Reliance has tied up with Appolo group to offer telemedicine.

I have been following the trend of E medicine for over a couple of months now. Till to date I haven’t been able to find a reasonale application for the same. Reliance hopes to encash the “brand value” of Apollo hospitals; remeber they were the ones who misdiagnosed ex minister’s blood cancer couple of years back. As a result of delay, P. Kumaramanaglam breathed his last. That was somewhere in ’98 or 1999.

How are they going to firm up with a docotr sitting across at the other end of the country? Well, it may suit those people who would kick in for novelty. The asking price is very steep- roughly Rs 1000/- which limits the whole exercise to a chosen few.

I have argued that only working model is tele radiology which has found a viable business model. Rest is crap- unless something compelling comes up.

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MTNL is offering triple play services- Voice, Internet and Cable TV I believe that it is a significant announcement.

I had reported earlier that both these PSU’s are intense pressure to introduce value added services. Ostensibly from Maran.

In any case, the pricing structure isnt available yet. What does it mean for the future- say about 6 months? Advertising trends are on the upswing- given the fact that inflation has remained steady and Indians are on a spending binge overall. Plus, most of the television programmes would find another medium to transmit their brain dead stuff. Initially its the free to air channels that hop on board; the pay channels might decide to jump in the fray once BSNL announces it’s intent.

However, Airtel has been keeping quiet about it’s plans to announce anything exciting. They have always been followers, waiting and watching to see as to how the market would react. Since MTNL is the first company to announce it’s plans- it is a matter of time that Airtel does so- it is one of the dominant players in the same circle as MTNL is.

That leaves an intense pressure on Reliance- their delay has further compounded their worries to ramp up customers- which means that they would drop the prices considerably to attract people. They would rather seed the people’s homes with set top boxes-which can work on exisiting televisions-give them a higher leeway and cache of customers than people who just have Personal computers. By all probability, there’s is going to be a big bang announcement- in the future.

Wait and watch- thats what my source in Reliance mentioned. They have no firm plans for the roll out- their entire energies are fixated on installing and expanding their reach in the interior areas- where the future battles are going to take place.

There could have been no other way to put it succintly. This has been the bane of it’s subscribers specially in the interior cities.

If the prrof of the pudding is in eating it, then this is surely food for thought. There are two incidents reported about lacklustre services. One in Pulwana in Kashmir and other in Shimoga district in Karnataka.

Agreed that it isnt indicative of a broader trend about it’s services; however both these places are perhaps a tiny speck in the map- may even be missed over. Yet, if it has made it to news, there is something seriously wrong.

Let me highlight the “juiciest” part of the report:

“Bar Association Pulwama president Abdul Gani Dar said that the BSNL has miserably failed to render proper services to nearly 3000 cell phone customers in the area.”

“…. approach of BSNL officers and technical staff people was never people-friendly”

Some food for thought indeed. This one in Pulwana in Kashmir.

In Shimoga, they have been suffering from the past 1 week and I quote:

“They submitted a letter to the BSNL on Tuesday complaining that the mobile services in Shimoga had worsened in the last one-week and the subscribers proved the victims in the transaction”

BSNL officers contend that they are shifting to different equipment; perhaps the same is the reason for the “faulty services”. I have never heard about disruption in services from other operators- frankly speaking even from my favourite whipping boy- Airtel!

Meanwhile, BSNL is putting genuine Reliance customers at “great hardship and inconvenience” ( yes, I speak on behalf of satisfied Reliance’s customers!). BSNL is failing to provide adequate interconnect agreements Enough reason for my gripes?

Institutionalised corruption and dumb imbecile morons. There is a sure shot recipe for disaster. When you have a lame duck “captain” of the ship ( everyone knows who calls the shots in BSNL or MTNL) and the future doesnt appear bright really.

P.S. Feeling good as I type this out early morning! Not good for “objective reporting” ( as to say); still I believe its worth it!