Hi Porkknuckle,
As in all occupations, there are always a few who spoil the good name of others so I won't make an excuse for those who should know/do better. That said, I sit next to a lot of our controllers, both expat and local, and they have all lifted their games to cope with the huge increases of traffic that we've seen in the last few years. Sometimes, we have so many aircraft on our screens and so many pending that it's hard to see the wood for the trees. That East sector controller has to do all the initial sequencing for both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with no flow control measures in place for aircraft from the Bombay FIR, and that task in itself can be overwhelming. With urgent coordination necessary, sometimes your check-in calls are deliberately ignored in favour of ensuring that the coord is accurate and timely with other controllers. Ideal? Hardly. Necessary sometimes? Yes.
The East sector is also plagued with another problem. It stretches for about 800 miles, I think, and aircraft in the RASKI/PARAR region cannot hear transmissions on the other side of the FIR so sometimes, when it appears that a controller is ignoring you, he is, in fact, desperately trying to hear more calls elsewhere and doesn't have the time to explain it all to you. A little grace extended to us would help a lot. In most cases, we're not trying to spoil your day or wanting to deny people the levels that they want. It's just that we're struggling to cope with the sheer volume of traffic, traffic that is not limited by flow control except in the case of UAE departures.
As for Bombay, yes, we have direct comms with them via a landline but we are subject to the whims of the controller de jour. There is a lot of variance in the performance of their controllers but I undertsand they have their own problems. We would be helped enormously if some of them told their management to implement Mach number technique so we can reduce our current 10 minute separation standard to a minimum of 5 minutes between a faster aircraft followed by a slower aircraft. As well, they block FL330 from being used most of the day to allow for crossing aircraft in their airspace. I would like to see them change that to FL290 or lower so the bulk of the E-W traffic can get their long-haul levels.
The HF freq's are given to us by Bombay every few hours but I can tell you from long experience; it will usually be 10084/10018/8879 during the day and 5658/5601/6661/3467 during the night. When we have time, we'll give it to you but we assume that some operators, like IAC and AIC already know the freq's to expect.
Hope that helps. Please be kind to us while we drown in traffic. We are actively trying to recruit the numbers necessary to sectorise to more manageable sector sizes, but that'll take some time.
Cheers