Airtel upped the salvo by offering 2000+ crores for the spectrum. This rattled the Tatas (who own perhaps the worst home ISP business) and Reliance and a full fledged media war broke out between the two “giants”. Tatas (and Reliance) claim that the GSM operators virtually got their spectrum for free and they should not be asked to pay for the same. They also want a technology neutral criteria for the telecom services; CDMA or GSM. The existing telecom operators are obviously shit scared of the new players in the market and hence the churn.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective and why the entry of Reliance and Tatas would affect the existing subscriber base. The telephone number portability has been announced and the plan would be affected perhaps by next year. Reliance and Tatas would roll out their services pronto pronto since they already own much of the infrastructure in form of manpower and physical assets. The GSM operators have gagged together in their rag tag association (even though their unity is in doubt) and are in effect an effective oligopoly. The entry of new players upsets their apple cart and they would be forced to introduce newer services to make themselves relevant.
On the other hand, this claim could be contested by the CDMA lobby because they have not done anything extra ordinary with their services. For example, no one single operator has a single sec pulse billing which benefits the customer. Suppose you talk at a strech for 5.03 minutes. You end up loosing the extra 57 seconds that remain unused. These are the extra seconds that are charged for without any accountability.
It isnt that the fossilised babus are not aware of the situation on ground. They have chosen to stay shut because their telephone bills are paid for by the taxpayers money. In any case, most of them end up being telephone consultants just like ex TRAI head Pradeep Baijal has done.
Hence, to round it off, I must admit that unravelling the telecom mess is bit like understanding a woman’s mind. I am not an expert but prefer to see things the way they affect us.
As the year draws to a close, the confusion in the telecom regulations persists. The ordinary paying customer is at the recieving end. As usual.
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