Long distance call rates between the two metros have been slashed. This was of course, “breaking news”. MTNL has, in effect, made that as local call between the two metros.

There is something that all media houses didn’t report about it.

1)MTNL chooses VSNL as it’s preferred carrier. It bypasses BSNL which was charging it higher rates for carrying MTNL’s calls through it’s networks. BSNL seems to have lost the bids in re negotiations.

2)BSNL has blocked (or threatened to block- I am not sure as yet) free roaming facility for MTNL customers in it’s networks.

3)The reduction of prices is estimated to be 375%.

4)Other operators have been granted National Long Distance calling licences (as reported here) which means that carrier access codes would be introduced shortly. It becomes imperative. If this happens, BSNL’s fortunes would tumble down rapidly.

5)MTNL is a profitable enterpise and the surge in call volumes is expected to be 5 times more than present.

This whole mish mash up means that finally we are having more choice for connecting across geographies. Even though, we are limited to few private players and the Government monopolies.

The only area, in my opinion, where BSNL can scale up is data services since they have a massive lead over others. This again is a far fetched idealised scenario. Expect more fireworks in the voice segment any time now. Reliance and Airtel wouldn’t want to see this oppurtunity slipping by.

Why the F*** Reliance can’t step up it’s fixed line operations soon?

MTNL is in the spotlight at the moment.

First sample this from Yahoo write up:

To make video transmission and personal interaction so immediate that the remoteness of the participants is erased, you need lots and lots of bandwidth. Bandwidth is the speed at which information — text, pictures, video, and other data — is carried over the Internet. You can visualize the now-vanishing dial-up Internet, with modem speeds of up to 56 Kbps, as a leisurely country lane. Broadband Internet, such as DSL or cable (1 to 5 Mbps), might be a regular street that you travel to get to work.

But the next generation of the Internet, with bandwidth starting between 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps and climbing from there, is a superhighway. (Part of this is already a reality in South Korea/ Japan).

Much of the research is based around Internet2′s high-performance backbone, called Abilene, that currently runs at up to 10 Gbps. But Internet2 is planning to upgrade Abilene to 80 separate channels of 10 Gbps each, using different wavelengths transmitted over fiber-optic cable. These channels could produce a mind-boggling 800 Gbps of bandwidth.

(More on Abiline here)

What could you do with this kind of 800 gbps bandwidth?

You could send high-definition video uncompressed to heighten it to a hyper-realistic level; use multichannel digital sound; display real-time-generated 3D graphics; control remote devices with no latency; or harness separate, powerful computing facilities into one mammoth virtual machine.

(Part of the reason for the development was fuelled by CERN, the world’s largest particle physics labortary. The amout of information it generates is mind boggling. Sharing it over conventional networks is out of question. Hence, the super fast networks hooked on to super computers, working on Linux. What else can power those monsters)?

Further uses of Internet 2 have been described for underwater explorations and telesurgeries; with almost no latency and everything happening in “real time”;we are close to something that was stuff of science fiction couple of years back.

At present, the project is limited to the Universities and is plagued by last mile access hassles for mass scale adoption. This last mile won’t be solved minus heavy investments; something that is not flowing in the sector at the moment.

Hence, it becomes imperative that the Universities/ Research Institutions in India to become early adopters for this kind of technology. The Government could scale up investments for tele conferencing et al.

However, the standards are not yet defined. Plus, it remains an overwhelming American “contribution”. Therefore, they would definitely impose their standards which would be restrictive for use in other countries. The next gen broadband, by whatever means, is plagued by proprietary standards; unless of course, it becomes Open Access/ Open Source. I don’t see this happening as yet.

See the Wikipedia entry.

Internet 2 home page.

I chanced on CNET write up about the “need for speeds”.

Triple play carrying voice/ data and video is a common place. Yet, an average Joe like us uses Internet for checking email/ casual surfing. How much speed is the right speed?

I am reminded of the billionaire’s famous words,”640k ought to be enough”. As the things stand today it is increasingly clear that we need more and more computing power. For example, the increasing complexity of the games needs more RAM and processing power. (I’d settle in for a console though).

Hence, it would be difficult to quantify the need for speeds. People would put it to diverse uses as they deem it to be fit. Unless of course the content chokes the access. This only means that telcos would have to scale up bandwidth manifold. Which I don’t see as “happening”.

In the comments section on CNET wirte up (which I came across the link via Digg), the whole thing seemed like a conspiracy by the entrenched telecom operators. How far is this true is not known; but they do hire publicists in the media to “educate” customers. However, with rampant file sharing, the ISP’s would be forced to cut back on access speeds. Something that BSNL/ MTNL or anyone else is damned scared of if this trend catches on in India. We are speaking of a handful of minorty (in customer’s terms) who is into hacking firmware for port forwarding et al.

Hence, this seems to be a debate between the classical haves (as customers) and have nots (as telecom operators). Who wins the final round? This time would tell.