This is stuff straight out of a textbook on how NOT to manage assetsat your disposal. At heart of the matter is the warring Department of Telecom and other side of the fence is Ministry of Defence. Both sides are the babus with their dog eared files lablelled as “classified”. The DoT wants the spectrum to be freed and hence revenue for the Government. Ministry of Defence says that till the time it is allocated a secure systems for it’s own communication needs, it would not vacate 45 Mhz of spectrum.

Recently, members form both fixed line and CDMA clashed with the representatives of GSM lobby and blamed the present mess because of the inherent inefficiencies in the network. There was a war of words and the battle spilled over in the media. Both sides claimed spectral efficiencies and both sides were crowing about the number of their subscribers as a testimony to the fact that their side of the story was better.

Whom to believe? The nature of the arguments borders on insane and technical and I shall try and explore the issue at a later date.

Ministry of Defence invokes the holy cow of defence which means that all babus irrespective of their departments shit in their pants. No one wants to be seen as a party to be compromising on national security.

The bosses call up the media houses and I suspect that the frigging spineless bastards have a hack to take down their dictation on phone. At times, they are happy to publish the press releases as “news”. No wonder, the tone of the news painted the Defence ministry as the villian as if they are holding the “phenomenal growth” of Indian telecom to ransom. 5 million subscribers per month? Wait till the Ministry gets an idea to call for authentic numbers after the verification of subscribers. Perhaps then, we could get an adequate number in perspective.

And that would definitely puncture the fancy valuations and grandiose assholes sitting up on top of the ladder.

At the heart of the matter is the official bungling and shows thorough ineptitude of A Raja as the new Telecom minister. I had my doubts about his capability earlier since he has not yet handled the hot seat as yet. I am sure it has fried his ass.

The tender called for mix of 2G and 3G lines. Motorola had earlier gone to the court citing that the process of exclusion was not fair and that it deserved better deal. It was awarded to Ericcson and Nokia combine (the details are tedious) but Raja blew his trumpet by claiming that the price negotiated could be brought down as it involved “public sums”. The delay in execution of BSNL’s tender means that it is loosing market share and it comes at a time when it can ill afford such a move in cut throat competition. To be fair to BSNL, even though it is ridden with maggots of all hues, the network is spread far and wide. And it does have competitive rates.

The delay in executing such a project prompted the employees to go on a token strike for a day. This was sufficient to get the attention of the moribund and comatose media to get the news on the front pages and even prompted Business Standard editorial. Last heard, the matter is still being negotiated by the BSNL board. I can only hope that things would be resolved soon.

On the sidetrack, I am shifting over to New Delhi for my residency. I had exhausted all avenues here in Ludhiana. Delhi offers a better oppurtunity and exposure to learn and assimilate.

Reliance is associated with also ran telecom companies; I still have to see them recover from the massive negative publicity generated because of their handset schemes and poor billing resolution mechanisms. Despite their media hype about being a 100,000 crore company (I wonder how do these valuations come in), they are a no where in the broadband retail and laggards in the mobile space too behind of course, the market “leader” Airtel.

Anil Ambani must be eating out of his hands. He is spreading himself thin with annoucement of massive power projects and his arguments with his elder sibling Mukesh who is rolling out a retail juggernaut. If the media reports are to be believed, Mukesh is far more capable of rolling out massive projects than Anil; however, I don’t trust these reports anyway.

Anil is still claiming that the next generation IPTV delivered over Gbps speeds would forever change the TV viewing habits of the populace. I have reason to be circumspect. With suboptimal branding of his existing Broadband lines and marketing 150kbps as “broadband”, his claims fall flat on it’s face. I still have to see anything substantial in their offerings either in their fixed line or mobiles.

Hence all these claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Since there is no independent verification of the same, I’d rather rely on the ground action than delusions of grandeur.