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.

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.

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.