At best, the draft proposals sound what has been proposed; but the industry and their associations would definitely seek to water it down.  Any customer “friendly” variant is not welcome for obvious reasons. In any case, the draft policy (specifically on broadband) needs specific inputs rather than broad sweeping generalizations that cannot be fulfilled in the current scenario. The Government of India also needs to do away with self styled experts and focus on basics to understand the need to encourage the adoption of broadband.

Let me be honest. I haven’t read the draft proposal in it’s entirety. So I would prefer to link it to someone who has done it. As luck would have it, I stumbled again on Medianama  with their take on the proposed policy changes. I would only highlight the issues that I feel need to be addressed regarding broadband alone.

1) Definition of Broadband : Always on with a minimum speed of 2 Mbps and not as proposed  to be changed in the year 2015. This is because with the change at the centre, the policy decisions invariably get stuck in the red tape. The whole bunch of users have been clamoring for 2 Mbps as the basic benchmark in order to utilize the actual benefit of the broadband.

Why? Because 256 kbps is pathetic. You cannot video chat effectively. You cannot stream media applications. You cannot do zilch. Still, the definition remains stuck at mere “doubling” of the speed. 100 Mbps is a promised pipe dream.

2) There have been effective proposals for setting up interlink peer exchanges in India to replace NIXI. An excellent blog post (not written by me but Mathew), clearly details the methodology to achieve this.  The highlights (sic):

NIXI is supposed to be a non-profit organization (that part I believe), however it allows ISPs to essentially charge each other tariffs of Rs25 per GB. At 1gbit/s, with an in:out ratio of 3:1 and utilization of 80% or so, this comes out to a total monthly bill of Rs44 lakh, or about Rs17/GB.

That’s a hell of a lot of coin, considering that 2 months of that could pay for a year’s supply of bandwidth to Singapore. Yes, a year (well, a single STM-1 @ 155mbit/s, anyway, but the cost still only works out to about Rs13/GB).

As you can imagine, if I, as an ISP, can save Rs4 PER GIGABYTE, I’m damn well going to,

otherwise I have to pass that on to you – the consumer.

3) The proposed opening up of the last mile access by wireless is a useless idea. Wireless or any of it’s iterations cannot, I repeat cannot be relied on for data intensive applications. There is no draft proposal for public access of Wifi’s bankrolled by the municipal corporations. Wifi’s can be used for another lofty purpose. To route the mobile network calls in hard to reach areas. Another brilliant stroke would be to encourage the uptake of the VoIP.

4) Even if you have 100 Mbps rolling in a shiny FTTH all the way up to your home, the lack of “real application” is a dampener. What would the mass of humanity rolling in this country use 100 Mbps for? Facebook? There is no concept proposal for encouraging the uptake of the broadband applications, for fostering a community of developers, lack of clear focus on the e-commerce, overt valuations of the existing firms and the works.  Granted that this is chicken and egg situation,  100 Mbps broadband networks are mere pipe dreams till the time there is focus on backing up a reliable infrastructure and true “unlimited access”.

5) Unbundling of the last mile access: The PSU’s are like wives. You can’t live with them. You can’t kill them. Simple. However, it does not mean that the last mile should be unbundled without having a proper oversight of the sector. I had believed earlier that proper competition on the same copper would effectively bring down the prices. However, this is fraught with it’s own hassles. The copper is pubic property and I am sure that anyone investing money would extract his own pound of flesh in terms of ownership of the cable. (This one is a retort to Medianama).

This should not be encouraged. Instead, the companies need to be given incentives to invest in the cable, peer through a separate exchange, a unified license to allow them VoIP applications, create infrastructure for niche products. For example, there could be an ISP specifically for gaming. Let it have the best response times in terms of ping. A separate company for IPTV applications. A different company for say, tele-medicine solutions with end to end infrastructure. Back it up with rural broadband initiatives and then you have customized solutions for different segments.

Let these marginal players slug it out with the established partners. Let them expand the pie. Mobile telephony did not happen overnight but by relentless onslaught of the advertisements to create a need for the product. I am not a big fan of the mobile applications, but that does not bias my outlook for the explosive growth, even though the numbers are disputed crap.

Broadband is a niche application. The draft proposals are mere eye wash and they need to be understood in their context before we bleat and crow about being a fucked up IT “superpower”.

What I agree with Medianama is the crap “fair usage policies”. But I have already stressed on the “unlimited” access. This is hardly going to be achieved and despite claims by fucktards of downloading 100, 500 or even 1000 GB is hogwash. As far as the net neutrality goes, the “faster access” to certain businesses is a huge controversial issue. The ping times in this country are so awful that is hardly going to matter.

Hence, all the more the sarkari buffons need to be given a pat on their asses for making some effort to think over the issues. With all due respect, I am also uploading the critique to their proposals. I am not sure who is going to read them, but for sure, this is better than just sucking up and doing nothing.

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Apart from this, there has been no earth shattering development in the past couple of months on the telecom scene. I am keeping an eye on it; shall be updating on it soon.

Thanks! As always, the best way to keep in touch is with the RSS feeds.

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Opera Mini

http://imgur.com/PZwCF

If you look carefully, bulk of the developing and the underdeveloped countries utilize the mobile web to access social networking sites. US (and some other developed economies) are lower down the scale.

Interestingly, the data transferred per user is a pathetic 7 MB (averaged over the month perhaps?) which means that operators are still being generous with their limits. However,  this is a crude approximation. For once, we have a clear proof that mobile internet is definitely a part of their value added services kitty but is NOT the revenue driver for them. They are offering it because there is no alternative.

This also explains their aggressive stance to get the 3G spectrum; primarily to add more voice customers than to offer data services.

If you look at the snapshot of the popular phones, Nokia is still leading the pack but majority of them are NOT smartphones. These java based handsets are pathetic in terms of functionality and at best useful for “checking the status updates” on Facebook.

A surprise entry is that of “Micromax” handset; they have capitalized on aggressive marketing and low price entry point.

Unfortunately, this does not portend good for the broadband initiatives. A cursory glance at the top sites (Google leads the pack) is only indicative. Google has benefited from being the default search engine on the browser and hence the port of call for any search. I barely use my handset for GPRS (or EDGE) for web surfing because smartphones (and their form factor) is basically useless to transact anything useful. For me, the only reason to invest is for email.

Nevertheless, this report can again be questioned in terms of “growth of users”. It is not clear about how the methodology has been arrived at and what has constituted the “growth in real terms”. However, one thing is clear. Most of the web sites focused on Indian content don’t have mobile strategies to counter the growth in the user base. Pathetic.

Indeed, with majority of the young adults unable to read/write or even engage in meaningful conversations on Indian polity, this “dumbification” was expected.

Facebook, although shows some presence (in terms of mobile access), mobile broadband is still “not hot” in US of A. There could be myriad factors but then Opera’s state of web access is best a “snapshot” of the handsets and it’s deal with the OEM‘s to bundle the product.

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I had the unfortunate instance of coming across an Idea Cellular subscriber. The complaints were related to call drops and inability to connect to international numbers.

While mobile number portability is an attractive option, yet the only drawback is that it cannot transfer the remaining balance to the operator you wish to get ported to. Repeated emails to their customer care went unanswered; I am glad we got rid of it.

A recommended option is to avoid it totally and look around for MNP.

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I could give a rebuttal to each and every slide posted here.

And of course, it’s not hunky dory. So despite the huge potential (because of population), why are we not seeing the explosion of opportunity in this space?

Fact is that VAS (value added service) is an unproven concept. In the Indian market, no one wants to risk out a potential investment of crores before finding out that this is a dead dodo. I don’t have authentic figures for the existing services available and in any case, no one releases them publicly as a matter of fact. It is safe to presume that VAS is a market that never took off beyond the “ring tones” market. It is unlikely that we are going to see any action in this space in the near future. Indian mobile “revolution” is seriously voice based though.

The same analogy holds true for the data services (GPRS and 3G) as well.

I have written about it extensively earlier (Do have a look at the related entries).

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In the same vein, broadband has been given a complete miss. In some recent telecom conference, the same issue was raised with assholes patting themselves on their back about “mythical 100 million” users. Telecom is a very dynamic field; it is impossible to nail down the exact number of subscribers unless you have strict defined criteria for what constitutes an active connection and the user who has fallen off the grid. Nil. Nada.

3G has been a monumental waste of resources (indirectly your money, you assholes); for all your crowing about the “world class data services”, these companies are sticking up a sore thumb up your ass. In terms of indirect taxes, huge mark ups on the tariff plans, advertising costs and pathetic end result to consumers (who likes caps on the broadband, you sissies), consumer is the end looser.

The reason why everyone jumped on the “3G bandwagon” was because of spectral efficiencies and not otherwise. No one likes dropped calls; 3G is going to ameliorate that. This also gave the companies a reason to upgrade their ancient infrastructure and opening up the backdoors for “real time snooping”.

Hence, these three issues are the most “rattling issues”, in my opinion. They are unlikely to be addressed in fancy documentations, “think tanks”, myriad “research firms” and others because none of them seem to have a fundamental grasp on the issues. So for all those morons who whimper on the forums about “lack of services”, you are unlikely to see any major change coming this year either.

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I had “cleaned up” the clutter recently; taking away a shit load of the “social integration” and the crap. In my opinion, social integration is useless. Hence, any overt reliance on Twitter or Facebook is bound to be difficult for the companies/start ups that aim to rely on them for their needs.

Although, they may be good for SEO/search rankings, I prefer to abhor them, keeping the Twitter account strictly for seeking immediate resolution to complaints or check out the new web sites which rely on OAuth log in systems. Then it is a matter of just disconnecting them.

There was an interesting post on OMG Ubuntu site on LiveFyre; hence this is a follow up post to bolster the argument in favor of LiveFyre.

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For long, I have felt the need to do a “consumer survey” which is motivated by real customers than the paid for shit stuff that most telecom operators crow about. It is impossible to capture data from the cross section of the user population and the retards who crowd on the forums would not be able to grasp the import of this exercise.

I realize the difficulties inherent in this exercise immediately. First and the foremost is lack of actual “complaint data”; TRAI does put up the figures online but there is a mechanism where these operators have to report back the action taken on the complaints. This is a good mechanism but I don’t see it enforced or whatever TRAI does, they are clueless idiots to make this data work for a better policy formulation.

Ditto for the existing delivery of the complaint mechanism. An aggrieved customer calls the operator in call center, is given a complaint number (not always) and no time frame for the resolution. I am presuming that their workflow is designed for the said purpose. Like any corporate organization working on “cost savings”, this is possibly “outsourced”. A smart team utilizes “dumb terminals” clogging up the bandwidth for most of “executives”. All the while, these brainless sods make the customers wait even more utilizing the spectrum.

This is a “presumption” but this workflow is bound to keep the customers “unhappy”. Billing and metering issues are definitely top of the list; unfortunately, even these thorny issues are not resolved in their entirety.

What needs to be done? Actually, this could easily be a dissertation exercise, capture and visualize the data and present a solid case report to the telecom companies. However, the implementation needs money and I am unlikely to see any movement on that count.

I could help with some possible criteria; reach me on the email (under “contact”).

One more thing. Reliance, Aircel and Airtel easily top the shit list.

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The entire article can be viewed here; although I don’t wish to skip over the juiciest parts (and something that I have always mentioned in this blog that is patently wrong with the auctions and the way it has been handled).

On First Come First Served Basis:

The Committee note that the First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) basis for the issue of Licences and Allocation of Spectrum has been followed by the Department on the argument that the announced UASL guidelines have made it open for new licences to be issued on continuous basis. The Committee’s scrutiny of the records reveal that in the Basic Service Licences guidelines, there is a reference to FCFS but nowhere in the UASL guidelines, the term FCFS has found a mention implying thereby it has no sanctity. In fact, on 24th November, 2003, the then Minister of Communications and IT had approved the Department’s proposal to give licence Spectrum on FCFS basis, but it was not codified in the UASL guidelines. Thus, there has been no such legally established principle as ‘FCFS’, at best it can be termed as a prescription to be followed for grant of licence/Spectrum…….

On Role of Media:

The Committee note that the brazen irregularities in the allotment of 2G spectrum and UAS licences were unravelled by some investigative journalists much before the Radia tapes came into the public domain. A journalist who played a stellar role in exposing the irregularities, on being asked about the sources of his information, replied that the information was collected through the RTIs and from some public-spirited insiders…..

Presumptive Loss:

….Intriguingly, neither the DoT nor the TRAI has quantified the precise loss. Unfortunately, the DoT instead of admitting an unconscionable act, advanced the plea that theoretical exercises based on economic modeling are fraught with simplistic assumptions and that no methodology can be suggested by them to calculate the loss…..The Committee feel that giving dual technology licence to the CDMA operators and new UAS licences in 2007-08 at a price determined in 2001 was not only imprudent but also smacks of a design.

Shortcomings in the Implementation aspect:

….While the first phase was implemented, the second phase was conveniently and intentionally, as subsequent events substantiate, overlooked. In the process, devising an efficient allocation formula for Spectrum alongwith an appropriate price remained unachieved as delinking the price of Spectrum from the issue of licences was given a go bye, disregarding the Cabinet decision. The Committee are deeply distressed that due to violation of the Cabinet decision and as a consequence of such deliberate omission, the issue of UAS license and allocation of Spectrum in 2007-08 at the price discovered in 2001 caused a staggering, but wholly avoidable, revenue loss…..

The Committee also desire that the price of Spectrum be delinked from the issue of licences without further delay and seek explanations as to why this important decision has not been implemented as yet…..

Role and Responsibility of TRAI:

The Committee note that the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are not binding upon the Central Government. But it is mandatory for the Government to seek recommendation of the TRAI in respect of matters pertaining to the need and timing for introduction of new service providers and terms and conditions of licence to a service provider. But the Committee are surprised to note that while seeking TRAI’s recommendation on 13 April, 2007 on various issues, the DoT did not seek recommendations on grant of new licences despite the mandatory requirement. Even though the decisions of the Government is final whether to accept or reject the TRAI’s recommendation, not seeking such recommendations at all speaks volumes for the DoTs malafide designs to circumvent the established provisions in the TRAI Act..

So now we know that TRAI basically is a useless toothless regulator.

But TRAI is not above all. So read the following:

Besides, the Committee find TRAI’s flip-flop in its recommendations also contributed towards the Department’s arbitrary and unilateral decisions. For example, in 2003 TRAI recommended that as the existing players have to improve the efficiency of utilization of Spectrum and if Government ensures availability of additional Spectrum, then within the existing licensing regime, they may introduce additional players through a multistage bidding process as was followed in the case of introduction of the fourth cellular operator.

The bad news:

One aspect that engages the attention of the Committee is the fact that worldwide, especially in the developed countries, the licensing and Spectrum related functions are actually performed by the Regulators and not by the Government unlike in India. The Committee consider such a practice as one of the main reasons for the DoT’s arbitrary decisions in dealing with the consultation process with the Authority.

The big players have engaged the Department of Telecom and the TRAI executives get exemplary post retirement benefits as fancy board members. Of course, they are there to liaise with the existing bureaucrats setting up huge questions on conflict of interests. I really don’t know whether these clauses are in built in their “rules” but if you look at the RTI applications to make their assets public, these faceless bastards need to be more accountable. Not all of them are like that but the blackest of the black sheep are bringing a huge shame to rest of the community.

Pathetic. Ours is totally a banana republic.

On 3G Spectrum (Which I personally feel has been “over-inflated”):

The Committee are happy to note that the auction of 3G Spectrum through an open and transparent bidding process has established the true value of the finite scare resource. However, as apprehension has been raised at many quarters that by paying such hefty amount to get 3G Spectrum, the successful bidders might pass on the burden to the consumers, the Committee impress upon the TRAI to keep a watch on the development in this regard and protect the interest of the consumer in tandem with the DoT.

Hope you are feeling bad enough by reading this sorry state of affairs.

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However, EFF disagrees with the basic assumption of “closed wifi” networks asking instead for different protocols. Howsoever, reasonable their demands might sound, I think it’s stupidity to let someone else piggy ride on my network; specially in the prevailing scenario.

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A little while back, Rajesh Jain had run a “Big Idea for India” contest. He has touched on many issues in his previous posts; there was a lack of serious debate on Broadband. This contest was open to all; I had mailed my entry to Rajesh on his email.
He had received over 150 responses for the same.

Jain announced the winners recently; in which yours truly has also figured (the names are in an random order). The contest was judged by Jain and Atanu Dey (whose blog is linked to in the blog roll in side bar). Of course, he has been a huge influence in shaping up my thought process and I owe a lot to him.

The post, in it’s entirety follows here. For the regular readers, there is nothing new because I have already touched on these issues in the previous posts extensively.

This is one answer and highly underrated option. The following scenario is envisaged:

1) Optic fibres running across to get the data without caps. We need fibre to home instead of outdated copper. Last mile access is contentious; while opening up last mile for private players is contentious, this needs to be debated. Britain has opened it up under strict regulations and British Telecom has been forced to upgrade it’s infrastructure to retain customers.

2) Heavy public investment for scalable architechture. Not 3G guzzling up spectrum but community Wifi’s (pay per use or perhap involving the municipalities making the people accountable directly for the level of involvement).

3) Create an ecosystem of open source applications to harness ideas; make it easier for people to access services. (Open Source standards promote interoperability; closed source is meant for perpetual profiteering at public’s expense).

4) Opening up the Government’s accumulated data through API’s etc; create models around it. For e.g., data from GPS installed in public transport would easily display the estimated arrival time through SMS if needed on the mobile phones. (“Hacker culture” is missing in India; most of the Bangalore flotsam is moronic army of debuggers and script kiddies).

5) Teleconferencing would make it easier for people to people contacts; Gujarat has shown the way! Why can’t India have something similar to Skype? (There is a move to have something similar in the GNU world where encryption would be based on open standards).

6) Education sector would get a boost; not only invite faculty, stream educational videos, hold tele-sessions but teach kids for a wonderful world of Internet. (Pilot experiments in Bihar/Gujarat have been well received; the idea needs scaling up).

7) Spin off benefits from e-commerce applications.

The potential is huge; if you are planning it to share with BJP, the easiest way out is to break the ISP‘s monopoly, hold TRAI responsible for execution (not DoT) and revise Broadband definition to at least 2 Mbps (UNLIMITED, WITHOUT any caps).

Thanks Rajesh!

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I had been busy in debugging a new web site; we haven’t moved in yet to a new hosting but it would definitely be on my calling card. It has been a lot of hard work; generating ideas and writing in documentation.

The default theme has been changed; I found the older ones to be better in terms of utilization of the space. The previous theme was overdone; a Twitter widget to roll the latest news on Broadband was introduced for any unique visitors. However, since most of the readers are ill-informed, I decided to give up on that too.

There was an option to subscribe by email; this has been done away with that too. I had set up a simple MailChimp account (RSS2Email) but due to lack of any response, it doesn’t make any sense to utilize their free services. It’s a lovely service and once I have a regular volume of posts; I’d revert to it.

The tag cloud has been expanded. I had set up a plugin for “contextual posts” (i.e. similar) but it did not serve the purpose. The sociable plug in has also been trimmed for easier management without cluttering up the interface.

If you wish to keep abreast of any changes here, I strongly suggest following this up through RSS feeds. Email is a passe’ and RSS is truly the way to go.

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I usually refrain from making any political posts here because this is not the right platform. However, I do assume that readers have some basic iota of knowledge about polity and make genuine efforts to seek out information. Admittedly, the blog roll has been trimmed down over the past few months but is an enough indication to seek news from alternative sources. Hence, I also rely heavily on different opinions to balance out the events as they unfold or else the media, in cahoots with the powers, is able to pull wool over the eyes.

As I have mentioned earlier, one of the major limitations of blogs is it’s discovery of content. Unless, it is spread far and wide, it would remain hidden. A vast legion and an army of morons descends on Twitter and Facebook which makes an engaging discussion, nearly impossible. I do miss the earlier interaction with like minded folks on the forums but right now it is swamped with idiots; the same ones who shouldn’t have populated the earth in the first place.

Nevertheless, first the 2G scam. It was actually “unleashed” by Congress as a careful calculated move to deflect attention from Commonwealth Games fiasco and overt attention from Gandhis who have actually benefitted from the windfall. It is not possible to point in the exact figure but we can be assured that it is a tidy sum stashed away in havens and far from the public scrutiny. Another calculated move was to discredit the ruling DMK regime and force them on the backfoot for poll understandings and fine tune CBI to extract maximum political mileage. When it was clear that this has not ensured the required “effect” i.e. people rising in revolt, Raja was held and packed away to Tihar Jail.

Although, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, any political observer worth his/her salt would not deny the way events unfolded. In a place like Tamil Nadu, where Congress by itself would not have been able to make any dent (given it’s near absence and lack of charisma in Southern States), DMK is still the best bet. So after wresting the key seat sharing agreement, DMK and Congress are still in the alliance and would face the electorate together. It’s surprising, that despite the “North Indian’s face” in North, it is aligning itself with a party that has steadfastly kept “anti north indian” stance. In short, regional chauvinism reigns surpreme and no one questions them.

This was later followed by a stalled parliament with a constitution of a PAC and a JPC; statuatory bodies under Parliament of India which is oddly making some news off and on and was agreed to after supposedly considerable lobbying efforts by the opposition. It’s wisdom may well be questioned; as far as I am aware of, it is a fact finding mission but does not prosecute. This again has ensured that public attention is deflected away from the massive commonwealth games fiasco; there is no iota of doubt that Kalmadi and his team are mere fronts for people in power to siphon off public money.

Now comes the “lokpal bill” and the balding gandhian asshole called as Hazare. The timing of his plank as “anti-corruption” is a huge suspect. But first, a reality check on the lokpal bill or what has been offered to the Government:

Jan Lokpal Bill is open ended and confers unlimited powers. So it goes without saying that selecting the Lok Pal Members is the single most important task.  There are no checks and balances at all in the bill that would make it idiot member proof.   In other words, if the mainstream institutions have been compromised, there is NOTHING in the bill that would prevent the Lokpal from being compromised too.  It gets worse because of two reasons.

1. The mainstream institutions (CVC, CBI, CAG, etc) can be turned around by people power every 5 years. That it doesnt seem to happen is due to there not being enough free agent voters in the system.  We can hope for a 20-25% increase in free agent voters which will straighten these institutions in short time.
2. A compromised Lokpal will wreak havoc and lay to waste the other institutions. There is no chance of getting them voted out.

The timing is circumspect.

Sandhya Jain hits the nail right on the head: (emphasis mine throughout).

Anna Hazare’s so-called fast-unto-death is questionable for its anti-democratic disdain for elected government and people’s representatives. The timing is equally suspect – right after the adjournment of Parliament after passing the Union Budget. It may be recalled that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was forced to gift Rs. 40,000/- crores to the leaky MREGA project favoured by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her unelected friends in the National Advisory Council; his attempts to curtail this hole in the exchequer enraged her.

As if on cue, Hazare, NAC cronies, Rockefeller Foundation-funded Magsaysay Award winners, and other usual suspects, ganged up against the besieged prime minister…..If laws are to be adopted and enacted in this manner, do we need either government or Parliament?

My point is that he is instigating the middle class intelligentsia that comes to hear him at Jantar Mantar – and neither he nor any of his allies is a grassroots mass leader ……..he moots an unelected oligarchy. This does not bode well for the nation or the society.

Sandhya Jain goes on to write:
…..the idea that Magsaysay Award-winning Indians should figure in the Lokpal selection panel. This stinks of an American hand….. we shall never know what kind of private networking could take place in government and bureaucracy via its favoured persons, to further Rockefeller interests.

India’s high profile elites derive status from the international NGO cocktail circuit. Their insatiable quest for funds and glory makes them adopt ideas and concepts without examining their validity in an Indian context. As they are very conscious of their elite status, they have unacceptable contempt for the people and their elected representatives.

We cannot endorse these non-accountable and glittering Western satellites.

Compare and contrast with what Times of India’s Shalini Singh has to write about it.

Although she rallies against the CBI for filing improper chargesheet, she praises Hazare for his stand.

The CBI’s latest chargesheet in the 2G scam investigation…… Timid and short on detail,it serves more as a lesson for students of law and police academies on how not to make a chargesheet.

…..clean chit to the Prime Minister (4 pages), the attorney general (2 pages) and the Tatas (7 pages).

The 60-page final report does not have a single line to prove corruption nor does it even remotely mention the evidence….

Shalini writes further:

…. it is not keen on fulfilling its own mandate of a statutory investigating agency, the CBI has assumed the role of an auditor instead. This is an important move, which helps create a mid-point of Rs 30,984.55 crore between the CAG’s Rs 1.76 lakh crore revenue loss figure, which is accurately based on TRAI recommendations equating 2G spectrum with 3G spectrum, and telecom minister Kapil Sibal’s irreverent and indeed outright frivolous “zero loss” premise.

Anna Hazare’s agitation is timely, appropriate and critical. The CBI making a joke of the 2G scam investigation despite the Supreme Court’s best efforts shows how desperately India needs anti-corruption laws and institutions like the Lokpal to bring in the changes that Hazare and others in civil society seek.

I haven’t seen the chargesheet (and neither I am a legal expert in these matters) so it’s hard to express solidiarity with Shalini’s assertions. It is also pertinent to note that she has been writing about the 2G scam over the period of time, so it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. I don’t want to write anything else about TOI because they have a history of suing independent bloggers and I don’t want a lame dick dingbat to send me a legal notice.

Jokes apart, the present course of events is muddy. No one can claim authority but everything is weighed and calculated to make matters worse for spirited and ordinary citizens. It is difficult to separate the chaff from the grain and interestingly, some of the mainstream publications in English Language Media have been critical of this balding asshole. However, its not really surprsing because the ELM (English Language Media); specifically the newspapers tend to toe the press releases issued by the Government of India.

With these limitations (of the blogging platform) and the din of thousands of idiots collectively crowing as representative of the civil society, it’s impossible to break through the logjam. Still, I seriously hope that sane people in this country get enough ejection velocity to get out of this nation for good because we have turned into a banana republic. It’s bad enough. Really.

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Opera Mini has touched over 100 million users riding on exclusive deals with various operators. It should indeed be a moment of pride for them; but at the same time, earning undisclosed revenue from Google as the default search engine.

This news comes at the heels of launch of new Opera Mail (link to their mail blog) which gives away 1 GB of free email space and full IMAP access. As a long standing customer of Fastmail (full enhanced access), I can testify for the service as near perfect. In the past 4 years, it possibly had about less than an hour of a downtime. My Opera had been conceptualized as a community based effort and has undergone radical changes in the past few years. And it has become better over the past few years of usage; interestingly, Opera has the best sync among the browsers baked right in.

Indeed, it has been at the innovation curve and nothing really beats it’s mobile offering. As a testimony to it’s growing user base, even Youporn has a dedicated option for opera mini users

Opera has done the right thing to bet it’s money on mobile offering. While it’s desktop may not be a hot property (I no longer use it because of Firefox 4), I would be on it’s on long term growth in mobile and connected devices where it is poised for a massive leap in times to come. And yes, one of the most understated technologies from Opera- it’s widgets. As standalone “objects”, they are platform agnostic; i.e. they can run on ANY platform if coded for. Much like the RSS feeds though.

I am unlikely to see any improvements in it’s feed reader in the near future (or atleast the company has not communicated anything so far). If I were to take a decision, I would market the desktop browser as a “content discovery engine”. The RSS feeds be contextually linked in form of tags (incluuding the emails) based on the text of the email/feeds coming through.

Email is the next logical option; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a basic form of email delivery through the mobile browser in times to come or at least some form of email notifications. Fastmail has the infrastructure to scale up; but I think their servers are going to be different but with the same Cyrus backend and absolutely topnotch IMAP services.

Where next? Opera, being opera, can code browsers alone. M2 Mail client is the best cross platform client out there (I think after thunderbird), and there is some talk to replicate the same “format” on the web. Nevertheless, the minimalist outlay is going to work fine though.

Since, my enhanced fastmail option lets me choose aliases (multiple though), I am a proud owner of two different aliases with Operamail domain

Way to go Opera.

Polish up your desktop browser, more (since we need the best and nothing but the best), and I would be glad to come back to it again

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Mark Shuttleworth was a maverick billionaire. He invested in an debian derivative, gave it for free. For the first time ever in the history, someone spent millions to seed the CD‘s. I remember getting a boat load of CD’s from Ubuntu Shipit service which I gleefully installed in my system. Of course, to it’s credit, it gave “free updates” every 18 months following release of “Long term release” which was upgraded every 5 years (with an eye on the enterprise).

A lot has changed.

I shifted to Ubuntu Derivative called as Linux Mint and more than happy with something that works and not which needs extensive customization. I prefer to go with the default settings alone but thats a personal perspective.

Unfortunately, the newer 11.04 is moving towards an enclosed ecosystem. Yes, the developers need to make money. But I find the idea of paid software in software centre, totally reprehensible. If the product is good, I would donate my hard earned money for it. But I would not buy it. For the same reason, Ubuntu One is a decent service to host the files in cloud; that would be good enough for people who need to pay for extra storage and do nifty things because it does not affect the main OS.

But when it comes to free and open source, I would prefer it to keep it that way.

All the best for trying out the buggy Unity; good concept but useless execution.

This is the first time ever, I haven’t linked to main site pointing towards it’s download.

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It’s unlikely “Swan” and “Loop Telecom” would ever be “penalized heavily”. Tata and Ambani, even though being summoned by PAC, would be asked to “pay up the damages”; some crores dealt here and there, permanent stock holdings to some prominent members and post retirement lollies as directors.

It transpires that Swan was a front for Reliance and Loop for Essar. Indeed, the idea was to bid for scarce spectrum, their holdings held in off shore accounts and laundered.

It is a dirty world indeed.

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Updated the entire blog with auto tags. Finding the contextual linkage to the tags should now be easier. In the long run, it is expected to have extensive cross linkage within the blog itself.

Also set up “related posts” which automatically scans for the “contextual linkages”; I have been adding the outgoing links as suggested by Zemanta but it would have been a hassle for older blog entries. This too have been enabled; should point back to the extensive linkages in the blog itself.

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NYT has a “poigant coverage” of Vodafone India. It gets some facts right. Vodafone is embroiled in a legal case stuck in Supreme court regarding tax evasion. I am not aware of the complexities but Vodafone is still awaiting the final decision.

The second fact is about heavy investments in advertising. If you can’t make up for anything else, scale up the bullshit and so goes the Vodafone’s motto.

Now comes how NYT is unable to refine the issues.

It says,

Vodafone has also been trying to get higher-paying customers on board, by offering monthly unlimited service for BlackBerry users, for example, for 899 rupees ($19.98). But all mobile companies compete fiercely for BlackBerry users, and at around a million people, they make up just a sliver of India’s population of 1.2 billion.

Vodafone has the WORST package in terms of data access. Period. If they feel that they can scale up the revenues by trying to milk the “blackberry” users, they are obviously mistaken and have their heads up their asses.

Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, alternates between enthusiasm and frustration when discussing India. The country’s “communicative, talkative society is the ideal ground for a communications company,” he said in a telephone interview.
At the same time, he said, “in the Indian regulatory system sometimes there is a tendency to see the telecom sector as a lemon to be squeezed.”

Fuck you moron. No one asked you to come here to try and lick the regulator’s ass. If you feel frustrated, leave the damned country. I would have nothing do with your screwed up zoozoo (or whatever contraption you have invented).

Oh here comes the veiled threat: (emphasis mine)

Despite their travails, Vodafone executives say they are committed to India. But they hint that they may rethink things if they are still left with a multibillion-dollar tax bill after the Supreme Court decision this summer.
“We like India, it is an important part of Vodafone; but we need to be reassured that it is a business-friendly environment,” Mr. Colao said. “For the time being we continue to invest.”

Hmmm. Business environment is as good as the fact that a company complies with local laws. If Vodafone decides to evade the tax (as per the Indian tax authorities), then the tax people have a good enough reason. Why should vodafone try and evade the taxes and not play along with what’s fair?

I’d be happy to see it rid of the damned pug and the zoozoo.

If Vodafone is so keen to grow “organically or inorganically” (whatever the fuck that means), they need to listen to their customers first. Arguably, not hide behind a customer care unit, bring in transparency and open up the VAS. For example, there is a huge disconnect in the price for Internet access in pre-paid and post paid segment. How come? In any case, the GPRS sucks (as an end user, I’d never touch this with a barge pole), their VAS is pretty useless.

I’d try and focus something on Content issues later; how mobile customers get shortchanged and what is the possible way out. Seriously, their Indian team needs to gird up because giving service is not a cake walk.

If some dingbat from NYT is reading this, first ascertain your facts. There is lot of PR bullshit mentioned in your write ups; before you hold up the mirror for “responsible journalism”. So far, Vodafone has grown taking advantage of lax regulations (by crowing about continued business interests) but customers are being blatantly ripped off.

I would strongly suggest to avoid Vodafone because it’s post paid plans get pretty expensive in the long run if you use the data services because as they mentioned, they like to squeeze their customers like lemons.

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I haven’t used Foursquare or Gowalla ever (but installing the app from Android Market right now). It would not be possible to do a comparison of these apps straight away but there are many people who have done it earlier.

The interesting aspect is that it relies on “crowd sourcing” turning up the recommendations as the user base grows. An important part of it is growing database of how social search has evolved since it is no longer dependent on what is being written about something. Instead it relies on how we interact with others in real time, build on the data, release the API‘s and bam… you have something better than the incumbent.

The impact may not be apparent immediately but I am surprised myself as to why I didn’t cover this issue earlier. Still, I am keeping my eyes peeled for the same and checking out Foursquare. Maybe, I’d look at Gowalla later but there are more people on Foursquare though. Gowalla sounds very odd (in my opinion).

Although I still feel that there is a huge scope for something similar in India (even as a value added service) but there is no clone either. Crap.

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