Eternal Wait for Decent Telecom

Last week I went to pay my bills for Internet phone taken from BSNL. It is the same argument I have to face repeatedly. As a customer, why do I have to suffer a lack of choice? I do feel cheated time and again. The worst is that I feel helpless each time. The telecom policy dreamt up a hope that we would be able to see a multitude of companies, each falling over each other to serve the customer who is a king. Bah. More than a pauper, I am reduced to nothing. Be it invasion of my privacy, getting those unsolicited calls or ignorant army of morons as customer support staff; I do not think so that I got what I actually deserve for my investment in the services.

The worst-case scenario is for broadband. This is indeed taking ever and ever to materialize. BSNL did launch its broadband. However, I am wary on their past record for customer care and the quality of the infrastructure. It is true that people have started complaining about the poor quality of broadband due to line disturbances. I have always maintained that it is easier to wake up a person from his deathbed than getting anything done out of the so-called customer care.

However, in advertisements I am promised the earth. Sachin Tendulkar has endorsed Airtel brand. How does he being featured in the same get me better quality of services? I remember when I was their customer couple of years back. My folks could not get through my number. Repeated complaints to the customer care made no change. Finally, I had to shoot a letter all the way to their head office. Belatedly after about a month, some dingbat chose to reply in the usual corporate tone. The same kind of language that they choose to advertise. World-class infrastructure? After much haggling and repeated calls, the fault was traced in their switch! So much for their intelligence. This gave me an insight in the way call centers worked. After making repeated calls, I was on friendly terms with some sensible people. Admittedly, not all are dumb. Some are bit more professional in their jobs. I have to know their problems and the way companies chose to deal with their customers. Dude, they said. Prepaid card? Forget it.

Internet remains a bugbear. I need Internet to keep myself abreast of what is the latest in my field. However, the high cost deters me to surf with peace of mind. If at times I am able to get a decent connection speed, the line drops in the middle of a download. Things have changed for the better in the past one year. Earlier it was a harrowing time to connect to the exchange. Often it took me a dedicated patience of about an hour or so before I chose to give up. What of the wasted calls? It profited BSNL in any case.

The other day I went to pay mobile phone bill for someone. I was astonished to see the various kinds of charges that they had levied. This was a GSM phone and the company had charged astronomically for roaming charges. It seemed strange that how can Reliance charge a pittance for the same. Having ones own network is imperative if you have to succeed in the telecom market. It also hinted at the way the GSM operators have ganged up to charge excessively from the customers. Any “arguments” with the bill collection agencies is futile.

The worst-case scenario is the invasion of privacy when GSM customers get unsolicited calls. There have been reports of people buying a brand new number and within a few hours, some moron is offering a credit card from a bank. This only exposes the fact the companies sell the numbers. In this case, they could have alerted the calling agency that the given number is activated. This is not a confirmed fact but it is possible, given the trend here in India. I would suggest that one should avoid handing out numbers in public places. Invariably it finds its way in the databases that can be had for a song.

I really wish that things improve. TRAI is supposed to be a regulator. Why hasn’t it stepped in and said that enough is enough? The recent Gartner report has mentioned that telecom has grown from strength to strength but the last mile connectivity remains pathetic. What of the last mile Sir? Come on in and you would realize that getting a telephone line from government provider is an exercise in patience. If you are willing to swallow your pride and ready to be insulted, well then you can have a look at what broadband means here. One thing that they were absolutely right about. The report mentions clearly that quality of services remains much to be desired. This is what I had mentioned in my earlier posts too.

Established players like Sify call their pathetic lines as broadband. With the absurd data limits of 300 MB, Airtel is offering the “lowest priced” broadband. 300 MB for what Mr.Mittal? Opening up my browser and closing it down? What possible Internet surfing could I do in 300 MB without you ripping me off in the process? Why be so absurd, guys?

I believe that it is the hangover of the past when the powers that be handed out favors because they wanted it to be that way. These people have created artificial scarcity when there is none. Plan a decent connection and sell the product. We customers are ready to pay for something good, Sir! Provided it is reasonably priced, assured services in the event of downtime and go that extra mile in ensuring that your customers remain happy. Does that take too much? Nope. It takes only a little effort on your behalf.

Discuss on: Sify Broadband, Tata Indicom, Airtel Broadband, Reliance Broadband, MTNL – BSNL Broadband, Dial Up, Others

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.

Tags: Advertisement, Airtel, Airtel Broadband, Broadband, BSNL, BSNL Broadband, Customer Support, GSM, India, Internet, Mobile, MTNL, Opera, Prepaid, privacy, Reliance, Reliance Broadband, Tata, Tata Indicom, Telecommunications India, TRAI

Airtel and Sunil Bharti Mittal – Untold Story

Sunil Bharti Mittal must be a happy man by now. Hailing from a small town in Punjab, Ludhiana, he has achieved in life what some people dream of. He was a push button telephone manufacturer until recently. It was the winds of change in the telecom sector, which really propelled him in the national limelight. However, Airtel has its own share of bloopers, which are clearly not in the public domain. I shall try and lay out a case as to why their practices are not in the national interest.

There was a cover page in Business World magazine recently whose title said “The man who gave up his network away”. It was clearly unprecedented step in the telecom sector anywhere in the world. Network is one thing that is sacrosanct to any owner. However, in a smart and clever move he did that which could fetch him a lot of savings. I am not going in the details of the dealings or the pros and cons. This is clearly a business move, which he knows best. My only concern is the overwhelming presence of the multinational corporations in the sector and such crucial as this one.

There are two main issues here. In my earlier post here, I had mentioned as to why FDI has not really changed the telecom scenario. More money for expansion invariably comes at the cost of risk to other operators. I shall go in that detail a little later. The overriding concern is the technology that would be used for the switches and telecom equipment. I read in Rediff article recently that low cost equipment is feasible as of now. If we talk of partnership between the academia and the industry, then this would have been a golden opportunity to reclaim our investments in IITs across the country. I am sure that spurred on by the demand they would have come out with some solution. Thus, save the precious foreign exchange. It is clear that overwhelming presence of the MNCs in the sector would clearly benefit their host nations. A poorly thought of strategy indeed, to increase the FDI.

The second crucial aspect is the security. I have a reason to believe that Singapore based companies are actually a front for the Chinese government. Thus, surreptitiously they are entering this sector. Why the mandarins sitting high up haven’t really thought of this at all? This is beyond any logical conclusion. I have opposed FDI on this very ground because these are ill prescribed prescriptions of the donor agencies. The so-called security measures announced were good enough to keep the Left shut up their mouths. Not that these people are not nationalists. The very idea or the foundation of their beliefs is flawed and outdated.

However, the biggest beneficiary has been Airtel after the increase in the FDI. They have realized, although belatedly, that value added services is the way to go. There was one major flaw in the roll out of the subscribers. To ramp up the numbers they concentrated mainly on the prepaid subscribers. The health of any telecom network is determined by the number of post-paid subscribers it has. To correct this they have started resorting to monopolistic tactics. The GPRS subscribers on the prepaid networks can only access the Airtel Live portal. In case they wish to download anything, a hefty charge of Rs 10 is charged per request. This is clearly anti competitive and goes against the established logic. Of course, a better way could have been to introduce a recharge voucher for a fixed monthly fee in case one wishes to access the GPRS and thence Internet. This forces the people to shift to post paid segment where the ownership costs are much higher.

Airtel has invested heavily in building up its brand. However, despite the greatest cricketer of our times, their advertising pitch does not enamor me. I believe that Airtel had consistently fallen behind the TRAI’s parameters in terms of quality of offerings barring a few circles. Hence, the newer ad pitches of “stronger and clearer” network.

The fixed line business is imperative for growth. As I had mentioned, increased funding would now mean that it needs to acquire operators with fixed line business. One that comes to my mind is Connect from HFCL in Punjab. After a relative lull in the roll out of services, it has suddenly woke up to ramp up subscribers. I was surprised to see their advertisement banners recently. Perhaps it could be because of entry of TATA in the Punjab circle. I have a feeling that HFCL wants to ramp up numbers and sell out. As it is, they have a lousy service and customer support in the after sales services. Airtel would want to pick up this stake for good because it does not make any business sense to duplicate the entire infrastructure. In any case, there is not room enough for another fixed line operator given the fact that Punjab has BSNL and Connect offering their services.

It is interesting to note the recent news that was reported in the media. On the announcement of the unified licensing regime, any operator who wanted to have a fixed line license was allowed to pay the migration fee. Airtel slapped a notice on the government asking it refund the same after the second round of policy changes were announced. It was clearly pointed out that fixed line license was voluntary. Airtel could have waited for the same or forego this amount. Is Mr. Bharti keeping his idle legal department busy? I am looking forward for the judgment.

Before I end this post, as the events have unfolded I have a hunch that Mr. Bharti would want to sell out his stake in Airtel. That explains his recent diversification in selling vegetables. It is clearly an untapped market and would go a long way to improve the best agricultural practices. I wish him all the best. The main reason is that despite all his ills, his was the first network that got the mobile network in India. How he pulled it off is another story.

Tags: Advertisement, Advertising, Airtel, Airtel Broadband, Broadband, BSNL, Chinese, Customer Support, GPRS, Hutch, India, Internet, Media, Mobile, MTNL, Opera, Prepaid, Rediff, Reliance, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Tata, Telecommunications India, TRAI, Value Added Services

Experiences with Reliance Broadband in WebWorld

I admire Reliance only for one thing; their vision. For them the ends matter, not the means to achieve the same. It was with this object they had set up their vast optic fiber network across India. Early on, they realized that for effective delivery of services, they need to have company owned outlets. Hence the concept of WebWorld was born. It was envisaged to be one stop for all the telecom needs. One could apply for a new telephone connection as well as surf the internet at “real broadband” speeds.

True, the advertisements come as “Real Broadband” speeds. However, broadband for most of the people means that their Internet Explorer is loading up pages faster than their dialup. That probably explains the crowded WebWorlds across the country.

However, today I had a taste of the real broadband that they were offering. As I entered the WebWorld, I was greeted by a pretty young thing with yellow teeth grinning back at me. She asked me to choose the starter pack. I wanted to download the Live CD version of Ubuntu Linux, which is a massive 640 MB download. I asked her about the charges to burn the CD. It was amazing 40 bucks! That too after one provides own blank CD. A bit of haggling and it came down to 15 bucks. Still I feel that it is on the higher side.

Then came the actual brass tacks. After logging in the password, I had to contend with Internet Explorer. Even though I do not like it, I could not install any Opera because of the administrator privileges. This is acceptable to majority of the users, still I always prefer Opera. Using any other browser is a crime! After requesting for the particular page, I sat back and clicked on the download page for the image file. Of course, the pretty young thing kept on hovering near me, which is a strict no no when one needs to surf online. I found that distracting. This said and done, the actual “broadband” speed hovered near 30-35 KBps. For a while, it touched a high of 120 KBps. I thought I was getting my moneys worth. Yet this happiness did not last for long. Suddenly the Explorer refused to respond. The download stopped midway.

After flurry of phone calls to the local tech and in Mumbai, they finally discovered that all they needed to do was to switch off and switch back on the router! Time wasted enough because the people hired to oversee the smooth functioning are not trained to troubleshoot. What if any problem comes during surfing? The standard answer is that for everything they call back Mumbai!

While I was at it, the Internet got back to life. The optimism about Reliance turned to despair. For some time I felt that, I was surfing on Sify “broadband”! The image file to Ubuntu was not loaded and it would easily take in about 6 hours more. I had to request the assistant to manage it for me. Somehow, they agreed! Maybe it was my way of persuasion or they were being helpful, I cannot decide about the same. Hopefully by tomorrow I should get the stuff I wanted. End of pity party!

Reliance has indeed a brilliant business plan. It has set up video conferencing in order to help the smaller businesses to achieve economies of scale. I was told, in the course of conversation, that there were very few people who utilized the services. In the same vein, gamuts of electronic resources are being provided. Yet it remains high priced for an average user. For power users who are used to see speeds zipping in MBps factor would be sorely disappointed. I believe that bandwidth at the user end is good enough for video chat on Yahoo. I d agree about the LCD monitors though. They are good enough for the eye candy and I have found no issue with the same. As regards to Windows XP, it is up to those people to deploy it on such a large scale. I have not played any games on the web because I was not happy with the quality of peripherals. Some of the keyboards refused to work and the mice at times were non-opticals. It was not a happy experience altogether.

What Reliance urgently needs to do is to train the end user assistants. Perhaps change their dresses. In greenish overalls and blue trousers, most of them looked like lost peacocks. It ultimately depends on the assistants as they reflect the company’s image. Reliance should be aware of the same. This is bit controversial here because the average user usually does not mind these bloopers. For me, like most of us browsing this article we need one thing. Bandwidth. If this is satisfied, I am a happy Joe. If this is not, expect more whining on the same!

Discuss on: Reliance Broadband

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.

More on: Broadband in India

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