Dada Avasthe Maraare! Pre-Call Message about Coronavirus on Your Mobile Network is Too Annoying?

Dada Avasthe Maraare! Pre-Call Message about Coronavirus on Your Mobile Network is Too Annoying?

Dada Avasthe Maraare! Yereg Mobile Call Malthandala Themma Latthondhe Uller? Pre-Call announcement about Coronavirus on your mobile phone network has been annoying callers lately. You’ll not hear “Tring Tring’ instead you’ll hear ‘Cough, Cough’? However, the message is quite long and can be a problem while calling emergency or a urgent message call.

But Luckily, there is a way to bypass the message.Here how you can bypass that Cough Cough and Coronavirus message- When you make the call, and as soon as it starts playing the message, press 1 or # on your mobile phone keypad- You’ll be redirected to the good old phone ringing sound, and you’ll be connected to the person on other side.

Mangaluru: This morning ( 10 March) after my morning walk, when I made my first call on my smartphone with Airtel as my mobile network, to my friend to join me for breakfast at Taj Mahal Restaurant, Hampankatta-Mangaluru, I was surprised to hear someone coughing, instead of the phone ringing on the other end. Once. And then again. For a second I thought my friend was coughing, but I was totally wrong. However, my mind toiled back to the coughing noise, which I would still maintain was not a very pleasant sound to hear early in the morning. And then a message started playing about Coronavirus infections that are fast spreading, causing COVID19 disease across the world ( at least 50 affected with that virus in India). It was Annoying!

What’s going on? If you haven’t noticed yet, the default ringtone in India has been changed to a message about Coronavirus that is causing infection across the world. The message aims to tell people, almost all of us who use various mobile phone carriers or SIM card from any other telecom company — BSNL and MTNL included — that Coronovirus is spreading and that it is important to take precautionary measures like washing hands with a soap to check its spread. As per the Govt. directive, the message on your phone may delay your call connect by a few seconds. But just wondering listening to the entire message may create a problem when dialing emergency numbers like 100, 108 etc

Sources reveal that on a request from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) ordered superseding of the phone ringing tone that one hears on dialing a number, with the 30-second information clip. The only exception to not hearing the coronavirus message is when a user has subscribed to a particular tune, mentioned sources. Government has asked mobile phone carriers in India to change default caller tune in India from “Tring-Tring” ringer to “Cough-Cough” and then a message about Coronavirus. It’s understandable but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

However, the message is quite long and can be a problem while calling emergency or a urgent message call. But Luckily, there is a way to bypass the message.Here how you can bypass that Cough Cough and Coronavirus message- When you make the call, and as soon as it starts playing the message, press 1 or # on your mobile phone keypad- You’ll be redirected to the good old phone ringing sound, and you’ll be connected to the person on other side. It’s worth mentioning that there is no permanent way to stop the message. You’ll have to perform the aforementioned steps each time you make an outgoing call to avoid hearing the coughing sound, followed by the Coronavirus message.

Even though the government is doing a good job in bringing awareness on this deadly disease, but for those people on a run and depend their lives on mobile phone communication, even a small distraction or few seconds waste of time on listening to cough..cough followed by Coronavirus precaution message is quite irritating and annoying. Currently, it is not clear for how long the person “Coughing” in your ear is going to be the default ringtone. But sources reveal that chances are that it is going to stay here, at least until there is a risk of Coronavirus infections spreading in India. I can understand that the government and telecom companies have the right intentions with this move. Yet, I can’t help but say this is incredibly annoying, and not just to me. A look at Facebook and Twitter show that no one apparently likes to hear someone coughing in their ears. It is almost like the Chinese government move where the country used drones to locate people walking out of the home without a mask and then chided them like they were 5-year-old kids in a school room.

While I completely laud the well-thought-of decision by the government of India, I have my doubts regarding the way it was carried out. The first thing that they could have done is to replace the annoying coughing sound with something rather melodious. Maybe a sound similar to a gong or a normal doorbell. Basically, anything would have sufficed but the sound of a man coughing his lungs out. When you see or hear someone coughing uncontrollably, you feel very sorry for the person and you also feel helpless at the same time. You immediately want to run towards them with a glass of water or in some cases may be a Strepsil candies for some instant relief. But in this case, you just get to hear the sound and do nothing.

I would try and avoid calling anybody as long as the campaign goes on because I somehow don’t want to end up feeling sick every time I call someone. Having said that, I think the initiative would to some extent help people who don’t have much access to the internet or television sets because by listening to the voice over they would at least be aware of the disease and its impending danger. They will also take necessary precautions about the same. In my case and many others like me, things would have turned out perfectly fine if the coughing sound would have been replaced with something more soothing to the ears, if not music. After all, if it is just about the message why not play that with some decent music or tone instead of the coughing sound.