Monthly Archives: October 2006

India: Village Telephones

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I intend to keep the post short. I came across this link on Boing Boing about the village public telephones in Bangladesh.

A village public telephone is thus :

Each Village phone remains under the custody of a village pay phone operator, who is responsible for extending the services to the customers for both incoming and outgoing calls, collection of call charges according to prescribed rates and proper maintenance of telephone set. The operator’s income is derived from the difference between the air time charges paid by customer/s and the billed amount required to be paid by the VP operator along with a flat charge for each incoming call.

(link)

The idea that it works has been taken from this case summary. (Another case study here)

I believe that this model can be suitably adapted for India scenario too. However, we would need someone ‘visionary’ to make this happen on a large scale. Much like the Grameen Bank which disburses microcredit for self help rural groups. Incidentally, Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. (Details on New York Times; incase you are forced to sign in to read the issue- check out Bugmenot for logins).

Google search throws up a lot of interesting links.

Broadband in India:Wimax and 3G

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Arguably, this has the hacks interested. There is a lot of hoopla about the probable launch of WiMax in Chennai. As usual, the platitudes were laid out, the newspapers crowed about the next gen technology streaming in digital content on the laptops et al.

However, behind all this, there are teething troubles. As I have mentioned earlier on, there is no content to speak off. It would be hard to implement the promised speeds of 1 Mbps and above in order to sustain the user interest. Then again, the critical mass is far less in terms of users who would be mobile enough to access the internet streaming in air. I wouldn’t be surprised if all this comes off as hot air and the project being put off “indefinitely”.

This “teaser” brings us on to another glaring deficit in landline business. It’s been over a year and a half and we still have plain vanilla “broadband” to speak off. BSNL is putting up the advertisement banners on it’s home page promising the next best thing to have happened ever since they launched “Broadband”. They seem to have finally set up the gaming portals and hope that enough users would be entinced to put in their money where the keyboard (and mouse) is. The unlimited plan is still capped at 256 k with an awful ratio which makes it a horrible experience to share the torrents.

It is the systematic failure of thought process because the whole decision making process is handled by incompetent assholes or glorified babus. It seems that no one wants to take the ‘risk’ of sticking out their necks- the buffons are clearly out of tune with the existing realities elsewhere. We have a floundering fixed line telephony and the rural divide seems to be widening like Mallika Sherawat’s legs apart.

Ditto for the jammed networks in the metros/ cities. To overcome the “shortage” and probably hoping to catch on the media inspired “mania”, everything 3G/ Wi wi thingy is a stuff of legend. To keep up the hopes alive for the possible onslaught of the advertising campaigns, we are being made to believe that 3 G is going to be a manna from heaven. It isn’t true but we all tend to believe it.

Sunil Jain has as usual argued about the pricing of 3 G and 2G spectrum charges. It does make for a sorry reading of present affairs. Even though the points raised seem to be “confusing’, in order to cut the crap, the present impasse is clearly suggestive of muddled thinking and havoc with the public resources.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India had declared that the air waves are a public property. We as the ultimate users have no say in the matters at all! The appointed babus/ politicians are supposed to take care of our interests and not the Hutch’s/ Tata’s/ Reliance’s of all hues. Argued that this is a highly technical debate, but is clearly acting out on our own interests. Look at the way the companies tend to treat in their customers and you would know the true extent the way they loot us to line their own pockets.

We do need a debate on the issue of implementing untested technologies- spectrum is a scarce resource and it would be patently absurd to sink on capital at something that is unproven anywhere else. Or loot the scarce public resources.

Indian Telecom:Combined offerings

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DTH or Direct to Home is getting better and better. Video on Demand, Interactive Television is slowly coming in the mainstream. DTH is slowly being propelled in the mainstream because of the potential value added services and ability to pay and use. It brings us to the stagnation of the cable TV in India; currently it still beams in analogue mode.

Reliance is planning to jump in the fray, perhaps later in this year. However, as I had mentioned earlier on, there seems to be no action on the ground. Besides giving us an ugly contraption in form of a reciever, there seems to be no aesthetics involved in designing and execution of the pay TV in India. We still have to see the maturity of choice as available elsewhere.

Spiked by lack of bandwidth and reluctance of the customers used to pay for the services, IPTV is no where in the league. Spin doctors were busy showing us the dreams of Mbps speeds which hasn’t materialised so far. MTNL had plans to introduce it on a small scale- they have pushed the “deadline” a couple of months ahead. Airtel is still grovelling in the mud and is backed by some utter nincompoops taking the decisions to roll out. In my opinion, it does cost money to lay down the lines; however, no company except BSNL can offer on demand connectivity in ALL the areas. Airtel should be aiming for that and hope to win the customers in the hinterland.

One possible way is to combine the offerings. Landlines, mobiles, Broadband and perhaps DTH can all be bundled with a single consolidated billing. The cost of the intra circle calls can be kept low. This would ensure customer “stickiness”; one potential drawback is that this could be counted as monopolised offering- restricting the choice offered to a consumer.

In my opinion, if the tariffs match with the lowest in the industry, it makes sense to ensure that a customer uses all the offerings from a single provider. It would only lower the costs of acquistion since advertisements reach a targetted audience. The success of the brand is measured by the brand recall and the trust someone would put in them. Backed by empty boasts, spin doctoring and advertising spree, Indian telecom firms are hell bent on gaining customers. Agreed. Yet the offers look plain in comparison to the possible alternatives.

I think it would be possible to sell combined offerings at much lower prices than individual products alone. Reliance’s strategy would be tailored to this effect (or so I have a reason to believe).

Let’s see how it works out for them. And us.