Fact of the matter is that the so called “associations” have done precious little to lobby for the access. The biggest promise was that of unbundling the local loop; i.e. open up BSNL’s rotting rat infested telephone exchanges for others so that broadband can be rejigged. It wasn’t so. It was rejected on the grounds that it amounted to privatization of the behemoth. We are none to wiser about it. After years of facing pathetic access, we are now forced to put up with pathetic Fair Usage Policies.

Mind you. My own RTI application from TRAI has clearly shown that these so called Fair Usage Policies are “extra-constitutional” and “illegal” meaning thereby that they don’t have the official sanction. It also means that TRAI has not done anything in this regard. At present, I have been busy wrapping up my work so it leaves me little time to pursue this. Of late, I am still waiting for the appeal filed against TRAI with CIC; bump….I have no word from them.

But then how united are we to face these idiots and force to act the way consumers want them? I find the different plans bumpkin. For once, the “lowest paid plan” is the one that no one wants; specially when it comes with dastardly and bastardly speeds. The Indian mindset plays spoilsport here and I cannot really blame the so called “market forces”. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate as to what sells and I cannot really point out a clear cut answer in the absence of solid data.

This brings forth the question of laying down fresh lines to service the market when already huge amounts of public monies have been spent over the past 50 years. Broadband is a long term planning with a huge amount of gestation built in. How many dumbfucks appreciate 1 Mbps? No one really notices the “speed” unless one wants minimal latency to connect their fancy PC’s or X Boxes. The population is minuscule.

Secondly, the recumbent operators are just not keen to service their areas. Has anyone heard of BSNL or even MTNL getting pro active to service their customers? They have the most fug ugly women to service their front desks who would make you feel as if you are interacting with your grannies. The point here is that an average run of the mill customer would hardly want to interact with a staff that is not inspired to service your needs.

So it all boils down to opening up the “exchanges” and allowing the people with gumption to lay down fat pipes and optic fiber cables to bring forth the goodies. It is not going to happen soon but then this is definitely a “suggestion”.

Since I am using Nokia E63, I came across two very nifty applications. One was Advanced Call Manager which blocks all incoming calls not listed on your phone book. You can selectively choose the “white list” or the “blacklist” to filter out the calls. The other is a SMS Manager which works on the same premise.

It’s worth it and has saned my life to a large extent.

A much more prudent option would be to analyze the situation and fix the guilty party. TRAI, to my understanding remains out of bounds for the general public. A public body ought to formulate the policies by LISTENING to them rather than stick around in isolation. Yet, it remains open to lobbyists of all hues and the post retirement bonanza is always an option for the retiring bureaucrats.

Remember Baijal? He had done nothing revolutionary while in TRAI but the worst part was that he went on to join some kind of a rag tag consortium of the private players as a “facilitator”. The exact details elude me since I had read this in one of the weekly magazines (for which I don’t have time now). Loosely translated, it is the big boys club where they are known for their wheeling dealings and lobbying since these guys are fully aware of the levers of power.

What this means for you and me? It means that SMS would be atrociously charged even though it is FREE for the telecom companies; customer care is a farce because these are fronts for these companies as the real buggers hide behind the smokescreen and your hard earned money is being palmed off easily.

My mail in response to Sunil Jain’s write up in Business Standard was published recently (in fact quite a lot of them though). I had clearly mentioned that BSNL does not lack the expertise to roll out the networks but rather it has been ham handed by TRAI and the network expansion plans locked up in court battles which stunts it’s growth. This means that a poor coverage of the private players in rural areas continues as it is because these bastards won’t let the others grow. This also means that behind the glitzy advertisements, your over dependence on these players is being taken for granted and for a ride.

TRAI needs to be dismantled or radically overhauled. It’s time that companies like BSNL speak out against them.

I am putting up the published email in it’s entirety.

The real reason for the loss of market share is the ham handed policies
and has nothing to do with lack of an opportunity. For over many years,
BSNL’s expansion for over 40 million lines for GSM has been held up in
court cases or stuck because of the objections of various ministries. This
speaks volumes about the operational efficiency of the PSU’s.

Mr Jain’s write up clearly points the anomaly. The entry of private
telecom players is welcome because they have worked hard to improve the
teledensity. However, this has definitely come at a cost to Indian
industry. None of the telecom equipment is manufactured in India and we
are dependent on the big majors from the Western world. Broadband as a
metric for the GDP languishes. Mobile connectivity based on voice alone
would not contribute to their kitty based on low ARPU’s; most of the
mobile operators have shied away from creating custom applications for
shoring up the value added services. Finally, having a private operator
does not mean that services are automatically ensured. There are a large
number of forums where people recount their horrible experiences with the
telecom operators; no one seems to be wiser than the other.

All of this to be kept in mind before they can get a clean chit. The real
public sector needs to be shored up, given operational freedom to choose
with the best practises and ideally no interference from any quarter. This
would be a fair enough ground to test for the acquisition of customers.
Further, the PSU needs to shed their complacency in case they need to
survive instead of relying alone on the taxpayers money.

Fuck them.

I was indeed surprised to read about Mukesh’s foray in the telecom business. This time in Broadband. Clearly there is a potential but he’s opted for Wimax delivery. It was all about Dad’s dream (as claimed earlier in the advertisements). It was clear to Mukesh and his team that in order to break through the clutter, they had to get something which was never heard off in the country before. Their “web stores” were one stop “digital hubs”. The idea, in theory was great. Yet, the gaming didn’t work off the way they wanted, it had severe billing issues and it appeared that Anil Ambani was interested to market the cellular version of telecom. Not the broadband variety.

Although, I am quite aware of the fact that they spent a huge packet of money to lay down the fibre optic cables and an attempt was made to provide for end to end connectivity. To add to their assholism (it is a very interesting mix of assholes trying to market something without creating a demand for it), their existing broadband plans sucked.

Any number of idiots mill around the forums to complain about Reliance but are totally unwilling to drag them to the court. You would find the same crop whining and sucking up later for the “new” wireless broadband because limited spectrum would mean that download limits would be rigorously imposed. Screwheads are aware of such issues yet claim a zillion times that they have been “ripped”.

Anyway, this interesting “brotherly rivalry” has no parallels. The billionaires with their army of lawyers are hell bent on making the “first move”. If I were in Mukesh’s telecom team, I would make the access “free”, charge for premium users and for those who wish to clog the networks, would have to pay the maximum. A free net access would mean that if your service has minimum downtime, more and more people would sign up for “premium services”. Simple logic but it’s beyond their thick skulls to understand. They are hard nosed businessmen. They think they know better.

See how this story evolves!

By it’s very definition, these messages are “unwelcome”. No one wants them. No one has ever requested for them. Yet, they stream in with a renewed vigor. I had planned some sort of RTI against them to be petitioned in TRAI. Yet, I am aware of the limitations on my time and the fact that one needs immense amount of patience for such a task. The way out has been by one feisty lady named Nivedita Sharma who has acted against these telecom operators. The cat is out of the bag. It is clear that all these numbers are leaked out in the databases. The fuckers who claim innocence are the ones who are worst culprits.

It isn’t brilliant journalism. Yet, kudos to Outlook (to some extent), that they carried out the lead story on the telemarketing calls. Unsolicited messages is supposed to be 50,000 crore industry (and growing)…by what estimates? it seems to be a simple premise. The more one casts the net wide, there is bound to be bunch of suckers who would fall for the “ravishing offers”. I am surprised that pimps of all hues have not yet started marketing their “massage services” as yet! Again I am surprised that Outlook has not bothered to check for the lucrative advertisement deals which come licking up the industry “executives”. Or the media managers. Or that their subscription is pits and pathetic and only a certain section of demography reads it.

Who knows.

Yet, the picture of Sarna isn’t awe inspiring. The pose set is clearly reflective of the intellectual and moral rot in the system. And these bureaucrats are a representative of such a system.

I am also linking to the Delhi High Court judgement (pdf) which I came across. See if it makes sense for anyone to file a class action suit in the consumer court. I can, but I need time to do it.

According to Neilsen survey (here), both Android and Apple iPhone are increasing their market share. It was in news recently that Apple had increased it’s market capitalization as compared to Microsoft and overtook it for a good measure. Steve Ballmers reaction was subdued even though he crowed that it is Desktop that matters the most. The debate has shifted to cloud computing; whether it is relevant in the present context and whether people would shift their loyalties. Smart phones have becomes means to access the cloud; either by applications (sandboxed for a good measure so that it doesn’t crash the OS), or by browsers.

Here in, Android and Apple iphone OS is leading the mindspace. Since the pictures in the Neilsen survey are under copyright, I cannot copy and paste them; but it is clear that traditional players are loosing the space. Blackberry is jaded and crap dip shit hiked prices make no sense; specially when they want to crack the Indian market. in a similar vein, Android is focused on the American market because thats the place where SOME action is taking place. Nokia isn’t a surprise omission because it’s symbian OS as a platform for a smart phone is ham handed by serious lack of apps.Those assholes need a bummer up their ass to make the phones more worthwhile because dip shit policies don’t work. Having a broad range of compatibility with the different email service providers is good but to make a phone “interesting” and “must have” needs hard work and a marketing muscle.

Coming back to the original question. Can the smartphone be the next wave of computing? Is the day of the laptop or the netbook numbered? It isn’t so because these are different ways of accessing the same thing. Ways and means matter. End don’t.

What does it mean for Indian consumer? It means nothing. Because the smart phone market is limited to a minuscule percentage of people who would perhaps drive the value added service associated with impending 3G (or any of it’s avatars). Which means Data. The network operators are going to ration the resource because it has been claimed that a regular tom dick or harry doesn’t need the bandwidth as compared to “top 5% of the users” who “clog the network”. It is the regular tom dick and harry who need “enough bandwidth” to access their email.

Fact of the matter is that in absence of a decent option, smart phones in India are more likely to remain a “show off”; much more like the “object of desire” whose utility is of questionable value.

In true interests of providing them a fair ground, I had emailed them couple of days back to ask them about their strategy to expand in India given the stiff competition in various circles. The market is already saturated (I still wonder how do they conjure up numbers for “millions”) and whether the potential really exists or not.

There has been no response from the email id listed in their website. I personally feel that none of the telecom companies wish to actively engage bloggers. Neither they are interested in any independent verification of their stated claims. This too is a humbling thought because had it been affiliated to mainstream media house, they would have licking my feet

Yet the regular readers of the blog are aware of my antipathy to the mainstream media houses. I have stood against their stated principles and their motivations. Neither I am interested in strapping on their published press releases which reads like a crap dip shit literature.

I still invite any one from Uninor to please clear the air about themselves and use this platform to disseminate information about themselves. It would be interesting to reach out to the possible target audience by means of social networking sites, twitter and blogs. A company that responds in a poor pre sales manner, is likely to do so after sales too. Unless, they wish to correct this perception!

The big question mark then boils down to the fact that competing technologies are making a beeline for the customer space. Nokia has upped the stake and launched a slew of handsets which are “3G” compatible. The networks are seeing huge amounts of raw investments in the space. Yet, in the previous write up, I had clearly mentioned that India represents a missed opportunity to shift to 4G instead of the present 3G investments. What the hell is the difference between 3G and 4G?

Here is an idiots guide to 3G versus 4G difference. It all boils down to download speeds. Although, in fair judgment, the download speeds are going to be marginally better than the existing experience on the handsets. We have seen multitude of ringtones and crap shit like that making a neat little profit from all that. Yet, the fad is bound to wear off. Sooner than later. Data can NEVER be the differentiator here because there is NO ecosystem for the same.

It only boils down to “operational efficiency” for the voice traffic.

No amount of crap dip shit research can explain the projected telecom users. Neither the best estimates. Nor the tax collections or the opaque methodology to count the number of customers. It is only a grab of the public resources by private players. Most of the private payers would exit out of the current game, leaving the field wide open for the bigger international players in the market. That would ultimately decide the price for the spectrum running into billions of dollars. That is the reason why Raja conceded to the big national players because the lobbying happens in their backyard. Any new International player has to kiss their ass to get a “toehold” here in Indian market that is supposed to be “exciting”. Fact is that no one fucking cares because we are way behind as laggards in either 2.5G or 3G or 4G (or even any of the new avatars) designed for future use.

TRAI releases it’s numbers from the industry proclamations; it has not thought to independently audit the claims. Neither does the Department of Telecom (or may be that I am unaware of any such publication in the mainstream media). I have criticized 3G on many occasions and I see no merit in sinking in huge amount of funds on a technology which would get outdated in rapidly evolving 4G standards. All the more, India missed a golden opportunity to set up it’s own standards for mobile telephony thus forcing the mobile operators to set up an ecosystem of not only the entire gamut of the telecom equipment but handsets also. It would have spurred on demand for quality and generated much better employment prospects than importing the crap dip shit that we are forced to put up with now.

No handset comes closer in terms of oomph and style; something of the likes of an Apple iPhone with it’s iTunes store. While it is profitable, something similar is next to impossible to find here in India- the market of apps is right there but there is no serviceable product.

Nokia has failed terribly; I am definitely impressed by the new layout of it’s Ovi Store but trying to find an app that works across all platforms is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To worsen the matters, the price quoted is in Euros. If any asshole from Nokia India is reading this, please understand that its not possible to pay in Euros here because THAT is NOT the national currency. Besides that, none of the applications are a must have. No wonder, the Finns are getting clobbered left right and centre; the market share has definitely slid down to 60% as per the estimates.

This brings me to the final question. If we dont really have apps or the snazzy and the jazzy handsets, what are we really fighting for? Why should 3G should really be auctioned?

If Internet connectivity is the SOLE criterion, then public Wifi’s should be set up. The Wifis should be free for access upto a certain speed limit; beyond that a price mechanism be set up for higher access speeds. Or broadband initiative be accelerated with the huge amount of Universal Service Obligation Fund (last heard it had swelled up to 18,000 crores). But well, since the lobby market exists in a big way, we can only hope.

For a better round up of the telecom scenario, please read an insightful write up on Knowledge@Wharton write up.

Rajeev Srinivasan has a list of the write ups detailing this “scandal” of monumental proportions. It is rumored to be worth…hold your breath….22 billion dollars!

Imagine the kind of money, if invested in broadband or community Wifis would truly make us a “superpower” indeed!

I quote the relevant text (emphasis mine).

Documents available with The Pioneer show that Central Bureau of Investigation DIG Vineet Agarwal had on November 16, 2009, sought call detail records of Nira Radia from Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) Milap Jain. “It has been reliably learnt that certain middlemen, including one Ms Nira Radia of M/s Noesis Consultancy, were actively involved in the above-mentioned (spectrum scam) criminal conspiracy,” Agarwal’s letter to Jain, seeking the detailed call records, stated.

On November 20, 2009, as per Jain’s instructions, Joint Director of Income Tax Ashish Abrol provided the details of conversation between Radia and key players in the spectrum scam, including A Raja.

“There are some direct conversations between Ms Radia and the Telecom Minister. In some other conservations, Ms Radia boasts of having helped some of the telecom operators in their efforts to obtain licences/spectrums. Ms Radia has also been in regular touch with Shri Chandolia,” confirmed Abrol to the CBI. RK Chandolia was Raja’s private secretary during the time of spectrum allocation and has since been elevated as an economic adviser in the Department of Telecommunication.

Nira Radia is the person who is under scanner for lobbying in the Ministry of Telecom.

Radia is an NRI, who landed in India in early 2000 for some liaison work for aviation companies. Of the nine companies that benefited from the dubious spectrum allocation by Raja, the CBI found that four companies were “serviced” by Radia.

Highly-placed sources said the CBI was denied permission by top authorities to interrogate Radia even though the telephone intercepts clearly exposed her role in the scam, which cost an estimated Rs 1,00,000 crore to the exchequer. “There are some direct conversations between Ms Radia and the Telecom Minister. In some other conservations, Ms Radia boasts of having helped some of the telecom operators in their efforts to obtain licences/spectrums.

CBI is now probing the scam. But then, CBI has been used as an instrument to intimidate rather than be of any “benefit”.

The idea is to screw up the alliance partners and make them more amenable to persuasion in the electoral political compulsions. Everyone was AWARE of the “scam”, the likes of Swam Telecom (promoted by Anil Ambani) who made a windfall fortune and and Unitech which erstwhile had interests ONLY in real estate.

….real estate companies Swan and Unitech bagged the spectrum license at a throw away price and they off-loaded their shares at a whopping price to multi-national telecom giants. The Swan Telecom bagged the license for Rs.1537 crore for operating in 13 circles. Within months (September) it sold its 45 per cent of shares to Etisalat, the telecom giant in UAE for 900 million US dollars (Approximately Rs.4500 crore).

Similarly, the Unitech, another real estate company too entered into a bumper deal, without investing anything in telecom infrastructure. The company got license to operate in 22 circles for Rs.1651 crore. Within weeks, it sold 60 per cent shares for Rs.6120 crores to the Norwegian company Telenor, who is currently a major telecom player in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

More here.

This is just another media circus. Raja is just another player in the game. We are all suckers AS USUAL.