Got an opportunity to visit Reliance store in Kharadi, Pune today.
I walked in with my SIM card (CDMA) which I was using earlier with my Tata Photon Max unlocked dongle.
There were around 5-7 more customers in there - with pretty much frustrated looks.
A few of them had some square shaped dongles and were complaining that there is no network and we are unable to reach the customer care as well.
So, I asked one of the boys there for the upgrade and he was eager to hand over a new SIM to me. Rs. 25 is what he asked for. I did not want to argue much about this though I know Reliance website states I should be paying only Re. 1.
He took my CDMA SIM and inserted in a spare phone and there was no network. There was one employee of Reliance there as well, who was asking if there was any issue of signal and he typed the numbers of some of us and sent it to some Reliance team via WhatsApp as sample numbers which were not working.
He said, this is a transition phase and we are working to sort things out.
The shop fellows said that the network will be back by second half today, but I personally cannot rely on that.
To me, it appears that this was intentional step from Reliance to scare people to port out immediately.
I also heard some dates that the new SIM will be activated around 3 or 5 June and the old one would stop working on 31 May.
About 4G, the lady stated 15 July is when it would start, but again, take that with a pinch of salt.
So, all in all, I am pretty excited to have purchased my first 4G SIM ever (I do have a Verizon 4G SIM which came free with my Droid Maxx, but I did not pay for it).
My dad is in Thane district and his CDMA stopped working completely (no signal) since yesterday. He will be visiting a store nearby to explore the upgrade option