I wish you all a very happy new year.
Monthly Archive for December, 2006
I hate to end on a pessimistic note.
The year 2006 was in many ways a sad reflection on the telecom trends. We haven’t been promised the Mbps speeds; Reliance isn’t scaling up; Airtel is becoming slouchy like BSNL; BSNL has refused to up the stakes for others; TRAI is being subverted and we are seeing an all out war for consolidation of oligopolies.
The consumer, i.e. you has already won the asshole of the year award and this isn’t the right tone for shifting in a new year. How so much I try, I hate to admit that there is no “India shining” anywhere around here. Not atleast with the Congress in power.
Yet, the promise is around the corner. We would be f***ed harder for our hard earned money, the congestion in the networks is bound to grow and with the increased entry of the telecom majors, our national security is up for a song. A country like Pakistan just has to turn off our vital communications set up and we would be on our knees in any time.
If I can see the “predictions” right, Reliance is going to slow further on it’s landline business. Arguably, it is a business proposition which is on a loosing wicket; BSNL’s monopoly is well entrenched. Reliance’s CDMA business is not giving it’s returns (I suspect) which should have been well profitable much more than their expectations. GSM provides the scale because it makes it easier to fudge with the sale of the GSM cards and show increased number of subscribers. Its all about valuations and gloating rights.
Much of it has already been explored in the earlier write ups.
What we basically need is the power back to the consumer to take effective decisions.
As we move in the new year, the sale of Hutch is imminent. There are many suitors for the slut and who gets the “cake” is difficult to predict. It’s making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Whether or not it is the “new wave” of Indian Telecom is for you to decide.
On the high note, most of you have asked me about the swearing on here. I believe that this delivers the message far more effectively than saying that I am frustrated by the lack of serious pace around here. Our collective wisdom collapses like the Indian cricket team; which in my opinion mirrors the Indian psyche effectively. We are all bunch of wimps when it comes to taking effective decisions for ourselves.
I believe that the next thrust of the growth would come from the wireless Broadband (or whatever crappy name you want to give it). As the telcos scale up investments in “air” (literally), the growth of Wifi would perhaps mirror the growth in the number of subscribers. However, with a low user base of laptops or access points, I may be contradicting myself. WiMax is all hot air though.
As for the BSNL Broadband, the promised Mbps speeds are in order. Though they are only offering it for Bandwidth on Demand. The unlimited plan subscribers are out of the ambit for the time being. I think, the games portal would be up soon and we’d see even higher latency times for them. IPTV has made it’s presence felt this year; I still have to get a positive feedback from the users. If this is not backed up with a portal for one access, it would be a sheer waste for access. Indians aren’t really getting around and spending cash online. It would need a technology enabler to make this happen. Much like the IT hype (which is of no fucking use to this nation), the telecom hype is bound to peter away.
Sigh.
Still, I hope the new year brings forth happiness and cheer in your lives. For me it is majorly a chnage of calendar; I still have to go for my rounds tomorrow!
This is from Sushubh’s post. He recommends third party DNS servers.
OpenDNS
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Level 3
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
I cannot access the forum myself. I guess someone high up must be upto their dirty tricks to influence the decision. Democracy is being trampled upon!
Finally, it goes to the Indian consumer.
It doesn’t include me for obvious reasons. And the webmaster. Two of us decided to fight the spin single handedly via the medium best known to us- blogging. Perhaps, this is the lone blog dedicated to the telecom crap that’s happening in India.
But why the Indian consumer? In my email campaign to BSNL head office fighting for ‘unlimited’ broadband, I came across a multitude of spineless frigging good for nothing swarm of idiots who hung out on the forums without being of any use to themselves or to the community. The scum was cynical, pulled me down on many occassions, happy to be a part of the curious onlookers and derided anything positive that came out.
Unlimited Broadband was announced; much to the relief of a dedicated group of people who stuck out and mass mailed to the boffins in Sanchar Bhawan. We as consumers have no fucking say in the way we want it. Either take it or leave it. The state of affairs is much because we are not united in demanding what is most appropriate for OUR OWN needs and not otherwise. Companies may crow about huge expenses lined up, including the cost of the employees et al. Frankly, it beats the crap of logic as to how they declare obscene profits quarter on quarter.
TRAI is the toothless tiger. Lamed and f***ed beyond any recognition, till recently, it has failed to uphold any consumer interest. By all means, we tend to elect and have appointed idiots in position of power who are not even remotely concerned with the intricacies of running a telecom system in this nation.
The present impasse is to be blamed on you all because you all chose to keep your mouth shut.
I had a lot of guys clicking on the “online petitions” for which no one gives a shit about. Many people feel good about the “clicktivism” that may perhaps relieve them of the guilt feeling that they have done nothing to fight back the system. These online petitions are a minefield for spammers of all hues and your email starts getting the huge amount of spam that you never ever thought of.
For all this, asshole of the year award goes to you.
Cheers for the new year.
I was reading this comment on the Broadband Blog and realized that we have enough players in the market. At least in the major cities.
What we need now is number portability. That ability to change service providers without changing mobile numbers would be awesomeness.
That would be the best way to get the companies to give the best values to the customers. They don’t want to but they would have to. If only TRAI goes ahead and implement it.
It may be a good news for Ruias who hold a stake in Hutch Telecom. Their windfall would be in billions, if at all they decide to sell their stake. By all possible indications, Anil Ambani is keen on buying out Hutch’s stake and propel himself to the “top” of the heap. It would give him a ready access to the GSM subscribers.
In my opinion, if I am right, Ambani would drive his CDMA in the rural hinterland given the price advantage that CDMA can afford. GSM would be his mainstay in the cities- the erstwhile Hutch driving his brand strategy. Plus give him access to the lucrative Mumbai market with a ready made subscriber base.
Airtel’s Mittal doesn’t want to loose this golden goose and wants to convert Hutch into another crappy service provider called as Airtel. It is all about the subscriber base isn’t it? Millions and millions? I am sure that the valuation would be far less than that is being reported in media. Media of course, has it’s sources but then one can never trust them. Hence, there are wild figures being quoted; in the range of billions.
The excat quantum of payments made would perhaps be never known. These are private companies and their shares are not publicly traded.
Ruias ran ESSAR steel which ran in debts. They were another wannabe big shot industrialists who just happened to invest in telecom as an afterthought. It clicked.
Why is it a bad idea for Hutch to be sold off?
I believe that it would create very strong oligopolies. As it is the companies don’t give a hoot to TRAI, the so called regulator. Further, these oligopolies would resist any consumer friendly initiative. Primarily, number portability. They would see the churn and shift of the subscribers would need additional investments hurting their “profits”. Ambani, like a rampaging maniac, would turn this company into another ‘reliance’ and make a mess of it.
I believe that Government should step in and avoid any sale in the best interests of the subscribers. I believe that the subscribers should have a say as to whom they would want to manage their affairs. We are just quoted as ‘numbers’ and nothing else. A price to be paid for.
On an afterthought. What would be Hutch’s communication strategy post sale to any other company? I would surely miss the pug. Imagine Ambani claiming that it was his “papa ka sapna” (father’s dream) or Amitabh’s voiceover crowing about what Reliance has done. It would be a sorry state of affairs for a company that had the potential to make itself better but screwed it up with lousy plan intiatives.
I had a cool thought about this one. I was trying to single out a company for it’s claims having fallen to ground. The usual suspects of BSNL didn’t crow out in the media this time; I guess the previous spike up their assess has cooled them down.
The pole position of course is tied up. I had first nominated GigaOm for the coveted position, which I feel that he would be courteous enough to accept. Even if he doesn’t, he is clear looser. For the uninitiated,GigaOM is a tech website that had indulged in so called “idea plaigrism”. We could excuse him for the present tense.
Equally vying for the pole position is the Indian consumer of Telecom. Frankly speaking, all the insults that we bear while using something as essential as a telephone. We can’t fucking unite on a single platform and force the companies to be more transparent about the tarriffs, about their policies, about complaint redressal, about their customer handling policies and of course for putting up with perhaps one of the crappiest and lousiest telephone networks in the world.
Where else would you voice your concerns? Indians are wimps of the first lot when it comes to fighting for your rights. While it may seem convenient to sit back and sign online petitions, no one gives a fucking hoot to your “clicktivism”. You ought to make the media accountable, write in, organise protests and perhaps the easiest one of them all- blog!
I have faced undue criticisms, profanities, aspersions cast on my virtual character, cynicism of the first order while hanging out on the forums trying to muster up support for the email campaigns for “unlimited broadband”. I have faced innumerable hassles trying to figure out the maze of the governance- the fountainhead of the fucking misery in our lives. Still, I would say that as a consumer group we could raise our voices together and there is a lot that can be accomplished that way.
In any case, asshole of the year award would be tied up for both gigaom and the consumer- you all.
A very strong contender for the asshole of the year is CNN-IBN. Interestingly I did write in a lot about them this year. CNN-IBN gets a lot of flak; I wrote about them around in the forums, on desicritics and almost ever other place where I could think of. Still they deserve the boot and better off as ‘assholes’ than anything else.
Send across your ideas on these worthy contenders soon. I’d be waiting for your replies 
An update. There is another asshole waiting in the wings suffering from so called ‘foot in the mouth syndrome’. He is the ‘exec’ from MChek, a mobile payment gateway for claiming that we wouldn’t need any more landlines. Oh well, some mothers do have these specimens too.
This makes it four of them now!
