Monthly Archive for August, 2008

The wonders of being interconnected

Published on 16th Aug 2008 in Indian Telecom. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I seem to have embraced the digital lifestyle for sure. I must confess that I am hooked on to the Web 2.0 as a social phenomenon; although I do feel hamstrung by the pathetic and high cost of access here in this country.

I have a slow (and unreliable) BSNL connection at my home and a fantastic Airtel Broadband at my work place. My daily life revolves around checking my updated RSS feeds and email including the updates on Facebook. I progress to check the new updates in the journals across the world. I get all the twitter updates on my cell, although its difficult to ensure a smooth service. I use Flickr account to update my pictures and trust Opera to keep a track of my preferences, updated bookmarks and speed dial across the platforms and geographical location. I use You Tube to stream the programmes I have favourited and watched.

I dont fancy a Blackberry as yet because I dont need an expensive option to reply to emails. So by and large, I am connected and hooked to the Internet. It hasnt taken over my life as yet but I realise that connectivity can be so important to know about what’s happening in the real world.

All this has become possible recently as part of the “broadband” revolution sweeping in. This sounds like a cliche. It really is. Much of the country is in the dark as far as basic connectivity is concerned. The “deadlines” have been revised umpteen times and no one looses sleep over the fact that in the global race, Indians are left behind only because the system cannot nurture ideas. None of the applications I mentioned are hosted in India nor designed by Indians. There are a host of me too applications chasing the fragmented pie with a “desi flavour”; it remains a disappointing experience to see that they cannot even ensure coding their web sites with existing web standards.

Societal bonds would change with the increasing thrust of Internet. As geographical boundaries melt away, we are going to see an increasing collaboration of people with common interests coming on a common platform with more profusion of ideas to collaborate towards similar goals. All in all, the existing system should facilitate this interaction. Only then, we would see the true wonders of being interconnected and interaction.

IPTV India: Against DTH?

Published on 15th Aug 2008 in General Thoughts. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Viewers are spoilt for choice. DTH is a credible option and at the start of the day, I had no frigging clue to the pent up demand for the same. The Direct To Home players like Tatas and Zee have spent oodles of cash on advertisements and hardware roll out that it appears unlikely that a newer player would be able to get a toehold.

Here in the grand strategy of Anil Ambani unfolds. He got the ad labs, poured in money in content creation and would make a huge moolah out of “exclusive” deals with media players. The value added services is a growing market and there is a HUGE space for exclusive content; I was surprised to know that there is a seperate channel for gardening; Tata has one for home tuitions. Although, it cannot replace the classrooms but then parents are keen for any degree of experimentation.

Coming back to IPTV. Does anyone of you readers think that this could make any degree of impact on the viewership? I feel that most of the people mistrust the landline outages (which are so frequent) unless there is a fibre to home coming to their homes with simple instructions to operate the set top box. The present hardware is designed to confuse the first time users; somewhere it ought to ring the bell to make it as simple as possible.

I would reserve my comments on the two competing platforms till the market matures up. Reliance is lying down low with it’s broadband offering. I am still wondering as to what has been the issue at their end. Why are they delaying the commercial launch? There are any number of ideas floating around and if they claim to be India’s number one network as far as the coverage is concerned, they ought to focus on their cherries. Or else, it would die a virgin.

Reliance Wimax: Disappointing customer service

Published on 11th Aug 2008 in Indian Telecom. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

This is a guest post from a reader, Mr Naveen Roy. He had sent across an attachment and detailed his sad story in the email. Its hard to believe that the customer care can be so dumb. Many a times, it’s a lone dingbat sitting in some corner of their “headquarters” who is replying to the assinine mails clogging the inboxes. There is a wide disconnect between the “customer care” and the idiots who have to the do the real work. I can testify for this; I had a major hassle with Vodafone.

Here is the write up by Mr Naveen Roy. You are most welcome to send in your feedback as well and I shall be glad to carry out the same here.

All I wanted was relocation for my Reliance Wimax connection. So I called their Customer No Care. All the automatons tell you is that you have to pay! When I really started digging for more information did they tell me that I have to take the equipment with me! Damn, I nearly missed that and god knows what I would have ended paying up for! Then I had to call and ask what the next step was. They told me that I would have to raise a relocation request. This I did. And this was done 2 days before I moved.

So I took the equipment with me and carted it to the new place. Then I called Reliance Customer No Care to find out what the status of the relocation request was. They said that it will take a week! I said ok and waited 2 days. Then when I called for an update, I was told that I will also have to pay Rs.500. Then I asked how much for a new connection. I was told that its Rs.500. I asked how long that takes. I was told that it can be done in a day. Well, I asked why there is a difference in relocation and a new connection in terms of the days. Well, the automaton there replied that it is company policy. I pushed harder for a resolution. No go. Automaton says that he cannot understand. I ask to speak to the supervisor. I am FLATLY REFUSED access to any kind of help!

I call the next day asking for the supervisor again. Again, no go. The automaton this time even accuses me of calling in just to WASTE HIS TIME!! Damn, I was so damn pissed off that I cut the call cause I am worried that I might transform myself into some electrical noise and burst his goddamned brains!

The next day, I get a call from their Customer No Care asking for my email address! When asked why, I am told that there is a form that I will need to fill up for relocation. By now, I am thoroughly and totally fuming. I ask why they don’t have it in the system when they send me the bills to my email address! When Reliance needs my money, they have my email address so that they can send me the bill. When it is something concerning service, they conveniently forget my email address! And I also ask why this relocation form was not sent to me the day that I raised the relocation request! No reply. Automaton says something that makes me want to puke in disgust. He disconnects call. Remember, I swear like a sailor. But all these calls, I have not used bad language at all. Not even calling these automatons the word STUPID. Which they all are!

Damned automaton then disconnects the call. So I call Customer No Care again and I am told that I was at fault. I am told that “Customer did not respond properly”. I said ok, thats fine. I am done with you guys.

I call Airtel, who even though they provide good service, usually do not have feasibility in many areas. Well the service desk was like a breath of fresh air and assured me that there was feasibility. I did not even have to pay a deposit as I took the corporate connection. The connection was done in 3 days and on the 4th day, there was light. Err no, the internet was working!!

Now, the joke with Reliance does not end there. Some days back, I receive an email from Reliance Broadband with my bill attached. But by now, I am not surprised. I am really frustrated. So where was my email address when the relocation form needed to be filled up?? So damn pissed off again, I send a mail to their generic customer no care email address and hope that this atleast will not be monitored by automatons. Well, wonder of wonders, IT IS!!

Well, rather than lose my head and breaking my head banging against a brick wall, I decide to take it cool and not bother about Reliance anymore. I wonder if I ever will trust Reliance in any form again! And the tag line on their service emails is – Looking forward to build a lifetime relationship with you. Like hell I would want to have a relationship with a company as this.

Makes for a disappointing story indeed. I hope that this gets some mileage and enough warning for others before they put in their hard earned money.

Mobiles in India: Value added services

Published on 10th Aug 2008 in General Thoughts and Telecom News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

This is a link to Rajesh Jain’s blog; Emergic. I am glad that he has started blogging again, although he is doing to promote his venture called as Netcore. He used to post across links daily to various tech columns and had amassed a good amount of readership. One of his employees is Atanu Dey who blogs regularly on his own site on Deesha. I am not sure how they are joined in the scheme of the things but Rajesh Jain does have his own crack team.

He does some numbers on the mumbo jumbo that is Value added services and I am more inclined to believe these stats as compared to the crap that gets dished out in the media. All in all, it is not the billion dollar industry but a more sedate estimated $200 million dollars. The number of subscribers may be “booming” but the real revenues are not. The mobile industry is playing a volume game and the new entrants realise it.

I feel that as the market matures and regulation becomes more pro active (i.e. there are no two centres of power- TRAI and DoT), it would be more fruitful for the customers. For starters, we would have more representation in the regulation from the customers; a real watchdog on lines of Ofcom who would penalise the lousy shit heads called as honchos and fair play instead of favouritism to likes of Reliance.

VAS (value added services) would help to extend the utility of the handset. Instead of downloading ringtones (which is an absolute no brainer), the likes of m Commerce might take roots. I had written an article on the same ages ago; Tata had plans to launch it in India. Somewhere along the line, the lost that game and became just another company with a fancy mobile telephone infrastructure.

If the market has to grow, there has to be a shift towards the basics. m Commerce can happen via secure sms based transactions. If the acceptance grows, I am sure there would be a good amount of money to be made in this.

RCom India: Soft launch

Published on 04th Aug 2008 in Indian Telecom and Mobiles. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Media reports are rife about speculation that Reliance Communications (RCom) has had a soft launch of their GSM mobile business. They have awarded a huge contract to Huawei (stupidity) and is being financed with Chinese money to expand their services. Incidentally, they own the company to lease out the towers for both the CDMA as well as the GSM services. It all remains in the “family”, so as to say. It’s pretty incestous.

I am eager to know about their service levels as well as their plans. They had shaken up the mobile industry earlier in their avatar and the space is all set to grow. Lets see how this unfolds.

Virgin Mobile: Service levels?

Published on 04th Aug 2008 in Indian Telecom. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Duh. This is the level to which Virgin Mobile stoops, atleast in US. I wonder whether they can pull of something like this on Indian airwaves. There was a lull in their advertising but the billboards are back and with increased intensity. They are betting big on their incoming calls being paid with branded handsets.

It only goes to prove that the new players would do anything to grab attention and vie for the new customers. I believe that the only way to add customers and retain them is via superior service levels rather than gimmicks like these or the Voadfone’s pug. It only adds choas to the confusion because there is no clear message to the customers. Many people are pissed off or even daunted to talk to the “agents” because they remain faceless and nameless. This means that most of the complaints remain unresolved. I still have to see some kind of an open interaction with the telecom companies and the customers on the websites or otherwise on an open forum where the top heads address the concerns. Once the media comes on in it, I am sure it would give them a lot of mileage. They would be much better off with ideas like these rather than have an idiot endorsing their products for a fancy fee.

By the way, most of the Indians use water for ablutions. It is much more safer and cleaner.

Airtel Broadband: Wow customer services

Published on 04th Aug 2008 in Indian Telecom. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Airtel Broadband offers customer servie levels unheard of in the industry. My splitter wire had gone kaput for some reason. I called up the customer care for the non functioning Internet. Within 2 hours, there was a dude at my doorstep. After fixing the fault, he gave me a receipt of the fixed fault, made me talk to a person sitting in the backend to close the complaint who cross checked with me regarding his complaints.

From close conversation, it was clear that the “engineers” are trained IT professionals. This is a drudgery job but someone has to do it. For every “colony”, there is a designated professional who handles about 10-15 complaints on an average. They offer their numbers because once you lodge in a complaint, the call gets “locked” and it is company’s hassle to resolve the issue within 4 hours. They make these claims in the advertisements and it works most of the times under ideal conditions. I was impressed with these people and their handling of the issue in a clean manner.

Airtel Broadband has a long way to go and they are selling their connections majorly on the strength of their Broadband expertise. The jury is out there and I wouldn’t be wrong in claiming that this is one of the best ISP’s in business. I have never faced a downtime; barring this issue but then this was a fault in the splitter wire worn out of use. Excellent.

Here is a message to other companies. Tone up your service levels and customer delight would follow. It only demands an attention to detail, scale up the protocols and review of the services. At end of the day, customer is the king and he deserves it so.