Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Year End 2007

Published on 28th Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This year draws to a close in another 3 days. It would not change anything except for the dates. I call this as perverted optimism because I keep on looking forward for some miracles. It’s truly a make believe fantasy world.

COAI finally mustered up guts and filed a lawsuit against Department of Telecom. As usual, the media was frothing at it’s mouth and made this the headlines. Reliance jumped in the fray and counter challanged DoT with their own version of lawsuits galore. It was free for all till they decided to call it sober down and indulge in some back room dealings. Lawsuits have ceased to make any more news for the time being.

Spectrum is the main cause of the “fights”. I have repeated this ad naseum and it makes no sense to highlight this fact that spectrum is a scarce resource and the way Government is frittering away it’s advantages should call for an open discussion. The fossilised babus are barely going to move their butts and would be happy to gather moss. The only people who are happy about the opacity of the laws are the lawyers.

Broadband is a non starter this year too. Airtel introduced their 8 Mbps plans with some assinine download limits. I believe that this seems to be a marketing strategy in order to create a buzz around their product. All the while, most people who sign up “shockingly fast broadband” (or whatever the ads claim), they would become aware of it’s potential. Which means that word of mouth publicity would get them more customers. I am not sure that this is their marketing strategy. I believe that this is stupidity of the first lot to make the available resources scarce and not catering to the existing pent up demand. In any case, their broadband pricing leaves a lot to be desired. Airtel has the bandwidth and the mojo and the works. Yet, it is staffed by perhaps one of the worst idiots who ever sat on a gold mine.

Tatas made a lot of news and perhaps for the first time they made it to the Asshole of the year on this blog. Congratulations to them on winning this coveted award and here’s hoping that they would keep up this record. They had their intentions set right and I remember reading in Business World about their grand plans to set up metro ethernet and their deals with Cisco. This was one off news and it wasn’t mentioned subsequently. VSNL lost it’s dominance in international distance calling cards and then Reliance gave them a good competition for international landing stations.

Speaking of Reliance, they made news for all the wrong reasons. They got into acquiring Adlabs and then fancied making movies. There was a talk of convergence and “lightening fast” broadband. (Notice the way they describe their pathetic products). So far, there has been NO shaking news about broadband; they are stuck in the 128k era. Ouch! Reliance has not ventured much in landline business and they are holding their cards close to their chest. At best, they set up shadown companies like Swan and Cheetah Telecommunications (what names!) to bid for the telecom licence.

Anil Ambani has been a true “also ran” in the marathon all the while trying to carve out some “niche” for himself. He knows that he is being compared to his elder sibling and when crores of accounted and unaccounted money is at stake, blood is thinner than water indeed. Mukesh was sensible to exit out from telecom and focus instead on retail and gas. It was Anil who still seems to be glamour struck (remember Tina Munim nee’ Ambani?) It shows for him.

HFCL Connect is a small time player along with Spice Communications run by Modis. They seem to have mustered up enough courage to apply for pan India licence and spread their wings. They remain, at best, marginal players and would interest the foreign companies in case they wish to set up shop here in India.

Hutch became Vodafone after protracted legal battle and it was a personal victory for Arun Sarin. However, the change of the name and rebranding has not changed anything with this company. I have been after them to improve the quality of their services but then nothing has changed. As usual.

I had expressed hope that the year 2007 would be the year of Broadband. However, this was not to be. This was more about spectrum wars, legal wranglings et a which I am sick of reporting here again and again. This has also resulted in slowing down of the posts here. I believe that the best news of this year is the announcement of number portability, initially limited to the metros. It would be scaled up at a later date to rest of the country. I hope that with low migration charges, the competition to retain the customers would be intense and it would be the quality of services that would speak for itself.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Asshole of the year 2007

Published on 17th Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

The final nominees for this years most coveted awards are as follows:
1) Department of Telecom. Ubdoubetdly, my favourites. They have bungled time and again by delaying the policies and failing to have a clear head on one of the most vital resources of the nation. Being headed by an utter moron has not helped the matters. When the going went tough for the previous incumbent, the manmoron of a PM added another dumb joker who has no clue as to why he came out dripping from “that place” soaked in birth juices. I am sure that “intelligence quotient” would be an alien term to the elected representatives for sure.

2) Airtel and Mittal. Having turned his baby venture in to a mega corporate giant, Airtel has been nominated for trying to fool the nation for paying off the spectrum dues. One of the loudest opponents of mobile spectrum auction, they are eating their own refuse and paying up for spectrum calculated on 2001 prices! Whoever would have imagined their stupidities compounded by arrogance! They truly deserve the asshole of the year unless a worthy competitor crops up.

3) Broadband companies led by BSNL. My favourite whipping boy. Ever eager to bare it’s little buttocks, they always ask to be slammed/whipped on their bare asses. The leader of the pack of these idiots is Airtel Broadband who deserves egg on their faces for introducing the ‘fastest’ broadband with a pathetic limit that you would not even piss on it. They feel that the users are dead wimps and nuts who would eat out of their hands for whatever they offer.

4) Tata Communications! Nothing to beat them. They were highlighted in the mainstream press by a lobotomised media house. VSNL Broadband has been labelled as “fraudband” by the intellectual users of this nation and rightly so. Being stung by the negative publicity online on the blogs (yours truly leads the pack to aim his barbs at them) and the mainstream press, they changed their name to Tata Comminucation. WOW. This is the first instance of a company changing it’s name to “reflect on the changing role of a telecom company in 21st century”! Add to this a story of a harrassed customer who weeps like an insufferable widow, moaning and groaning instead of filing a legal suit. Assholes springing up more assholes?

5) My final nominee is YOU, the customer. For staring on instead of doing something. For bleating on the forums without moving your butt to act. Shrugging your shoulders and knowing fully well that this system is your elect without making any effort to improve on the system collectively. For keeping an ostrich like attitude and cheering this process on. For all this you deserve a cold meaningless death. And a horrible death with your fingers, toes, brains, entrails and genitals being devoured by hungry pigs. You ought to be repeatedly struck by lightning for you deserve no mercy. (This is a repeat of the 2006 award but then I am running out of serious ideas!)

By common consensus, I am happy to vote for Tata Communications for Asshole of the year 2007! Tra la la la. They richly deserve this for being in the “communications” business in the first place.

Till next year!

Broadbandblog:Asshole of the year

Published on 13th Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 1 Comment Tags: , .

As usual, the blog is happy to appoint the contenders for asshole of the year award. This is one of the most coveted award for the telecom industry since it involves the movers and shakers of this country. The criteria is very simple. You just plaster the “personality” with the award for whom you believe that his/her decision has affected you adversely. We have had very notable mentions in the past couple of years and repeating their illustrious names. The thread is running on the forums too! (unless the mod wants to act tough and kick my backside instead!)

Indian Telecom: Spectrum war hots up

Published on 13th Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Airtel upped the salvo by offering 2000+ crores for the spectrum. This rattled the Tatas (who own perhaps the worst home ISP business) and Reliance and a full fledged media war broke out between the two “giants”. Tatas (and Reliance) claim that the GSM operators virtually got their spectrum for free and they should not be asked to pay for the same. They also want a technology neutral criteria for the telecom services; CDMA or GSM. The existing telecom operators are obviously shit scared of the new players in the market and hence the churn.

Let’s look at this from a different perspective and why the entry of Reliance and Tatas would affect the existing subscriber base. The telephone number portability has been announced and the plan would be affected perhaps by next year. Reliance and Tatas would roll out their services pronto pronto since they already own much of the infrastructure in form of manpower and physical assets. The GSM operators have gagged together in their rag tag association (even though their unity is in doubt) and are in effect an effective oligopoly. The entry of new players upsets their apple cart and they would be forced to introduce newer services to make themselves relevant.

On the other hand, this claim could be contested by the CDMA lobby because they have not done anything extra ordinary with their services. For example, no one single operator has a single sec pulse billing which benefits the customer. Suppose you talk at a strech for 5.03 minutes. You end up loosing the extra 57 seconds that remain unused. These are the extra seconds that are charged for without any accountability.

It isnt that the fossilised babus are not aware of the situation on ground. They have chosen to stay shut because their telephone bills are paid for by the taxpayers money. In any case, most of them end up being telephone consultants just like ex TRAI head Pradeep Baijal has done.

Hence, to round it off, I must admit that unravelling the telecom mess is bit like understanding a woman’s mind. I am not an expert but prefer to see things the way they affect us.

As the year draws to a close, the confusion in the telecom regulations persists. The ordinary paying customer is at the recieving end. As usual.

Vodafone India: Sucks to the MAX!

Published on 03rd Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

If there is any survey for dissatisfied customers, HUTCH (and now Vodafone) would clearly come out trumps for sucking to the max.

Over the past few months, I have been emailing the bozos to register my complaints with the management regarding the dismal quality of call services. I have been experiencing frequent call drops and disturbances which makes calling below par. So far, I have been getting varied responses to my queries. At one point of time, they even decided to sanction the ‘in building” solution to my place of work; I have not got the assurance in writing as yet.

The worst off is the customer care; I had to wait for almost 15 minutes before my call was attended to. It becomes extremely difficult to deal with a dumb moron trying to make “sense”. Much of my efforts are wasted in trying to frame a query that he would understand. It would be a perfect situation to let off my steam to a jerk who is almost suicidal or on the brink of being one.

I truly wish I could rap their knuckles nice and hard in order to make them understand that it takes a lot of time and hard work to acquire a customer and none whatosever to loose one. I am desperately waiting for some more competition to catch up so that atleast these buggers are forced to improve their services.

Screw them indeed.

The open source hassles

Published on 03rd Dec 2007 in General Thoughts. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I have been an open source proponent over the past 4 years and realised the frustration over the period of time by sticking on to it. At the centre of debate is the copyright versus copyleft scenario which has no easy solutions and answers. There are proponents of two theories and considerable amount of money and energy is being devoted towards promoting their respective agendas.

Microsoft has been dominating the computer scene for over tow decades now ever since the personal computing came into picture. It is immaterial as to how they achieved their “dominance”. To them, stealing intellectual property rights and passing it off as their own is second nature. They have a whole army of lawyers to battle the companies and frequently tends to settle out of court by paying in huge monies. The owner is the world’s richest man and grows richer by the second. The employees are well paid and I believe that they are taken care off.

On the other hand, there are a group of “hackers” who pit in their brains to make the “free” software work. Their de facto spokesperson which includes the likes of Richard Stallman go around the world propagating free software. Much of the work has been done by these renegade folks who work behind the scenes to create software which is open source which means that anyone can modify their work and release in public.

Much of criticism of Microsoft has been about their stranglehold over the hardware manufacturers. This was evident over the release of Windows Vista which required users to “upgrade” to be able to use a fancy interface which by itself is utterly useless. Still, the company piled on cash to advertise the “features” by trying to induce people to use something that wasn’t really worth it.

Idealism apart, the incremental nature of the hardware complexity has meant that there is a bewildering array of choices in front of a consumer. It becomes difficult to choose and not to fall for the advertising glitz. With the release of new software, the support for the previous versions slowly vanes away. With every version release and “features” the users are forced to upgrade their hardware in order to make the features work.

I faced similar predictament a week back. I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop but howsoever hard I tried, I could not make my webcam or my wireless work. I have been facing issues with my trackpad not working out of the box; it was next to impossible to get the support from the forums or the designated support structures. My usage for the laptop was suboptimal because I could not use the hardware that I had paid my hard earned money to use.

However, I could easily set up the same hardware in Vista which had come previously installed with the same. Wireless worked flawlessly and so did the data transfer. Setting up the network was “easy” and it was a matter of getting used to putting the right buttons to click.

How does this user experience matter? I have been waiting for the “perfect” Linux distribution that would be truly plug and play. No doubt that a lot depends on the hardware manufacturers to release their drivers in the Open Source. Still, the usage for Linux remains sub optimal in the sense that even though the hardware is made to work, the full functionality is not utilised. For example, my laptop speakers are dolby enabled and can create a variety of sound effects depending on the equaliser settings in Vista. Even though the sound works in Linux, the effects don’t. In effect, it doesn’t really translate into “customer delight”.

I installed Open Suse (which is rpm based distro) and started missing the convenience of Debian. Still, it has really come in a long way from what the earlier versions had been and as I understand, a lot of work is being devoted to making majority of laptops work. I feel that at this pace, it would truly take a lot of time before anything meaningful materialises and an ordinary user would really need some working knowlede of command line interface to make things work for him/her in Linux.

This brings us to the questions that I had raised about copyright and the copyleft. There are no clear cut winners here and it only depends on the nummber of people propping up either side of the divide. I have my system in a dual boot and for “emergency” while travelling or for WiFi access, I have to depend on Vista. Maybe perhaps, in the near future, the distros would be polsihed enough to translate into a happy user experience. Otherwise, presently, I am sticking on to Dual Boot solely because of idealism for Linux and nothing else.