Ring Side view of Indian Telecom Circus
This is how pinging Google show at my place. I confirmed from my friend and he is getting ping drops too. After canceling the night double speeds, this is the last thing I expect from Airtel. I am not even sure if the call center guys would take this complaint seriously as the pings get normal randomly… So, it is definitely not the wiring at my place’s problem.
It was coming. I have been proved wrong on very few occassions (a fact that I am proud of) and one of them was about CDMA. CDMA is an acronym for Code Division Multiple Access. This was promised to be more lucrative for the telecom service provider as it enabled them for a quicker roll out. However, the patent owner Quallcom earned a revenue from every sale of the handset making the quicker roll out far more expensive as compared to GSM.
The recent shift of Reliance and Tatas towards GSM signals a “victory” for the spin doctors of the GSM lobby. With further and incremental improvements in GSM, the so called, 3G technology promises better data transfers which was presumed to be THE advantage of CDMA over it’s GSM counterparts. Rightly so. I have seen streaming video on my old trusty Samsumg Reliance handset which was unheard off for GSM. They had a dedicated portal for the colour handsets and as early as 2003/04 it was a ’status symbol’. They cost a cool 25k for a brand new handset.
Much has changed since then. I have opposed CDMA on the grounds that expensive royalty payments could be avoided by shifting to “open source” GSM or develop an indigenous mobile platform on lines of CDMA. The telecom companies could have easily developed a system for mutual use. The differentiation factor could have been the service levels or the value added services et al. Since we are a nation of bumbling morons, this did not happen.
Many eyebrows were raised at the way Reliance and Tatas were asked to pay up money for the new licences. The GSM lobby cried foul (rightly so for the first time) at the way these companies have been favourited. Reliance had even set up shell companies like Cheetah Telecom (can’t they think of something better?) to buy out the spectrum and hence scale up their valuation with the scarce resource.
Given the mess in this sector, it is obvious that Department of Telecom is going to play God for obvious reasons. The gold rush for the spectrum is still on and not surprisingly the GSM lobby is themselves to be blamed for. They had opposed the auctioning of spectrum when Ratan uncle had proposed this. The present mess is for all us to see.
Hence this is indeed a matter of speculation as to how this would sort itself out. We are all there to see the bloody circus out from the ring.
Much like the UFO sightings it had generated a wave of excitement. Most of the Airtel users testifiied getting a temporary 2 Mbps boost! And what a f***ing boost it was! My torrents coursed like crazy, my downloads went off in a jiffy and You Tube was streaming videos like crazy…
It all boils down to the various options that we get to exercise when we have the choice and the bandwidth. If you feel you have a “fast” 256kbps “broadband” wait till you get a 8Mbps thingy. It would surely blow off your pants (in terms of user experience that is). Yet, we as Indians would rather perish than stick out our necks and fight for the issue.
My sources deep inside the Airtel complex are not opening up their mouths as yet. There were various conspiracy theories doing the rounds. Some felt that it was the imminent launch of Airtel’s IPTV launch and this was to test the “load on the lines”- whatever that means. For me, it was a good day; better than the dreary existence otherwise.
I hope that we get to see affordable 2 Mbps soon. Here’s hoping. I’d have something less to bitch about then!
By the way, Airtel is the best ISP I have ever used. In terms of service, they are way ahead of the other ISP’s. I have never faced a downtime (by HIS grace) and the “customer care executives” (or whatever you wish to call those poor blighters) are a shade better than the other counterparts. This is not a blanket endorsement of the morons who are sitting over a goldmine without capitalising on their investment. Still, to their credit, I am sure they would be rolling out something better in the future. I have a testimonial of a customer who’s Airtel landline got installed in 24 hours flat! A working connection in 24 hours! Mine took 72 hours and that too after much threats and cajoling the morons in the fray to get my net working.
After Ajoy’s series was aired on CNN-IBN, I get a feeling that it lacked the killer punch in the presentation. To their credit, it must have taken a lot of guts from the producer to go against the channel’s advertisers and announce it to the world that VSNL Broadband sucks. I am surprised though that a huge majority of the subscribers chose to keep their mouths shut despite the suffering and it took one dedicated spirited Ajoy to stir up the things.
Indians by their own admission are masochistic. They would prefer to suffer ignonomious heaps of abuses rather than stand up for their rights. Maybe, it’s ingrained in their psyche that they are not supposed to question the way things are.
VSNL must be quaking in it’s boots now. A simple Google search would throw up frustrated users bad mouthing the service and calling it as “crap”. For me, I have been documenting the whole process as I see it unfold.
Are the corporate “honchos” illiterate or oblivious to the whole process? This “take it or leave it” attitude pervades all through. Problem is that till the time we all learnt to fight for our genuine rights, nothing is going to come out of the process.
I have seen this problem being replicated on the forums. The moment you put up a request to do something concrete, the thread goes dead.
It is in this pervasive mentality, companies like VSNL survive and almost get away with murder. Most of it’s customers are content with a “working” connection; they would not claim their downtime credits or the speeds they have signed up for.
Broadband remains a pathetic joke and VSNL Broadband remains a perfect example of how bad things can be. Sify is in it’s own league and has a different story to tell. But when it comes from the house of Tatas’ it is shameful on their part to treat customers like a piece of shit. They have big money and big access to levers of power. But what it cannot subvert is the popular opinion and the democratic media (if that exists in the real world). It cannot get away with the crappy services if the customers decide to get together, file a class action suit, spread the word that their services are not up to the mark and take them to task. They are duty bound to get you your services; sadly most of the customers fail to exercise their own right.
Dusserah is celebrated in remembrance of the victory of Rama over Ravana.Burning of the effigy of Ravana on the Vijaya Dashami day, means to get rid of the evils in a man, which are sex, lust or carnality; anger or rage, greed, avarice or temptation, attachment, allurement or infatuation, arrogance, ego or pride, jealousy, hatred, feeling of revenge, insulting others or talking ill of others, dishonesty, selfishness, intolerance, violence, cruelty or hurting others.
This is the richness of the Hindu symbolism.
Here is the text of the email published in The Hindu (one of the lousiest commie pinko newspapers) under the heading “Bye Bye Tata”.
Another entry in the Slimes of India where they have highlighted the broadband woes.
Is it a proof that the mainstream press has woken up to the menace of the ISP’s? Would we see more and more coverage in the mainstream press regarding the pathetic state of affairs? My crystal glass is hazy. These morons would buckle under the lure of advertising money from the associated companies and/or the industry association. They have big bucks and treat the media like a discarded whore. Sadly, media is happy about being in that state.
3 notable exceptions: Business World that still retains the old world charm of thoroughness; absolute delight to read some of their write ups and mercifully have not sold their soul to the devil as yet. Business Standard is another publication that is recommended. For the main political news look no further than The Pioneer.
Thanks to one of the readers here on this blog, here is part 2 of the show. The earlier part is here.
I was totally horrified to see VSNL’s response to the whole damned issue. It was an officially signed document from none other than the vice president of a TATA group company where they were clearly helpless about the pathetic broadband. At end of the signed documment they clearly mentioned that either you take broadband and be happy with what’s being given or leave it! This is what Tatas have to offer to their customers; one of the largest corporate houses in the country! I have always held this long standing belief that most of the “honchos” are over paid dumb MBA’s with no orientation towards “customer satisfaction”.
My sympathies are obviously with the customer who has had to suffer the downtimes to such extent. This is NOT one off story to come to light. This is the story of thousands of customers across the nation who have had no choice except to latch on the “broadband” either lured by the brand name or the compulsion because there was no other service provider in their area. This is the story of ineffectual emasculated regulator which looks away at the other side because they cannot help out a customer in distress. The regulator cannot even enforce it’s own regulations!
Unfortunately, not everyone has stood up on their ground and demanded their rights. I have seen people venting off on the forums and hoping that some miracle would happen. There is a sizeable number of the morons happy about “clicktivism” and sending off online petitions. As if that really makes a difference.
Tata Broadbandwould still be defrauding a large number of customers unless some severe strictures are passed off against them. As seen in the show, they have clearly mentioned that Ajoy’s case is one off an abberation whereas, it is clearly not the case. Ajoy has documentary proof against the company to prove their false claims.
Ideally, the people along the chain of command should be held for their lapses. They are not doing their job for which they have been appointed. Who is to be held responsible for these lapses?
