Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Convergence at cross roads

Published on 23rd Sep 2006 in General Thoughts. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

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

Published on 17th Sep 2006 in General Thoughts. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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?

Published on 17th Sep 2006 in General Thoughts. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

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.

Indian Telecom:Myth

Published on 17th Sep 2006 in Indian Telecom, Mobiles and Telecom News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

One in every third prepaid subscriber is fake. If this isn’t “chilling”, it ought not to be to you dear readers because I have been asserting here that the valuations of these companies have been artificially bloated.

Of course, it wouldn’t be affecting the execs in their plush offices because it is the deceit that keeps them comfortably on their asses. During a routine criminal investigation in Haryana, the police discovered huge number of connections in a single person’s name. After further probes, they discovered that a number of telephone connections had been booked in the name of fictitious entities. In simple lay man’s terms it means that anyone could potentially “misuse” the phone numbers without the fear of being traced.

The Haryana police booked a couple of Airtel employees and it took considerable resources (my guess) to avoid a PR disaster for them. The whole matter seems to be subdued and suppressed and talked off only in hushed up tones. It is not getting the attention it deserves. By rough estimates, if the proper physical verification takes place now, it would shave off one third of the numbers which the companies gloat about. No wonder, Ramachandran, COAI chief, is keen only for the random verification of the subscribers. They cite huge logistics problems for the same.

This has grave implications for the internal security of this nation. In the name of driving up subscritions and ramping up subscribers, the norms have been thrown out. It didn’t apply to them in the first case either.

Getting a pre paid is simple. One has to furnish a “proof” of residence/ photgraph. That’s it. No questions asked. The “verification” is done at the level of the shopkeepers who is supposed to know the local residents. A little “consideration” and things get rolling for a new connection. Prepaids cannot be traced to the original subscribers and the SIM card can be destroyed and a new one had.

Post paid norms are tougher and no wonder, I get to hear delays on the part of the companies to verify everything at their end.

This wouldn’t be solved overnight and is a clear cut violation of licensing norms. Why haven’t their licences been cancelled?

VSNL: Doing the unthinkable

Published on 02nd Sep 2006 in General Thoughts. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

If anything that defies common sense and logic, it’s Tata’s owned VSNL. As part of cash and buy option, Tata’s inherited a rotten Government set up that refuses to shed it’s bunch of nincompoops. They do have people sitting on in the board rooms with fancy titles like “corporate strategists” with the company’s goals not really defined in any concrete manner.

I was reading an account of VSNL buying up end to end bandwidth with the promise that it would “revolutionise” the Broadband access. Retail broadband is floundering; their corporate connections seem to be shifting to greener pastures like Airtel / Reliance. While there is no break up of numbers, if a company is reducing it’s prices, it only heralds a serious trouble for itself.

In the monopolistic set up, a company has no initiative to improve it’s services. We all know from BSNL’s attitude and it’s poker faced idiots drawing their salaries. The erstwhile country cousin, VSNL came in from the same umbilical cord that noursihed the unshapely appariation of socialism- BSNL. The misfigured ugly contortion gobbled up the market share and despite being turned into a “corporation” refused to shed it’s genes. Given the fact that it is unweildly in it’s present avatar, it is gasping for breath of fresh air.

Not long ago, VSNL hired the best brains in legal business to defend it’s “cause” for NOT reducing the prices for bandwith. Until someone’s dark alleys of the mind fields lit up and they decided to assert themselves as regulators and forced VSNL to reduce the same. BSNL and the end customers were overjoyed and we could see the birth of “unlimited” connection- a newly invented lexicon that was possible because of the efforts of committed few.

Here in this respect, I beg to differ from one Mr. Sunil Jain, who is the editor of Business Standard. I don’t share his exuberance in his write up on VSNL’s recent move to slash the bandwidth tarriffs and Maran’s intervention to that effect. He gave the example of Special Economic Zones or SEZ’s being a multiplier effect on economy (infact a disaster for the Finance Ministry) and if I remember right, his own newspaper had opposed the setting up of SEZ’s.

Maran’s pronouncements came in much after TRAI had set in high fees for the private players to set up Long Distance telephony. Maran had it reduced and as a result a host of companies joined in to offer their services. I am not happy with the private players coming in and then, carrier access codes haven’t been formalised. Till the time the policy matters are clear cut, it wouldn’t make any sense to rejoice.

Here in comes the rub. Realising that VSNL would be raped if they didn’t make any efforts to protect their markets, they have resorted to slashing prices across board. It seems that it would ONLY benefit the corporate customers for their VPN roll outs and would perhaps marginally affect the retail pricing options. VSNL has all the power in the world to offer whatever speeds they want and not cheat it’s customers with their shoddy “customer care”; i.e. if the number of comments are to go by elsewhere on this blog. It hasn’t happened for obvious reasons and we have a notional presence of broadband across India.

I’d keep my eyes peeled on in for anything new. I have a strong reason to believe that Tata’s might exit from the retail broadband initiatives in the coming few years. They have NO presence in the fixed line business and perhaps spreading themselves too thin with the DTH initiatives and their mobile telephony business which is tanking them in. Their advertisements reflect the despondency and not long ago they had Saurav Ganguly and Sania Mirza as their brand ambassadors, both of them loosers in their fields.

Some day they might just admit defeat and tank out of the Indian market like a capsized boat.