Monthly Archives: September 2006

Convergence at cross roads

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One of the most promising applications of broadband is convergence. Basically it’s the voice and data in one pipe. There have been many promises made so far about the “potential”; however, there has been no clear cut direction from TRAI. Witness the unholy mess in DTH sector (which could bring about convergence in real terms by upgrading the bandwidth alloted to it), we are absolutely rudderless.

Broadband could be the potential trojan but only if and when the telecom companies scale up. The biggest stumbling block isn’t the content in my opinion, it is the hardware to play the goodies. In order to capture the market, I am sure the Indians are going to rely on cheap Chinese imports giving no REAL choice the consumer. Take it or fucking leave it. Witness what BSNL has been shoving down our throats. In similar vein, the DTH operators are giving their ‘co-branded’ crap hardware which neither excites nor exude any confidence for it’s utility.

Reliance is planning to tie up with Microsoft (or perhaps it has- the exact details elude me) for the content delivery via it’s Entertainment players. Microsoft is “evil” and I am sure Reliance would be shooting itself behind it’s puckered hole (often associated with an ass) for handling consumer complaints. It would enable them to set up centralised servers to stream content via telephone wires ( I can’t think of any other way) to the televisions. Computers are a significant minorty and are still aspirational symbols for majority of Indians.

In part, this post was “motivated” by Robert Cringley’s write up on Apple’s strategy to dominate the entertainment market in the near future and absence of any equivalent response from Microsoft. The winds of change and content delivery via iTunes store format still has to make it’s debut in India. Majority of the venture capital funded start ups have failed to make any significant dent.

Content would basically mean “bollywood” crap being dished out or the inane Star Plus serials. Hence it all depends on the marketing and strategising content delivery platforms.

In the increasingly ‘me-too’ market, the competitors would have to ensure something “different”. I would part on Robert Cringley’s write up on Apple’s strategy via iTunes, VoIP (and teleconferencing) and Microsoft’s failure to capitalise on convergence. This has a relevance to India too; any one would want to “socialise”.

….Now what about that USB port on the back of each iTV box? Giving his tour of the gizmo last week, Jobs rushed right past the USB port. What could that port be for? It’s not for a USB hard drive, that’s for sure, because the key brain in this system is back in your Mac or PC and its very large hard drive. Nor will Apple (immediately) enable the iTV to act as a digital video recorder, because that might step on TV network toes before Apple is ready to do so. The USB port is clearly intended for an Apple iSight camera, a webcam to go with your HDTV. It’s iChat for Grandma.

This is the heart of Apple’s emerging communication strategy. I was tempted to write “voice-over-IP strategy,” except that wouldn’t have been correct. For Jobs, this particular road less traveled is about video conferencing, not voice. VoIP is replacing a $20 phone with a $1,000 computer. What Apple has in mind is creating an entirely new form of computing experience, but this time — because it will take place mainly on a TV and not on a computer — many users may not think of it as a computing experience at all.

What has to be especially satisfying about this plan for Apple is that there is literally no response even possible from its greatest competitor — Microsoft. The level of technical sophistication and application integration required to make this work is beyond Microsoft within the next year or five years from now. So where Windows Vista will bring a variety of older Apple OS features to the PC desktop, Apple’s Leopard will go far past the desktop metaphor altogether and introduce friggin’ TELEPORTATION.

Mobile Phones: The future

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This is linked from Boing Boing (one of the highest trafficked blogs online) about the future of mobile phones in Kenya. In a way, it holds relevance for India too.

Nathan Eagle writes :

A large part of this boost comes from the innovative use of mobile phone technology by local entrepreneurs. In contrast to their use in the developed world, mobile phones in Africa are used for a wide variety of tasks, from sending money to family members to buying a fish from the market. Kenyan business men, farmers, and laborers are finding new uses for a tool thought of as simply a voice communication device in the West, and are coming up with original methods for solving their own problems. For example, contract laborers can now provide their phone numbers to potential employers and move on, instead of having to wait for hours at a workplace in case a job arises.

Access to market information through mobile phones also provides rural communities with invaluable information about centers of business; many African fishermen check the local fish market prices on their phones to determine where to bring the day’s catch. The Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (Kace), now provides crop growers with up-to-date commodity information via text message (sms). This allows farmers to access daily fruit and vegetable prices from a dozen markets, and many have quadrupled their earnings because they have access to information about potential buyers and prices before making the often arduous journey into urban centers to sell their produce.

The community payphone, another innovation unique to the developing world, has helped bring mobile phone usage to the poorest areas of Africa. These payphones are owned and operated by entrepreneurs who buy airtime from the network and subsequently sell it to local people who don’t own phones themselves.

The last concept of “payphone” is interesting. It could solve the problem of availability of phones in the rural areas and is worth a try. The fish example is in vogue in Kerela where it has helped the fishermen to realise higher returns for their efforts. We are still to see a viable model of payment exchange systems in India though; we are talking of the insurmoutable hurdles of payment gateways.

My earlier write on Mobile commerce.

Let’s hope for the viable solution for India.

Airtel Broadband: Not able to scale up?

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Airtel is failing to deliver. Or so it seems.

If this is the pointer, as in the blog entry, it wouldn’t be far off time when Airtel would be counted in the same league as Tatas and Sifys of the world.

I too had applied to Airtel to get a new connection from them. However, despite repeated “representations” to their nodal oficers and CEO’s desk, no affirmative response seems to be coming from them for a new connection. It is convenient for them to say no; I am surprised since they have a very miniscule share as compared to BSNL or the legions of hapless consumers who have signed on for Internet through cable.

However, Airtel is in a different league as far as South/ Eastern circles are concerned. Those who have Airtel are raving about their “professionalism”;this too proved to be short lived after they recieved billing glitches which refused to be rectified.

Companies invest heavily in advertisements and call centres without getting any appreciable returns on their investments. To me, this seems to be a waste of resources since call centres only serve to screen the customers from the higher ups. All the crap about customer being “king” is for glossy adverts in magazines, newspapers or TVs.

The biggest driver of the growth is the naive customer in the hinterland who has money but hasn’t been exposed to the consumerism. The explosive growth of the media has brought in customers face to face with ads that promise the world and seek to deliver an aspirational lifestyle. Somewhere there seems to be a miss between the cup and the lip; it isn’t delivering just the right “desired dose”.

I have seen some of the persons working closely in the Telecom industry. Their entire attention is focussed on the sales target; not on delivering the “satisfaction”. Primarily, India remains a low margin high volume game because of the lopsided policies. I have earlier argued that prevailing prices are way too high because of the purchasing parity being low in India and prices can easily “crash” by a magnitude of 40-50% in the coming few years.

Broadband is clearly not delivering in India. Agreed that last mile access hassles are a definite reality, companies having fixed line businesses would derive their steady revenues from value added services. It wouldn’t be any problem to set up an iTunes like clone and offer videos/ music to the masses. A win win solution for content providers and the content delivery platforms. It would give the end user a much larger choice.

Airtel has introduced “unlimited games” recently in order to “popularise” it’s broadband offerings. This only adds credence to my statements above that Airtel is looking at this potential revenue stream. It is no where in the league of playing World of Warcraft online with thousands others; still a small step is a giant leap for Broadband in India.

A side note. Airtel cannot f***ing ensure that their web site conforms to the web standards. I repeatedly got a screen saying that it needed Internet Explorer to view that page correctly! So much for the outsourcing magic in India. If these screwed up vegetative morons can’t code properly and ensure compliance to the established standards, it is a shame for a company that crows about “world class infrastructure”.

They simply can’t deliver the goods.