Freedom 251: Ringing Bells to Start Phone Deliveries From June 28

After a long period of silence, Ringing Bells, the company behind the Rs. 251 Freedom 251 3G smartphone has announced that it will start deliveries to customers from June 28.
The company's Managing Director Mohit Goel made the statement to PTI. Ringing Bells' PR company said it had "no information" but that it believed the company would be carrying out deliveries soon.

Goel had previously committed to shipping the first batch before June 30. Ringing Bells, which announced its smartphone the Freedom 251 earlier this year, promised to sell a 3G enabled smartphone for just Rs. 251, but almost immediately ran into controversy.

Ringing Bells distributed prototype units to journalists which bore the logo of another brand on the phone, badly covered with white-out. The company claimed it had received millions of registrations, though later revealed that its first day of online bookings saw just 30,000 units being sold.

It promised to meet the impossible price through economies of scale, and making in India, but both of these notions were found fanciful at the time. A Congress MP called it the biggest scam of the millennium, while Ringing Bells was accused of fraud by a customer care firm. Adcom, whose phone was the one Ringing Bells sent out as a prototype, said it was ready to sue the brand, and telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said its books should be scrutinised.

If the brand is actually able to carry out deliveries at just Rs. 251, of phones that really work, in reasonable numbers, it will be a stunning end to a journey that has been an absolute roller coaster. But if it falls short on any of those measures, then Ringing Bells troubles might just be beginning, if earlier events are any indicator.