We just lost another CDMA brand from India - Vodafone Netcruise. It was actually EvDO Rev A based data services provided over USB data cards. Vodafone and MTS India (SSTL) entered into a partnership in July 2011 by which SSTL’s EVDO products are to be sold under Vodafone brand.
That time deal was perfect for both - Vodafone was weighing profit from 3G, and had 3G presence in just 9 circles, while MTS was a pan India CDMA player with better EVDO services. And that time Vodafone has better brand value to sell relatively new player SSTL's high speed data cards to corporates.
However time changed a lot - MTS is now present in just 9 circles but MTS dongles (MBlaze) grabbed a significant market share, while Vodafone launched 3G on pan India basis, thanks to ICRA. If you can remember MTS or Vodafone never published any separate data for Netcruise. There was little success of this brand, and lately almost no activity.
MTS has recently been pushing its RevB (downlink upto 9.8Mbps) services under MBlaze Ultra. They bring own smartphones, Wifi enabled USB dongles and Wifi Hubs to promote its own branded services.
So it is inevitable that they would parted from the brand sharing agreement.
Netcruise's website netcruise.in is now redirecting to MTS India's website.
Earlier Tata Docomo also killed Virgin brand - all Virgin Mobile customers are now under Tata Docomo brand. Aircel's pseudo-MVNO services - Blyk and Simpossible are in limbo. So only pseudo-MVNO brand still surviving is Talk24 (TTSL-Future Group venture).
