Published on
26th Oct 2008 in
Indian Telecom, Tata Indicom and virgin mobile.
Tags: Advertisement, Advertising, Broadband, BSNL, DTH, handsets, India, Mobiles, Opera, Tata, Virgin, Virgin India Mobile, virgin mobile, Virgin Sucks.
Virgin Mobile is going full throttle with it’s advertising blitz; I remember, there was some issue with it’s licence because it was a virtual network operator. Tata claims that it isn’t. The truth, as to who fathered it, is not known to anyone.
The “bastard” of this company is trying to grab attention like an unwanted company. It makes tall claims about it’s “superior network coverage” and it’s “young outlook”. Pooh. Who the f*** cares about it anyway? On what basis has it made these claims? It’s hard to discount it, nevertheless, we could take it with a pinch of salt anyway.
Their website is an overdose of flashturbation. Its a bad idea to attract the dudes who have no decent access to broadband. In anycase, it chokes on my crappy bandwidth of BSNL at home.
I have no clue about the new “execs” at the helm of the affairs but if their CEO is a rich bored millionaire who has nothing else to do excpet launching himself in hot air balloons or dance with skimpy chicks, it speaks a lot about the professional attitude of a company. It doesnt promote the seriousness with which it needs to be taken; instead I have a creepy feeling that they are just fly by night operators.
The idiots need to realise it that a strong message doesnt go by having whacky advertisements. Drop down the prices, subisdise the cost of the handsets and bleed the new players by being able to offer services based on quality. I still have to come across a subscriber of this company who has said anything positive about there efforts. I wouldnt be surprised if they give in free mobiles with a rider of a locked in period. Unless they have enough balls to do it.
I have been out of the wireless broadband loop for long. Any pointers to the kind of speeds or services? Here is the thread on the Indian Broadband Forum.
I have been always opposed to the wireless broadband initiatives because they fail on many counts. For plain vanilla surfing, it sounds like a good idea. But when it comes to the crunch, these fancy ideas fail in execution. Comments are on.
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.
Woohoo. My persistence paid off. I have made the company credit the bill that they owed me. In addition to that, I have made them apologise for the whole fracas. I have realised that despite their claims of “happy to help”, they are among the most disorganised band of morons; just like the other operators.
Having a multiplicity of operators is not going to help unless they are brought in line by a regulator that has real powers. This is wishful thinking unfortunately.
I was thinking of the old times when I was dependent on BSNL’s largesse. I fought the shitheads on the phone, clogged their email servers and created a lot of brouhaha online for the same. I made them run around to give me a connection that actually worked. I made them correct the billing faults; I made them see through my point. It was a tough battle but it was only designed with one intention. We can achieve far more success in life if we are allowed to reach our full potential and not be constrained with the artificial barriers. People across the world are reaching out to new avenues; our development stops just short of South Extension in New Delhi. Thats the kind of “Gurgaon” model that we hold up to the world to signify our progress.
Making the company pay for their follies is an example that I wish to hold up here. It makes sense to be persistent; sniff out their potential weaknesses and hammer on whatever they respond to you. I emailed all the previous mails with this implicit knowledge that even though no one is going to read it, the company would be shamed to have a mess on their hands. The media likes to sniff out such incidents and I had plans to alert them to such “harrassment”. Elsewhere it would have been a PR disaster because one of the most important system of a mobile company is their billing system. I am told that it is a very expensive solution and needs to be robust. If people start having doubts on the billing system, they would desert it like rats on a sinking ship. It is perhaps for this reason, the telecom operators are loath to act on the complaints.
Further, a system should gurantee the fact that it not open to abuse. Mobile cloning is a persistent danger and there are many dudes in Palika Bazar who do it for a small fee. There is an whole underground system to clone the shit; mobile companies must be able to proactively anticipate these incidents and prevent them. Or else, it would be a disaster. An utter chaos.
I have made them pay. If anyone is reading this in official capacity, a middle finger up to you. If someone is reading this in personal capacity, dude, you are a personal failure to make a company worth it.
Published on
18th May 2008 in
Indian Telecom.
Tags: Airtel, Anil Ambani, BSNL, India, Internet, Landline, MTNL, Opera, Reliance, TRAI, Wifi.
At times the bozos sitting up and making rules seriously surprise me. They have called for implementation of Internet Telephony and Carrier Access Codes.
This was mandated much earlier way back in 2001; however, this was opposed by Bharti. Reliance had entered with the premise of “death of distance” and had made STD calls ridiculously cheap. At that time, Dhirubhai Ambani was still alive and Mukesh and Anil Ambani were still brothers in arms.
If Internet telephony is implemented in it’s present shape, it would see present rates crashing down to a large extent. It would give a new lease of life to ISP’s like Sify and other fringe lunatics to scale up investments. I can foresee the entry of players like Skype as well as other SIP players which rely on open standards. It’s hard not to imagine the real gains to economy as a whole and it would benefit the adoption of setting up of WiFi hotspots on a larger scale.
Carrier access codes means that one can choose his/her service provider and each of the incumbent telecom operator in fixed line business has to provide that option. It means that you can choose Airtel landline to use BSNL’s calling cards to call up you mother in law in Timbuktoo. Granted that mother in laws should remain far away without casting their evil eyes on their kids…..
The major player that’s going to get hurt is BSNL (and MTNL). Unless, they improve their services which are required in the present set up, people are going to abandon them like rats on a sinking ship.
Although, this isnt new and TRAI has probably dusted off it’s old files from it’s dingy offices, still, all compliments to them to even think of doing such a thing. This comes as a breath of fresh air indeed.
This one is a classic from Sushubh. BSNL Broadband provides a dialler for Linux and gives it in “exe” format!
Nothing could be worse than this. Unless we are talking of Home 125 Plan!
Access deficit was a tax imposed on the mobile consumers for subsidising BSNL to provide rural telephony. Most of the operators have not set up mobile towers in rural areas citing “losses”. Further, they chose to set up “Universal Access” fund (or something similar to this) to get subsidised for setting up the infrastructure. So far, it has not happened as yet.
Once the access deficit charge was waived off, most of the operators crowed about the fact that the call charges would be reduced further. I have not had the good news so far.
We might not see the good things happening to us soon.
