Improve Interpersonal Skills

Episode 1

• A) Introduction:

CE1.1 This episode describes my professional activities after I was appointed for the post of Assistant Manager at Idea Cellular Limited on 24th July 2004 until 13th May 2005. I was in the department of "Network Services-Switch" at Surat (Gujarat, India) main switching centre controlling the complete South Gujarat Idea mobile network. After this period I was transferred to INCP-Rajasthan on 14th May 2005, which I have discussed in CE2.

B) Background:

CE1.2 Idea Cellular Limited formerly known as TATA AT&T and BIRLA group was working hard to gain a good market customer base in Gujarat. Facing a very competitive market from Hutch and other strong opponents, Idea's main aim was not only to have a strong customer base in the mobile market but also provide a good customer service. Moving forward with this aim, I started my permanent position of Assistant Manager in Idea Cellular after successfully completion of my one year graduate engineer trainee probation term from 24th July 2003 to 24th July 2004. During the GET tenure, I was nominated for a professional training course on AXE-810 delta hands on by Ericsson from 2003-12-11 to 2003-12-13.

CE1.3 The nature of work area

The nature of my work area was related to the nodes carrying live traffic. The main switching centres were MSC-SRT, MSC-RJKT and MSC-GNR. The nature of this role was two fold, firstly, my technical responsibilities and secondly my managerial responsibilities.

As the technical person, the nature of my work was related to the following tasks.

1. The operation and maintenance of the switch nodes like MSC, BSC, HLR, APG, IN, modems, RBS, DDF, MUX, Power cabinets etc.

2. Building up of the data transcripts in order to perform network expansions and network configuration changes.

3. Testing of new network features.

4. Data base handling and report functioning.

As the Assistant Manager, I was responsible to carry out the following tasks.

1. I issued the shift time table on a monthly basis to all the team members.

2. I shouldered the responsibility of managing all the testing sim cards which were issued to Surat main switching centre. These sim cards were of international and national mobile operators. They were used for the technical testing and the troubleshooting of roaming problems that came to the surface from all over the world.

3. I was in charge of all the Switching hardware shipments that were happening