Everyone is happy that Indian Mobile revolution has triggered millions of subscribers. All well, there are a couple of high fives and plenty of back slapping. Indians seem to have finally arived on the world stage; there are omnious comparisons with China. What else?

This post is triggered by comments appearing in Indian Economy blog and a Financial Express story.

There is however a fatal flaw in assumptions. Has anyone cross checked or verified the numbers? The incremental growth in numbers is assumed to be static. The whole addition of the mobile subscribers is dynamic affair. Much like the addition of new subscribers or churn in the old ones.

Let’s see it this way. Absolute numbers mean nothing for the mobile telecom party. It’s hogwash and sadly people who report on these issues are ignoring this fact.

However, mobile telecom numbers shouldn’t be quantified in this manner; we need some alternative methodolgy. How do you account for the same person carrying different telephone connections; seasonal visitors et al. Statistics can be definitely misleading.

At the end of the day, it’s just the mobile congestion is getting worse with every passing day. That is a DEFINITE proof of growing numbers!

Intersting links while I stumbled on these blogs here:

Santosh makes a pertinent observation that VoIP should be brought in to play an increasing role in the mobile revolution.

However, I personally feel that it won’t happen. First, the existing service providers have cartelised and it would be very difficult to break through the existing entry barriers. Any new incumbent would have to scale up; it would ahve made sense in underserved areas but “lucrative cities” are a strict no no now.

I really wonder whether the telecom equipment behemoths would have VoIP equipment to retail to these operators. They are happy to pander their own technology and earn royalties. Since there is no competition in the real sense of the term, innovations aren’t welcome.

GSM at best can be scaled up to WAP, GPRS or the 3G services. All for “faster” downloads. Does that really translate in better customer experience? So far, GPRS et al haven’t shown that to be possible; I am deeply circumspect about 3G roll out. Plus, GSM is inefficient user of spectrum.

So, VoIP would be good in theory for mobile networks; as for offering it on landlines it remains to be seen whether the existing arrangements would work or not. Suppose a Skype like thingy comes up; BSNL would be very happy to block it. Given it’s opposition to sense and sensibility.

Another link from Mr Dawra’s post was from BBC which said that Internet penetration can be increased by using Railways since they own huge amounts of fibre.

The main virtue of the plan is its ability to reuse the existing cable system, avoiding the time and cost of laying a fresh cabling network.The electrified railway tracks contain communications and control cabling, which almost always has spare capacity. This can now be exploited for sending modern telecommunications services to outlying areas.

With Prof.Jhunjhunwala at the helm of affairs, this is a sound idea.

He designed the CoRDECT systems- which is, I believe, based on CDMA for wireless Internet. As far as I know, HFCL Connect is using this system to offer wireless Internet.

So, the ideas abound; more than the numbers we need some action on ground.

Tags: 3G, BSNL, CDMA, China, GPRS, GSM, India, Indians, Internet, Landline, Mobile, Opera, Spectrum, Telecommunications India, Telecommunications India, Wireless

Lav Gupta is heading BSNL’s broadband division. I have nothing personally against him; though he famously remarked that higher speeds in Indian context make no sense. This means that price it high enough so that we as ordinary Indians have no respite.

I sent across no less than 6 mails to rectify the issues with BSNL Broadband pricing details. Here is the last one written in abject frustration after I recieved a reply to the first mail saying that “BSNL would do something”. (Indeed that left me surprised, really).

Dear Sir,

Despite repeated emails, there has been no response to my queries.

I hope that you can understand that there is a build up of anxiety as my exams are approaching near (in first week of April) and still no respite from the limited bandwidth and downloads.

Sir, it isn’t expected from an officer that mails go unanswered despite repeated pleas as a customer. Granted that there cannot be an overnight change in the BSNL’s policies, it would have been pertinent enough if you would have bothered to provide me with some firm answer instead of a very lame reply that “BSNL would do something”.

It’s indeed unfortunate that no reply can be elicited from CMD office either. Is it the unstated policy of BSNL to feed fat on hapless consumer at an end who probably has no ways and means to request for information otherwise? The discriminatory and monopolistic pricing is playing havoc with the spread of Broadband and it’s been reported all over the media. Due to unavoidable circumstances, I am forced to put up with this practise or else I would have my phone disconnected long time back given the fact that customer service from BSNL is in the pits and as lousy as it can get. No replies from your office have just reinforced the same fact.

I am looking forward to your reply on the same issue and hope that the discriminatory price bands would be removed soon.

This post comes in the wake of UPA’s attempts to set up another Pay Commision. As it is these Govt. employees are overpaid to the extent of bleeding the exchequer dry. 100,000 crores is the dole out in pays, perks and priviliges for 2 crore employees.

As it is, their public perception is low. This incompetency on behalf of Mr Gupta is irritating. Do these people think that they have some ordained divine right to keep the customers on tenterhooks? Is it justified to keep him in employment as the considered opinion is a major and stumbling roadblock to our own access to information? It is only the time factor that’s keeping me from filing the information under Right to Information Act; this allows me to sue the concerned officers if the information supplied is vague or even misleading. This is a REAL hope and hopefully, I shall explore this option too.

Before I end, a primer from TDSAT. That’s the abdjucating body for deciding Telecom complaints. Unfortunately, they don’t take suo moto cognisance of the complaints sent to them. I believe that any case has to be filed in front of them as per the established laws in Civil Procedure Code. The only way out is the Consumer Court where I could file a class action suit in Public Interest.

Well, surely this blog has taught me a lot!

Tags: Broadband, Broadband pricing, BSNL, BSNL Broadband, DTH, India, Indians, Media, Telecommunications India

Ever since this was “ajaxified!”, I have been experimenting with the basic set up. Though, I must admit that my HTML skills are next to none. I am persisting with this theme as it renders the entire contents in a pleasing format. It was there briefly prior to upgrading but for some reason, I had to revert back to Word Press Default.

Finally, I was able to add the Creative Commons licence; this says it all. While it doesn’t mean much because determined folks would copy anyway, I believe that this is far better than “copyrights reserved”- with its own legal hassles.

For the record, Internet isn’t owned by anyone and I don’t have lawyers who would go “ape shit”. (Regular readers would recognise this term). All is done in the spirit of Open Source and Open Access.

One more issue at present is the Akismet Spam plugin; this is catching even genuine comments. As time progresses, I am sure that it would learn a thing or two. It held my own comments for moderation!

Please bear for the time being while this is settled. Rest assured it would be done.

Before I end, a few good words about Opera. It’s going to release the next technical preview. There is an excited buzz about Opera Labstoo. According to Opera Watch:

The Opera Labs will contain prototypes (technical preview and beta versions) of new browser versions. Opera spokesman Thomas Ford told Opera Watch that the Opera Labs would be a resource on the Web to get a behind the scenes look at the new products and technologies that Opera is working on.In addition, Opera will also add content about open standards and Web applications.

Even if it isn’t Open Source, Opera is customisable. Czallion geeks weren’t able to test Firefox’s memory issues and the patch was delayed for almost 3+ months. I have no problem per se but it doesn’t make Firefox better than Opera at all. Customisability is important for the end user; I see no reason why it can’t be deployed across government offices, schools and corporations. If security is the issue with Firefox (majorly), then Opera is far safer browser than either FF or Internet Explorer any day.

Tags: Broadband, HTML, Internet, Internet Explorer, Open Source, Opera, spam, Telecommunications India, theme, word press