Originally Posted by
sgopal2
Hello - I'm bumping this thread back up. I am having problems getting a SIM card in India as a foreigner and was wondering if anyone has any advice?
I went into a Vodafone showroom last week with all of the necessary paperwork (Passport, OCI card, photos, etc) and had my application rejected twice. The first time the guy got confused because my current passport didn't have an Indian visa page in it. I tried to explain that the government did away with Indian visas for OCI, but he didn't seem to understand. Fortunately I had a copy of my old passport with the U-visa page. This caused confusion because the expiration date said "LIFELONG". The Vodafone people took pictures of everything and sent it in for activation, but it was rejected. Apparently foreigners can get the SIM activated on Vodafone but their system requires that a valid end date of a visa be entered. OCI cards do not have an expiration date, so the system seems to reject them. Instead of trying to work with me, they rejected my application twice. After spending nearly 6 hours with these idiots I just gave up. They kept asking for me to provide Indian ID to activate the SIM.
Any OCIs have experience in getting SIM activated while in India?
A Mumbai acquaintance describes this as a typical Indian snowball of
bureaucracy. A relatively simple process gathers layers of complexity as it rolls through the system, until participants lose sight of the goal.
There may, or may not be some truth in that observation. But even those visitors who would like to follow regulations find themselves asking friends to get a SIM for them, or finding a phone repair shop that will do pretty much he same thing..