Tag Archives: Airtel

Updates after a long hiatus

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It’s been a long time but I had been extremely tied up with the academic commitments. I promise to return to full time blogging once I am free from them.

Over the past few months, I have become cautious about the privacy on the net. One of the first moves was to switch over the name to Administrator.  I had already moved away from Google; but more importantly, the last vestige was Google Reader; this too was given the boot in favor of Newsblur an independent developer based in New York and an excellent news reader.

Apart from this, I strongly recommend Ghostery and Noscript add-ons for your Firefox.

I have been following the 2G and the 3G scam but unfortunately, due to political compulsions, nothing has come out of the Supreme Court order. The key players are all out of jail.  So all that drama that ensued was all for the show.  Apart from this, there is no concrete action on ground regarding anything new in the pipeline, barring the 4G that is in the air. Airtel is rumored to launch it soon in key areas and beyond the wireline, Airtel is hoping that it would be a key determinant for it’s bottom line. Of course, the restrictions for “limited broadband” remain on course. You are unlikely to see “all-you-can-eat broadband” anytime now.

Interestingly, there is a trend of co-branded handsets for bundled offers for  data. It’s not a sign of matured markets but rather a sense of desperation on part of the telecom companies to be able to sell anything. I don’t have any clue about the development of mobile apps but with overt reliance on Android to drive Google’s penetration in the heartland, mobile phones are slowly becoming ubiquitous. Well, there are more mobile phones than the toilets in this country!

Lets wait and watch for 4G.  Lets see how it works out.  I’d be back soon.

 

 

 

Broadbandblog: Daily updates?

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bharti-airtel-ltd-300x224

Image by bhautikjoshi via Flickr

I have experimented with the tone and tenor of the write ups here. It’s impossible to update on a daily basis although RSS as a delivery mechanism is very powerful in it’s context; it’s easy to set up feeds to keep the blog updated regularly.

However, I personally feel that the sector as a whole has not evolved to a meaningful extent to report on the events. Vodafone has been dragged to the court. Airtel has botched up it’s 3G offerings. 2G scam has caught up with its final actors. However, this is still the “tip of the iceberg”. A lot goes behind the scenes and some unlucky few get caught up in the swirl. Indeed, they are just minor fronts for the systematic loot.

Writing on all this is a chore. It’s pathetic to repeat the same thing ad-nauseum.

Vodafone Logo

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Hence, I prefer to write when I get a sudden burst of “inspiration”. This blog has definitely morphed from it’s rigid confines of Indian Telecom to something more of a “digital narrative”.

I could also write on the operators elsewhere; unrestricted data does not flow uniformly. Yet, in most of the developing countries, scarcity is something that is engineered. It holds no relevance for most of us to know about what AT&T is doing with it’s T- Mobile acquisition. Further, we have distanced ourselves, not only from the advertising, but also from reporting any industry sponsored events. I routinely get invitations (off and on) but they are mostly from clueless PR executives.

Daily updates is beyond the scope. Writing is a passion and needs to be stoked. Yet, there is no point in being pointless either!

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India Telecom Operators: Shit List

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TRAI

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For long, I have felt the need to do a “consumer survey” which is motivated by real customers than the paid for shit stuff that most telecom operators crow about. It is impossible to capture data from the cross section of the user population and the retards who crowd on the forums would not be able to grasp the import of this exercise.

I realize the difficulties inherent in this exercise immediately. First and the foremost is lack of actual “complaint data”; TRAI does put up the figures online but there is a mechanism where these operators have to report back the action taken on the complaints. This is a good mechanism but I don’t see it enforced or whatever TRAI does, they are clueless idiots to make this data work for a better policy formulation.

Ditto for the existing delivery of the complaint mechanism. An aggrieved customer calls the operator in call center, is given a complaint number (not always) and no time frame for the resolution. I am presuming that their workflow is designed for the said purpose. Like any corporate organization working on “cost savings”, this is possibly “outsourced”. A smart team utilizes “dumb terminals” clogging up the bandwidth for most of “executives”. All the while, these brainless sods make the customers wait even more utilizing the spectrum.

This is a “presumption” but this workflow is bound to keep the customers “unhappy”. Billing and metering issues are definitely top of the list; unfortunately, even these thorny issues are not resolved in their entirety.

What needs to be done? Actually, this could easily be a dissertation exercise, capture and visualize the data and present a solid case report to the telecom companies. However, the implementation needs money and I am unlikely to see any movement on that count.

I could help with some possible criteria; reach me on the email (under “contact”).

One more thing. Reliance, Aircel and Airtel easily top the shit list.

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