Monthly Archives: January 2007

BSNL Broadband:Year of Broadband?

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One thing is for sure. BSNL is planning to come in as a major triple play player in the next coming few months. They are looking forward to leverage this advantage big time.

The upgraded 2 Mbps speeds is a wow factor in India which till recently was unheard of concept. Perhaps for the first time ever, we can watch streaming videos without bothering about the buffer times. BSNL is keen and intent on declaring this year as the year of broadband; something that reflects from the CMD’s message online.

I quote verbatim: (emphasis mine)

Year 2007 is going to witness a Broadband revolution as we have declared 2007 as “YEAR OF BROADBAND”. We intend to invest Rs.2000 Crore to strengthen our Broadband Infrastructure. Today our Broadband service is available in about 600 cities / towns. We plan to extend Broadband coverage to more than 1000 Cities / Towns and 20000 Villages over the next two years. During the year 2007, Broadband coverage will be provided to all Secondary / Higher Secondary Schools and all Public Health Centers. Gram Panchayats will be brought under Broadband map progressively by 2008.

Our existing Broadband capacity of 1 Million ports is planned to be augmented by 5 million ports, out of which 1.8 million ports will be deployed in rural areas. We are in the process of launching Broadband access through Wi-Max technology in about 1000 Block Headquarters. Wi-Max is capable of offering Wireless Broadband Service in a radius of 20-25 Kilometers. You can look forward to launch of Triple Play Services and On-Line Gaming Services over Broadband during this year.

We have also decided to provide latest features on our fixed line phones and would gradually replace the existing telephone instruments of the customers with instruments having facilities like CLIP etc. (This is true indeed and the company has provided a new handset at my premises. It was definitely a pleasant surprise).

I thank all BSNL Customers for the faith reposed in our services. (This is contestable claim. Mr. CMD doesn’t realise that all these years we have had NO option). We re-affirm our commitment to empower our customers with world class state-of-the-art services (Really? If that is true, Mr CMD, remember the frustrated mails sent across to your office complaining about the local line man not being able to set right the fault in the cabling landing in my flat, which played havoc with my broadband access) at affordable rates and look forward to their continued patronage. (Thanks to the lethargy of Airtel/ Reliance/ HFCL Connect and other players looking at pan India presence, we would have to tolerate BSNL for the next coming few years).

Still, this demonstrates BSNL’s intent to rectify the issues with looking at long term money spinners in terms of value added services. We would hardly get to see the uniform roll out of the promised services; it would be a staggered soft launch. This is in trend with the other roll out of BSNL’s services. Finally, this reminds me of the pain and agony we all had to face while upgrading to the “unlimited” plans. 2 Mbps unlimited seems to be a far cry. One thing is for sure. If BSNL has an affordable package for triple play, then I am willing to migrate to the thingy.

Airtel, watch out. BSNL would sting you hard on your privates and Mr Mittal and his fancy promos may all go out for a toss. We’d wait and watch.

Apple iPhone

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This is from the “iconic” Steve Jobs who has a master stragetist behind marketing Apple’s products. In the recently concluded Mac Expo, this phone was unveiled. It is hoped that it would be shipped by mid of this year in an exclusive tie up with Cingular. Apple plans to support more protocols in future.

Apart from the “oh-so” design, what is so special about the phone and why has it been featured on this blog? I believe that Apple wants to get to the fast expanding world of Wireless. These guys could have manufactured this beaut earlier on. They didn’t. They were waiting for a perfect roll out of their iTunes store with music videos and songs so that it becomes a compelling proposition for Apple to sell a device which could play their wares on their hardware.

It is a win win for the telecom companies and Apple. Telecom companies can drive up the sales for their horrible tech called as EDGE/ 3G and have a reason to lobby for extra spectrum. Apple can crow about it’s iTunes and it’s phone. People would be willing to either show off their new tech toy or get hooked on to watching streaming video (in my opinion it gets boring after a while unless the people in question are stone dead morons watching reruns of “Friends”). It is this critical mass of idiots that Apple wants to target. And it is the same mass that is more comfortable with mobiles than computers.

iPod has become critical to Apple’s soaring stock market and it’s fortunes. Till recently, the only innovation has been in increasing the hard disc size or adding a tiny screen to it. For the same reason, iPhone would be so called “iconic” and “ahead of it’s time”.

Why is it important for India? I believe that value added services mean a lot to the telecom companies for their cash generation. And morons are to be found everywhere :-)

It took a company like Apple to design something different and market it as if there is no tomorrow. What would stop a company like Reliance/ Airtel/ Hutch to get this in India? However, since we don’t have a portal like iTunes specifically for Indian market, it would take a long time to fructify it’s plans to make things happen here. Still, I wouldn’t like to discount any development of this sort here in Indian market.

Picture taken from the Apple website.

Update: Robert Cringely has written on his blogechoing my own thoughts. He obviously makes much better sense than I do.

I take the liberty of quoting him from his write up.(Emphasis mine)

Cisco’s trademark infringement lawsuit, as well as its recent introduction of new iPhone models, shows the company has no intention of giving up the iPhone trademark to Apple. And since Cisco has a prior claim, just as many lawyers, and more money than Apple, one can only guess that Cisco will prevail. So why did Apple start this fight in the first place? Publicity.

Further, Robert asserts :

This leaves us with the mystery of why Apple deliberately hobbled the cellular Internet capability of its iPhone, Apple Phone, whatever. As described this week, when the iPhone ships it will only work with Cingular’s EDGE network, which is its 2G Internet service that maxes out at 170 kilobits per second on not just a good day but on a day that is so good it never happens. I’ve used the EDGE network and it feels like dial-up to me.

The iPhone is this amazing connectivity quad-mode device that can probably make use of as much bandwidth as it can get, so making it suck through the little straw that is EDGE makes no sense from a user perspective. But remember that the parties involved here are Apple and Cingular, neither of which is 100 percent allied with user interests. Cingular has a 3G network called BroadbandConnect or “MediaNet” if you buy Cingular’s associated Cingular Video service….It comes down to an accommodation. Cingular wants an iPhone exclusive and is probably paying Apple money for that privilege. Mobile phone carriers are eager for video to succeed on their 3G and 4G platforms because it represents a major new source of revenue. Apple’s iPhone is the best handset yet for displaying that video. But Apple isn’t going to allow this to happen without Cupertino gaining a substantial piece of the action.

Apple doesn’t intend simply to enter the mobile phone market, they intend to dominate it, and ultimately to gain service revenue through iTunes, no matter whose phone you buy.