No, I am not getting paid for writing this blog.. I decided to pen about it simply because I feel very strongly about this widget being underutilized.
Now what the hell is GPRS ? If question like this passed by your mind, I feel writing this blog makes perfect sense 
Well it stands for General Packet Radio Service but to start with one can think of it as mobile counterpart of internet explorer.
Probably most of us have a cue about it but as high as 90% of us having GPRS compatible mobile phone never bothered to even click on its icon. Each one of us has one or the other reason for same, let me attempt to thrash some common myths.
Myth 1: GPRS.. I guess it was launched two months back.
Believe me, I am not able to recall when I checked my mails through GPRS for the first time. Yeah it was some three years back when browsing through internet was my favorite pass time during lecture!! Moreover, I was not charged for same, the credit of course goes to Reliance
Myth 2 : I know GPRS inside out, its a costly affair.
Of course not, In fact I would say this is cheapest affair one could have Well, I would say let numbers do the talking. In case of leading service providers its 10paisa/10KB. Moreover, major players in this domain do not charge a penny as rent!!You can check your mails by spending less than 1 rupee. Moreover, things like OperaMini can reduce it to 20-30 paisa.
Myth 3: Its painstaking job to get this working.
Yes it is, if you think sending three lettered SMS to a five digit number will enervate you.
Myth 4: Alright, but then it comes with high end mobile phones.
Going by your definition of high end phones, i would like to say these days high end phone start from as low as 4k!!
Of course, the scenario is not as rosy as I have tried to portray. User experience has been a persistent problem because of huge gamut of screen sizes of mobile. Having said that I would like to add that research is on in this direction and people are coming up with plausible solutions like zenzui.com
P.S. If this blog contributes to increase in usage of GPRS, I expect service providers to pass on my share 
Nice promotion for GPRS, you could add one or two more myth in favour of GPRS myth like GPRS attracts virus and some more.
anyway after reading this I am sure you are going to do blast.
Lets see what comes next from you
Yogesh,
It will be nice to know how big a issue viruses actually are.. how much of it is hype and how much practically-faced problems by us or or close friends.
I have not researched this.. and would be happy to know your findings.
Sumit, you too.
Thanks,
Avinash
(RouteGuru)
Hi Avinash,
Sorry but I couldn’t get you.
Do you want to know about the virus issue? or you are not convinced that even virus is the problem with GPRS still we go for this?
nice blog dude…..i got to learn what shit they talk regarding GPRS?
Reliance and GPRS? You mean 3G1X for sure.
Hey Rajeev, I am not sure whether it was 3G1X but I used access it via RWorld.
Well its a neat attempt to bring GPRS into the everyday life.
I have a couple of problems that you have not addressed
1. how easy is it for a lay man with little exposure to the internet to use wap based services?
2. What is the positioning of GPRS?
I mean whom is it most beneficial for
for techies like us who are well connected to internet (most of the while)
or
ultra busy managers who need to be connected on the go (needless to mention they are very few in numbers)
or
a common man who needs to check his pnr status (not necessarily on the go)
SMS addresses both the two issues as sending 123 to 4567 is as easy as it comes and SMS is well positioned, its an easy to use technology for information seekers who are not connected to the internet ! and who do not intend to spend time learning some terms like url and download and basic functions on the web.
Just my 2 cents. I am a big fan of SMS, think its massively underutilized.
apart from that I think GPRS should be free, only data should be charged for.
GPRS is NOT Reliance – RWorld. Reliance offers CDMA 1-X technologies which is a 3G technology! And GPRS is coming from GSM side of technology which is called 2.5 G technology.
One thing I must add here is that since we are BoP market, we dont see much of the handsets which make use of faster data rate capabilities of GPRS or CDMA 1-x. Reliance Rworld is a nice attempt!
Arvind
[...] Yes SMS is omnipresent but these days number of GPRS compatible phones are not less. One can get it for 4K or even less. All we need to do is to spread awareness and thats what I did in this post. [...]
IMO, Reliance didnt have GPRS its CDMA 1.x based which means it provides services comparable to GPRS. however if by GPRS you mean data rates then they would be similar and you can just call it packet data vs PUSH-PULL data (like SMS)
Yes Varun, thats technically more correct.
My aim was to grab attention of most of them and bring them to common platform in order to come up with solid knowledge base. To serve the purpose, I thought the topic should be simpler.
[...] Well..One more baby step towards revolutionizing mobile web. The mobile portal aims at hosting applications, which, would encourage users in using GPRS services. Although, we have made attempts, in past, to spread awareness but the need of a useful application was felt since long. mobile STD code: This was a long pending request from few of our users, especially when we shared the database of the code some time back. The application, though crude as of now, can be accessed both from desktop/laptop and mobile phone. So now, to find the details of any mobile number, all you need to do is punch first 4 digits of same. Don’t believe me, try it here [...]