Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications and BSNL use these cables to transmit international traffic.

- The Hindu Business Line

“Currently, internet and data usage are low because of the festive season. India will feel the impact from Monday when offices and businesses come back. Telcos have diverted all traffic from the Atlantic route to the Pacific, but our connectivity to the latter route is not sufficient to cater to all of India’s traffic,” Rajesh Chharia, president at Association of Internet Service Providers of India, was quoted as saying by the Economic Times.

Full Story Here.

The cable was cut on March 27th. We are working diligently to find better performing routes for our IndiaLD service, but expect that calling issues will continue for some period of time.

IndiaLD.com will be down on Wed. March 20th 2013 from 11:30 AM to 2 PM Pacific time.

We are upgrading our calling platform to the latest version of the software, and need to take all services down.

During this time, calling will not work and the website will not be accessible.

We have scheduled this maintenance period during one of the lowest calling times of the week to minimize the impact it will have on customers.

IndiaLD calling services and the website will be unavailable on Tuesday April 24th from 1PM to 4PM Pacific time for regularly scheduled maintenance.

We have scheduled this for our quietest time of the week to have the least impact on you all. We will be performing routine systems maintenance during this time.

We are going to begin phasing out the credit limit starting on April 1st, 2012. The credit limit only applies to our monthly minute plans. If you are a Quarter Calls, 1.5¢ Calling Card, or PAYG Minute customer, you can ignore this.

When our monthly customers use up all their minutes, they have two options to keep calling:

1. To buy more minutes from the Top Up tool

2. To keep making calls and be billed for the extra calls at the end of the month.

Option 2 uses the credit limit to determine how many minutes of extra calling you can make. This method is going away. If you need additional minutes on your account, we want you to purchase them via the website through our Top Up tool.

The credit limit is a vestige of our system from way back when we couldn’t do Top Ups on the website. It was a useful tool because it allowed people to keep calling, but it also has some drawbacks and led to confusion. Switching to a Top Up only system makes it easier for us to manage monthly plans, and it prevents you from accidentally going over your monthly minutes.

On April 1st, anyone who is in a monthly plan and does not have a negative balance on their account will have their credit limit set to 0. All of those customers will need to come to the website, login, and purchase additional minutes via Top Up after April 1st.

If you are in a monthly plan and have a negative balance after April 1st, then we will wait until your plan renews to set your credit limit to 0. This will allow you the opportunity to pay off your negative balance at your normal per minute rate instead of at the overage rate. Once your plan renews, you will need to use the Top Up tool to purchase additional minutes.

We will be working on ways to make Topping Up your account easier including via a mobile app and are investigating having an automated phone system for when you cannot get online.

If you have any questions about the change, please put them in the comments so we can answer those questions for everyone.

Hometown Telecom lost a friend and business partner last week when Chris Edgecomb passed away too soon. Chris opened his colocation facility and his extensive network of connections to us when we first got started back in 2006. IndiaLD users may not know who he was, but billions of IndiaLD minutes have passed through Sirius Telecom on to India. He served as a link between the US and India, both literally and figuratively.

Every January we go out to the PTC show in Honolulu to meet with carriers. Many of the show meetings take place on couches in the outdoor hotel lobby. Hometown always goes down at the crack of dawn to get the best couches, and we always hold one for Chris and his team. To think that he will not be by our side this year, or in the years to come.

The industry has lost a larger than life figure, our founder has lost a good friend, and his family has lost a loving husband and devoted father. He will be missed.

Thank you for everything Chris.

If you have made a Quarter Call between November 10th and today, you have received a balance adjustment of $1 added to your credit. One of our wholesale carriers was dropping our Quarter Calls after 30 minutes last week, and we want to make this up to our Quarter Call users.

The extra $1.00 has been added directly to your balance. It only is for people who are in Quarter Calls and made a call from November 10th to today regardless of whether your call went over 30 minutes or not.

You will not see any history of this in your billing summary so please do not look for it there. Take my word for it, if you were affected, your balance has been credited with the equivalent of 4 Quarter Calls.

IndiaLD has had to suspend our free SMS service, because of recent changes to TRAI regulations in India. Here is the announcement we got from our provider:

As you may be aware, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a new regulation on the SMS industry in India in the latter part of last year. After multiple delays and updates, these regulations are now scheduled to go into effect on September 27, 2011. These regulations are designed to significantly curb the sending of unsolicited commercial communications to consumers through enhanced enforcement of the National Do Not Call (NDNC) list, now renamed the National Customer Preference Registry (NCPR).

While our customers use SMS for personal communication, our service is classified in India as a commercial service and subject to these requirements. We are exploring alternate methods of delivering SMS, such as including your US number as the sender, so that we are no longer considered commercial. We will resume SMS service once we have found a solution.

Effective September 7th, 2011 IndiaLD will be changing the rates on our USA calling plans. The following plans will change:

IndiaLD USA 500 from $4.45 to $4.95
IndiaLD USA 1000 from $7.95 to $9.95
IndiaLD USA 1500 from $13.95 to $14.95
IndiaLD USA 2000 from $19.95 to $19.95

All of our USA to India calling plans are being priced at a cost of 1 cent per minute.

All plans that renew on or after September 7th will be charged at the new rates.

We have had to raise prices on some of our plans in order to offset our increased cost of doing business. We have held off on doing so for as long as possible, but now need to reprice our plans in order to continue providing the same high level of service that we have always offered.

We will also be making several additional changes to our service in the near future. We will be eliminating the credit limit/overage facility, and raising the minimum number of Top Up minutes you can purchase. Both of those are necessary moves because of increases in our merchant processing costs.

IndiaLD will also be offering some additional features that many of you have asked for. Look for soft phone support, and the ability to buy blocks of minutes with a 90 day expiration soon.

As part of a larger reorganization of our calling plans, we are discontinuing the IndiaLD USA Unlimited Calling Plan. The plan is no longer available to new customers. Renewals for this plan will remain active until 8/26/2011. If you are an unlimited customer and your billing cycle renews between now and 8/26/2011, you will get another 6000 minutes for $29.95 added to your account.

After 8/26/2011, all USA Unlimited customers will be converted into the IndiaLD 3000 Minute Plan which costs $39.90 per month.

So for example, if your plan renews on 8/20/11, you will get 6000 unlimited minutes added to your account for $29.95. Then on 9/20/11, you will get 3000 minutes added for $39.90.

If you do not want to be switched into the IndiaLD 3000 minute plan, please contact customer service and tell them which plan you want to be moved into. You may also cancel your account if our other plans do not meet your calling needs.

The USA Unlimited was an interesting experiment for us, but one that is ultimately not working. The average minutes per user in the unlimited plan was just too high for us to keep it open. With the market changing, we have chosen to simplify our product offerings and bow out of the unlimited game.

We are adding the ability for our customers to send airtime credit to mobile phones in India. Soon you will be able to buy credit for family and friends who are on all of the India prepaid mobile phone plans. We’ve tested this feature on a small scale, but need some more tests before turning it over to our customers.

If you would like to help, you can do so by letting us send a small amount of mobile credit to someone you know in India at our expense. The amount will probably be somewhere between 50 and 250 INR. To participate in this test, all someone needs to do is comment on this post with the following information:

• Indian mobile number
• Name of the mobile network that number is on (i.e. Voda, Tata, Idea, etc…)
• An email address for the person at this number (we will need them to email us back with the confirmation message)

All comments will be kept hidden to keep personal information confidential.

We will be making 10 to 20 test messages and are trying to get a wide mix of Indian mobile operators. People will get the credit on a first come, first serve basis based on what mobile network they have.

This is not limited to IndiaLD customers. You can submit a friend’s information for the credit, or just tell someone in India to comment themselves.

Thanks