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.