Tag Archives: fraud

Big Idea Contest Winning Entry.

Leave a reply
The BJP logo

Image via Wikipedia

A little while back, Rajesh Jain had run a “Big Idea for India” contest. He has touched on many issues in his previous posts; there was a lack of serious debate on Broadband. This contest was open to all; I had mailed my entry to Rajesh on his email.
He had received over 150 responses for the same.

Jain announced the winners recently; in which yours truly has also figured (the names are in an random order). The contest was judged by Jain and Atanu Dey (whose blog is linked to in the blog roll in side bar). Of course, he has been a huge influence in shaping up my thought process and I owe a lot to him.

The post, in it’s entirety follows here. For the regular readers, there is nothing new because I have already touched on these issues in the previous posts extensively.

This is one answer and highly underrated option. The following scenario is envisaged:

1) Optic fibres running across to get the data without caps. We need fibre to home instead of outdated copper. Last mile access is contentious; while opening up last mile for private players is contentious, this needs to be debated. Britain has opened it up under strict regulations and British Telecom has been forced to upgrade it’s infrastructure to retain customers.

2) Heavy public investment for scalable architechture. Not 3G guzzling up spectrum but community Wifi’s (pay per use or perhap involving the municipalities making the people accountable directly for the level of involvement).

3) Create an ecosystem of open source applications to harness ideas; make it easier for people to access services. (Open Source standards promote interoperability; closed source is meant for perpetual profiteering at public’s expense).

4) Opening up the Government’s accumulated data through API’s etc; create models around it. For e.g., data from GPS installed in public transport would easily display the estimated arrival time through SMS if needed on the mobile phones. (“Hacker culture” is missing in India; most of the Bangalore flotsam is moronic army of debuggers and script kiddies).

5) Teleconferencing would make it easier for people to people contacts; Gujarat has shown the way! Why can’t India have something similar to Skype? (There is a move to have something similar in the GNU world where encryption would be based on open standards).

6) Education sector would get a boost; not only invite faculty, stream educational videos, hold tele-sessions but teach kids for a wonderful world of Internet. (Pilot experiments in Bihar/Gujarat have been well received; the idea needs scaling up).

7) Spin off benefits from e-commerce applications.

The potential is huge; if you are planning it to share with BJP, the easiest way out is to break the ISP‘s monopoly, hold TRAI responsible for execution (not DoT) and revise Broadband definition to at least 2 Mbps (UNLIMITED, WITHOUT any caps).

Thanks Rajesh!

Enhanced by Zemanta

S-Band Spectrum Scam India: ISRO in the dock

Leave a reply

It does not bode well for a country whose appointed Prime Minister (or whatever he fancies himself) whimpers and cowers and professes helplessness at the misdeeds of what is happening in and around. We live in charged situations and things are deteriorating at a rapid pace.

Corruption and nepotism is order of the day. So well, this S Band is a needed for “wireless broadband” and since spectrum is a scarce resource, there is money to be made at public expense. The deal is simple. Create a shell company, buy spectrum (or have it arranged to be transferred) and sell the equity to a foreign investor.

In effect, the foreign investor may be Chinese, American or of any hue or color. By a simple stroke, these guys get a toe hold in the state of security, a backdoor entry for them. In event of war, when communication needs would be paramount, these bastards would simply cut us out.

Hence, despite the huge brouhaha about the charges sticking out, the “zero sum game” of the losses and the “tamasha”, people are fed up. Although, I still don’t see any signs of “mass upheavals” all around barring perhaps the Chinese armed terrorists called as Naxalites and the on slaught of cheap human labor and sex traffickers from Bangladesh.

Therefore, The Statesman has correctly identified the Sunday Special as S Band Spectrum Scam and analyzed it’s ramifications.

I quote:

Devas was conceived in secrecy by an “incestuous” relationship with ISRO. Most of its board members and senior employees are former ISRO personnel who provide inside information. The deal was masterminded by three former scientific secretaries of ISRO. The ISRO headquarters is very much chairman-centric and of late has become a den of corruption and favouritism. They misrepresented facts to the then secretary, department of space, and misled the Space Commission and the Union Cabinet. The fact that a very one-sided contract was signed by Antrix with Devas on 28 January 2005 was never disclosed to the Space Commission or the Union Cabinet.

This is the reason why the news has gained so much prominence.

Here is a shocker (with my emphasis).

The S-band spectrum, defined as radio waves with frequencies that range from 2 GHz to 4 GHz, was allocated by the World Radio-communication Conference for terrestrial mobile communications services in the year 2000. Armed with this confidential information, Devas is supposed to have developed a novel commercial application in association with global experts and approached for S-band spectrum allocation at a throwaway price. Under the legally binding agreement, Devas would pay Antrix a total of $ 300 million over a period of 12 years. The cost of building the two satellites, GSAT-6 and GSAT-6A would be Rs 416 crore. The launching cost is extra. ISRO had approached Arianespace, a European consortium, for the launch of GSAT-6 because of delays in its own satellite launch programme. The hidden benefit of the use of 70 MHz S-band spectrum, according to the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, would be more than Rs. 200 lakh crore.

If this is not good enough, the author has made a clear case of why the guilty needs to be punished.

The emerging requirements of S-band spectrum by strategic government organizations and societal needs were ignored. Defence minister AK Antony woke up to the S-band requirements of the Army, Navy and Air Force only after the Cabinet decided to annul the deal. “The government is now conscious of the necessity of giving the required capability to the armed forces, paramilitary and other strategic organisations,” he said.

The author goes on to provide instances of serious national security lapses.

Between January 2005 and July 2010 Devas was busy selling the capacity to foreign vendors, getting foreign investment board clearances, attempting trials without witnesses and waiting for European technology to mature which they could sell as their own technology. It offloaded 17 per cent of its stakes to Deutsche Telekon (Singapore) for $75 million. In short, attempting bigger frauds and covering their tract as the satellites were getting ready.

Hence the big issue remains of “money laundering” by the established players, loss of paper trail and the likes.

It’s a pathetic scenario indeed.

BSNL Broadband: Some reasoning behind RTI

4 Replies

Of course, I am pissed off with the development. There is no infrastructure to speak off. Hence even though I know that broadband came in picture in and around 2004, it’s been over 6 years and we are hardly seeing any traction in the space as far as the speeds and/or prices are concerned.

Hence it is to have them admit on paper that the prices have “stagnated” indeed. 256 kbps is nothing in this day and age when the speeds elsewhere have touched over Gigabits.

The “perfect pricing” can always be debated. I would root for ATLEAST 2 mbps for INR 700-900 price band. This of course has to come with any stupid “fair usage policy”. In any case, wherever there is abuse of the network, they ought to ask the customer to perhaps a higher speed band.

Network abuse is in built and the very idea that traffic is being monitored ought to be deterrent enough. In any case, even with the restricted traffic shaping, I hardly see any traction in the space; it is an awful experience to stream the videos or access data intensive web sites.

If majority of the user space in India centers on Social Networking/Matrimonial sites and email, I don’t foresee any “overloading” of the networks. If they are really interested in lowering the overall costs, then they have to explore alternatives like NIXI to peer the data amongst themselves or cache the data for faster access.

Why BSNL then? Foremost reason is that I am it’s customer. Secondly, it can be alleged that because of it’s “monopolistic stance”, the real “revolution” in speeds and prices has to come only after goading it to work. If BSNL as the “market leader” is made to act on prices being offered, others have to match up to it. Well, thats what the intention in the long run is.

One more thing. I have specifically asked for the various break up charges. I strongly feel that the charges ought to be in public domain. How much is BSNL really affected? It is buying bandwidth from upstream and distributing it (apart from owning it’s own gateways, if I am not mistaken). One ought to know how much it really costs to move gigabytes of data on it’s pipes. In the same vein, RTI filed with TRAI previously was very clear that there is nothing like “Fair Usage Policy”. Hence it would at least force BSNL to acknowledge that FUP is “illegal” and help is to fix a responsibility as to who has come up with the idea. He/She should be hauled up over the coals.

Hence this is truly a disruptive power of RTI to expose the cosy nexus between the various ISP’s because they are defrauding their customers. One particular issue that caught my eye was FTH service being advertised as “upto 1 Mbps” and being more expensive than the same service being offered by DSL. Hence, I have asked them for an explanation about the same and the differential in pricing. FTH is not being advertised heavily which has the real potential for future.

I am also keen to know about the “limitation of upload speeds” of 768 kbps (as per their web site); I feel that this is an artificial restriction and should have their response on “traffic shaping”.

It is very clear from the outset that much of the information would be withheld, not revealed etc etc. Hence the best option is to wait, file an appeal and then present the case strongly in the state information commission.

I am willing to fight it out.