Of course. First and the foremost. We lack a credible infrastructure to speak off. Telecom equipment could have sparkled a “revolution”; got the manufacturing instead of services job in the economy. Detractors to this statement would allege, for obvious reasons that jobs are nevertheless being created; but it is the manufacturing that counts for a robust economy. This has been mentioned in the previous posts so I wouldn’t comment on this issue again.

 

In the same vein, broadband has been given a complete miss. In some recent telecom conference, the same issue was raised with assholes patting themselves on their back about “mythical 100 million” users. Telecom is a very dynamic field; it is impossible to nail down the exact number of subscribers unless you have strict defined criteria for what constitutes an active connection and the user who has fallen off the grid. Nil. Nada.

 

3G has been a monumental waste of resources (indirectly your money, you assholes); for all your crowing about the “world class data services”, these companies are sticking up a sore thumb up your ass. In terms of indirect taxes, huge mark ups on the tariff plans, advertising costs and pathetic end result to consumers (who likes caps on the broadband, you sissies), consumer is the end looser.

The reason why everyone jumped on the “3G bandwagon” was because of spectral efficiencies and not otherwise. No one likes dropped calls; 3G is going to ameliorate that. This also gave the companies a reason to upgrade their ancient infrastructure and opening up the backdoors for “real time snooping”.

 

Hence, these three issues are the most “rattling issues”, in my opinion. They are unlikely to be addressed in fancy documentations, “think tanks”, myriad “research firms” and others because none of them seem to have a fundamental grasp on the issues. So for all those morons who whimper on the forums about “lack of services”, you are unlikely to see any major change coming this year either.

Related articles

• TRAI proposes Rs.1-lakh cr infrastructure investment (hindu.com)
• India telecom changes proposed (bbc.co.uk)
• India min says M&A norms for telcos need to be liberal (reuters.com)
• India’s former telecom minister officially charged (marketwatch.com)
• Is the telecom party in India over? (trak.in)
• ‘Raja manipulated Telecom Commission’ (hindu.com)
• Mobile Fair-India telecoms gear boom seen surviving scandal (reuters.com)

Tags: 3G, Advertising, Assholes, Broadband, data services, India, manufacturing, Mobile, real time snooping, Telecommunications India, TRAI

NYT has a “poigant coverage” of Vodafone India. It gets some facts right. Vodafone is embroiled in a legal case stuck in Supreme court regarding tax evasion. I am not aware of the complexities but Vodafone is still awaiting the final decision.

The second fact is about heavy investments in advertising. If you can’t make up for anything else, scale up the bullshit and so goes the Vodafone’s motto.

Now comes how NYT is unable to refine the issues.

It says,

Vodafone has also been trying to get higher-paying customers on board, by offering monthly unlimited service for BlackBerry users, for example, for 899 rupees ($19.98). But all mobile companies compete fiercely for BlackBerry users, and at around a million people, they make up just a sliver of India’s population of 1.2 billion.

Vodafone has the WORST package in terms of data access. Period. If they feel that they can scale up the revenues by trying to milk the “blackberry” users, they are obviously mistaken and have their heads up their asses.

Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, alternates between enthusiasm and frustration when discussing India. The country’s “communicative, talkative society is the ideal ground for a communications company,” he said in a telephone interview.
At the same time, he said, “in the Indian regulatory system sometimes there is a tendency to see the telecom sector as a lemon to be squeezed.”

Fuck you moron. No one asked you to come here to try and lick the regulator’s ass. If you feel frustrated, leave the damned country. I would have nothing do with your screwed up zoozoo (or whatever contraption you have invented).

Oh here comes the veiled threat: (emphasis mine)

Despite their travails, Vodafone executives say they are committed to India. But they hint that they may rethink things if they are still left with a multibillion-dollar tax bill after the Supreme Court decision this summer.
“We like India, it is an important part of Vodafone; but we need to be reassured that it is a business-friendly environment,” Mr. Colao said. “For the time being we continue to invest.”

Hmmm. Business environment is as good as the fact that a company complies with local laws. If Vodafone decides to evade the tax (as per the Indian tax authorities), then the tax people have a good enough reason. Why should vodafone try and evade the taxes and not play along with what’s fair?

I’d be happy to see it rid of the damned pug and the zoozoo.

If Vodafone is so keen to grow “organically or inorganically” (whatever the fuck that means), they need to listen to their customers first. Arguably, not hide behind a customer care unit, bring in transparency and open up the VAS. For example, there is a huge disconnect in the price for Internet access in pre-paid and post paid segment. How come? In any case, the GPRS sucks (as an end user, I’d never touch this with a barge pole), their VAS is pretty useless.

I’d try and focus something on Content issues later; how mobile customers get shortchanged and what is the possible way out. Seriously, their Indian team needs to gird up because giving service is not a cake walk.

If some dingbat from NYT is reading this, first ascertain your facts. There is lot of PR bullshit mentioned in your write ups; before you hold up the mirror for “responsible journalism”. So far, Vodafone has grown taking advantage of lax regulations (by crowing about continued business interests) but customers are being blatantly ripped off.

I would strongly suggest to avoid Vodafone because it’s post paid plans get pretty expensive in the long run if you use the data services because as they mentioned, they like to squeeze their customers like lemons.

Related articles

• Vodafone top gainer in India number portability-trade (reuters.com)
• India court defers Vodafone tax case hearing (reuters.com)
• Vodafone and Essar hire banks to value joint-venture stake (telegraph.co.uk)
• Impressive Marketing, the ‘ZooZoo’ Style (globalthoughtz.com)
• Spat Delaying Vodafone’s India Tower Assets Sale (online.wsj.com)
• Vodafone says OK with Essar IPO of Indian JV stake (reuters.com)
• Will Vodafone discard the Zoozoo? (adpunch.org)
• India court defers hearing on Essar Telecoms merger to April 1 (reuters.com)
• Vodafone says still believes no tax to pay on India deal (reuters.com)

Tags: Advertising, author, data services, DTH, GPRS, India, Internet, Mobile, Telecommunications India, Vodafone, Vodafone India

Which is better? iPad 2 or Kindle?

It’s hard to decide on the specifications and my only interest to put up the post here is to mark a shift in the way Internet is being accessed in other countries. US remains a competitive market; partly because the mechanisms of delivery exist there. In India, people expect it for “free”. This is also one reason why I strongly oppose the “limited broadband” because that would affect the way users interact with the medium. However, rest assured that market is not mature enough for the numbers; there is no strong “demand” to question the pathetic supplies as yet and voice calls dominate the Indian market overwhelmingly.

Register has an interesting write up on upcoming Kindle. I remain deeply opposed to concept of “Ecosystem” which tends to track the users over a period of time to target advertising. There are credible alternatives in Open Source and in recent times, there is a huge surge of developer interest in polishing the user interface. ( FYI, everything on my system is Open Source alone barring a few proprietary codecs and Flash- I am still waiting for HTML 5 to mature so that I ditch it for good).

Kindle and iPad are ugly vestiges of ecosystem (as I mentioned above) which hardly merit attention. I think it was Amazon that has pioneered the use of a recommendation engine to it’s visitors. Apple tracks its payments through it’s iTunes interface keeping a lion’s share of the revenues. The content creators have nothing else but to gnash their teeth because iPad owners (and I would say a huge bunch of idiots and suckers) are most likely to loosen their purse strings for paying up the cash.

Hence it becomes imperative to check out what the linked article has to say.

It is not clear why Apple has delayed enforcing the rule – clearly designed to protect its own revenues, but also its position as the primary point of contact for the user’s mobile activity – until 30 June, since it already barred the Sony Reader app from its App Store last month on the basis of the same terms and conditions….Currently, its Kindle for iOS ereader app handles all ebook sales through Amazon’s own Kindle web store, with the revenue divided only between Amazon and the publishers. The more successful Apple’s tablets and apps are, the more difficult it will be for Amazon to walk away from its iOS platform – but it could whip up a dangerous level of consumer, developer and even regulatory opposition to the iPhone maker (though, as the proud owner of a closed ecosystem itself, it would need to tread carefully).

How do they monetise their platforms:

Amazon is rumoured to be planning a scheme where it will give away free Kindle ereaders, for instance, to customers who commit to certain levels of ebook purchasing, newspaper subscriptions or the Amazon Prime service. And of course, Amazon has an established retail platform and experience that commands high levels of awareness and trust, unlike the other tablet makers. It could enhance this with its own tablet because it could take its own 30 per cent cut of in-app purchases.

How is this going to affect the netbook sales:

For every 10 tablets sold, five netbook or notebook sales will be lost in developed markets, it estimates, limiting notebook growth to 8 per cent year-on-year in 2011, and pushing netbooks into a decline of 13 per cent, to 34 million units. Many areas – especially the US, western Europe, China and Indonesia – will suffer from overstocked retail channels for mobile PCs, although the iPad’s impact on emerging markets will remain minimal.

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow though I am sure that the manufacturers have built in supply chain efficiencies and they could foresee such an event. If I had piles of cash, I would enable Linux on all the netbooks and sell them at subsidised prices or give them away for free with a bundled service. Though this unlikely to happen but if anyone from the telecom industry is reading this, this is your last chance to popularize the 3G offering. Get into hardware sales, bundle it with 3G, work out the costs of supplying it to remote areas and you have assured locked in customers for say, 3 years. The specifics could be worked out but a mobile netbook with open source applications is a great “killer option”. If you choose to support Microsoft Tax (like you as assholes are capable of), this would be unviable in the long run and MS wants Windows 7 or whatever number of their crappy operating system you can imagine to run on the “tablets”. I mean who wants to deal with such demented idiots anyway?

Related articles

• Why Android Could Help Amazon and the Kindle Threaten the iPad (ostatic.com)
• Amazon is best hope of a viable alternative to iPad (go.theregister.com)
• Kindle ecosystem – the very best Kindle sites, tools, blogs (ireaderreview.com)
• Can any tablet challenge the iPad? (reviews.cnet.com)
• Can any tablet challenge the iPad? (reviews.cnet.com)
• iOS 4.3 Getting Started Guide, Which iPad 2 to Buy?, iPad 2 Teardown, Android Tablets to Fail, and More, iNews Review (lowendmac.com)
• The Kindle Is An iPad Accessory, And That’s Why It’s Still Going To Be Huge (AMZN, AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• How can open source survive in a post-PC World? (h-online.com)
• Android makes tablet gains, but iPad to stay strong in 2011, say studies (linuxfordevices.com)
• Amazon hires more Android developers: color Kindle Android tablet in the offing? (teleread.com)
• iPad 2 will keep Apple top of the tablet market, says Gartner (guardian.co.uk)
• Apple iPad 2: Who should buy and who should pass (zdnet.com)

Tags: 3G, Advertising, Amazon, android, Android Tablets, App Store, Assholes, Broadband, China, Computing, DTH, Google, GUI, HTML, Idiots, India, Indonesia, Internet, iPhone, Kindle, Kindle Android, Linux, Microsoft, Mobile, Open Source, open source applications, Opera, operating system, overstocked retail channels, PC World, Publishing, retail platform, SMS, Sony, Telecommunications India, United States, web store, Wifi, Windows, Windows 7, Wireless