History, dear folks, can teach us a lot. The generations who learn from their history are better placed than who refuse to acknowledge it.
The wisdom holds true for corporations too. CEO’s mar or make a company; despite the common sense prevailing on ground.
In a way, I have been wondering about Reliance, Anil’s division. Much vaunted “broadband” hasn’t materialised; his mobile business hasn’t really excited the market in recent times and hordes of people are expressing dissatisfation. Then, of course, Reliance has it’s neck deep in different ventures which defeats the entire purpose of having focussed plans for telecom. It would, in the end, go down like the Govt. of India’s black hole- where money goes in but no result thereof.
I was indeed dismayed to see a write up in Indian Television.com which talked of last mile access woes. It’s true. However, Satyam burnt it’s fingers nicely and had to exit it’s ISP business. Reliance is refusing to learn from the history and that of not too recent past.
According to the report, Reliance would be investing and scaling up the infrastructure including billing, while the last mile access would be provided by cable operators.
There is an inherent flaw in the model. First, the Cable internet isn’t the bright speck in the sky for Internet access; unless of course it’s optic fibre running to your home. DSL can giver higher and faster access. Then, the problem of secure browsing- most of the PC’s running Microsoft would be infected. It’s easy to compromise a PC without firewalls et al.
Reliance would be stupid enough to expect the cable operators willing to invest time and energy- the same issues that dogged Satyam would plague Reliance too. Lack of customer focus and alienation would soon settle in.
Most of the cable operators have their own “internet services”- they act as last mile distributors for telecom companies. Why would they allow any other company to compete with their own services?
Despite this, Reliance has enough financial muscle and extremely active legal department to arm twist them. This would make your cable operator wary, unless they are backed by a robust association. Satyam was percived to be pliable and the dodos didn’t bother about customers anyway. Reliance would never want to have bad press.
Let’s see how their foray comes in the picture. Let me grudgingly admit. BSNL, by mid next year, may have the last laugh. Specially when they have started scaling up direct optic fibre to building clusters in select cities. These Govt. PSU’s may well rule the broadband market. Everyone else, would twiddle their thumbs and resort to lobbying to open up last mile access.
Specially when media would get enough brains to start comparing the inroads made by other companies.
If the report in Indian Television.com is just a proposal, it’s good enough. History never forgives anyone who ignore it.
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