I still cannot understand the “mobile story” and “fastest growth” crap. More and more people are migrating towards parallel connections instead of the trickle down effect as expected. Agreed that “lifetime incoming offers” have appealed to the segment of population who keep their mobiles only for incoming calls, the precentage is far and few inbetween. We have no break up of the demographic profile and if the trends are to be seen, much of the money and the effort is being poured in the metros where there is more of a spending power as compared to other cities.

I have three telephone connections; one for regular use, the other a landline for broadband access and the thrid for calling up other Reliance numbers. Overall, I fail to understand as to how they would account for the “churn” or the “fastest growing segment” because I have never been enamoured of using the VAS. The operators know that there bread and butter segment is the voice calls and I am sure that they would implement the VoIP solutions to cut down on their costs. Everything else is flotsam and media generated hype.

In the same vein, most of the other handset manufacturers are clearly not making any efforts to address the cost of the handsets. Barring the advertising costs, if they implement open source solutions for the newer PDA’s, it can reduce the cost of the handsets to a large extent. Google’s Android would effect this to a large extent; though, I would reserve my comments on it till the time I actually get to use it. It’s still in the nascent stage; I am sure it would mature with the next release as they learn from their mistakes.

Vodafone has not addressed the GPRS connection charges; I still have to come across a reliable operator who can ensure a seamless connectivity across the major highways. I would want to access the Internet on a long boring journey; it remains a pathetic experience to even open up the mailbox. I don’t favor the mobile net on the move partly because of my bais for broadband and partly because it’s assinine to peer in the small screen. Unless of course, one has an iPhone and Safari which makes it a pleasure to surf on the small screen. Brilliant conceptual implementation.

The elections are nearing and I am keeping my fingers crossed for some semblance of the maturity on the following government to provide a clear direction to the broadband access and policy. We can do a lot more once we have a reliable connectivity. We dont need fancy laptops for kids in rural India to demonstrate the “modern with rural” mating. Its assinine to pour in money for something which just remains a showcase and earns you f***ing brownie points for “corporate social responsibility”.

This is just a loose string of thoughts as I was travelling back down. Although, it is a fascinating experience to see the rural landscape change. We realise that there is a lot of untapped potential and there is a chance to “change”.

They have a lousy network and I have been experiencing frequent call drops and network congestion to connect to other operators. They have among the worst tariffs for GPRS access and it’s a nightmare to get them to respond to simple queries. I am entitled to my opinion for all practical purposes.

Unfortunately, despite the littany of complaints, it becomes very difficult to communicate the change of phone number to other people. I have a feeling that the regulatory watchdog should come up with a solution like detailing the network parameters and perhaps a survey which measures the various parameters of the service operator like complaint handling etc.

I was surprised to read that any complaint being sent to the Appellate Authority needs to be sent in “duplicate” and that it takes 3 months for the complaint to be resolved. 3 months! I’d be better off minus their services.

I have just emailed to their nodal officer and got an auto reply saying that they need two working days to respond. I shall be updating their responses here on the blog. Let the world know what they are up to.

Nokia 6300,

This is my latest acquistion after considering a lot of other factors. The recent price cuts also fuelled the decision to buy one.

I have had an excellent review of this handset; my sibling was using this handset for the past 1 year and reported no loss of functionality with it. It has a brilliant colour screen which makes it readbale in full daylight.

I wouldn’t go in the technical specifications; what got me interested was that it comes with Opera Mini preloaded. Unfortunately, my current service provider, Vodafone, has one of the lousiest GPRS access with sky high rates for access. This makes it unviable in the present context.

It would be worthwhile to shift to Reliance GSM, as and when they launch and when the number portability kicks in. It doesn’t get better than this, isnt it? You get to retain your number and expect to look in for a better service.

Apple announced opening up their development platform by releasing their Software Development Kit. Anyone with coding knowledge would be able to design the applications for the same. Apple being Apple, has also announced support for Microsoft Exchange; in effect it is aiming for a slice of corporate market for push email services aka Blackberry. (Read another excellent write up here)

I would risk my own set of predictions; Apple would be looking forward to upgrade the hardware and offer higher capacity drives and 3G compatible handsets. It would then kick some ass. And make it worthwhile for me to buy one too as a productivity tool.

Frankly, the current crop of handsets is disappointing. There is no doubt about the technological developments making mobile phones as a true convergence device but the proof of pudding is eating it. Frankly, their software is clunky and most of them have slow response times enough to make you yawn. With Intel’s launch of low power chips, that should make a difference.

Nokias lack the “cool factor” because they are seen around with everyone. There is no air of exclusivity with them. I’d rather be caught dead with a Chinese branded handset; although most of the lower end handsets from Nokia are rebranded Chinese or Taiwanese throwaways. Interestingly, Nokia and other handset manufacturers can easily sustain the price cuts over a period of time; they make a killing in the initial months of launch.

Apple iPhone would grow on the mania and frenzy created in the market place. If you have buckets of money and don’t have an Apple, it’s of no use. I’d agree about getting a diamond studded Vertu and getting a personal concierge on beck and call, but that’s too uncool and very very dry. iPhone is hip; much like the old world charm of listening to Black Sabbath and smoking grass. I endorse Black Sabbath but not grass though. Yes, you get the drift.

When would anyone get this here in India?

If Sunil Bharti Mittal is not shitting in his pants yet, he is the biggest moron in the industry. Reliance would be smart enough to upstage the existing players by slashing the costs ruthlessly. I am sure they would sweeten the deals with subsidised handsets or may even give them free initially. Imagine the multiplier effect it would have! They would make their money with locked in handsets and if I can see the situation right, they would go in for bottom of the pyramid where the real voumes lie. Unlike Airtel which has not been able to differentiate it’s offerings or establish it’s brand identity or the typical South Delhi crowd that ohhs aahh’s about the Vodafone screwed up pug. You get the drift.

Raja changed the rules of the game. Videocon (and notice the word “con”) too joined in the fray. Dhoot Sahib is the newest entrant to the millionaire club though would appeal to a typical pan chewing marwari unlike Bharti Mittal who gets himself invited to fancy conclaves. Dhoot too has the foresight to hit below the belt; even though he is an also ran in the electronics market, he has enough foresight to cash out his investment and make a neat pile. Interestingly, a company called as Swan Telecom has been allocated spectrum. I have heard (from my sources) that it is a front end for Reliance only.

In the game of shakers and movers, Airtel can look forward to monetise it’s investment in fixed line telephony. Even though there is a lot of brouhaha about the 3G licences on stake, it would not happen overnight. India is a volumes market and GPRS/EDGE is seriously a load of bull crap multiplied several times over. 3G handsets wouldn’t be affordable atleast for the next 5 years and crowing about Mbps wireless speeds makes no sense. Atleast to me. Unless we speak of Wifi networks in public places. Of course, being powered by fixed lines….

Raja has done a great deal of disservice to the nation by not auctioning off the spectrum. It’s difficult to quantify the exact money that has played in here. We need to know as to why cross over licence was given to the select few. Further, GSM companies have had to eat crow for their insistence on subscriber linked spectrum allocation and for too long they have been getting away with it. When TRAI declared that the subscriber’s number should be 2-3 times the existing number (and all kinds of Government agencies came into limelight to ascertain the spectrum issue), the companies had to sit back and huddle in silence.

The next move is being planned by smart ass lawyers who are going to make a killing in the next few weeks. The legal eagles would surely feast on this unholy carcass.

I remain opposed to foreign interests in a vital sector like telecom and there is no way I can ever endorse the idea that they should remain in this nation. Having a pug as your mascot only means that this company has gone to the dogs.

It was stupid of them to launch an advertising blitzkreig to change everything to pink. And now everything to be changed to Vodafone. Oh boy! They surely have a lot of money to burn. Incidentally, their website is full of coding errors and cannot even render itself properly across a standard compliant browser like Opera.

I dont think that Vodafone would be able to really shake up the telecom industry. They would remain behind Airtel for times to come unless they consolidate and dish out something worthwhile. Maybe unlimited GPRS or something exciting in their portal. At times I wonder as to how a company can make oodles of money selling caller tunes. Or something like an exclusive deal for Apple iPhone. I am sure there are many to sink in their money for that overpriced gadget.

Depsite “millions of broadband hooked subscribers”, the Internet penetration in India remains a measly 0.04%. This has been because of the short sighted policies adopted by the Government. When they realised that it wouldn’t be feasible to service the wireline, ISP’s of all hues are now are crowing about the WiMax as the next best thing to have happened to Indians for Internet access. I see beaming executives go to that “extra” mile to ensure that the word gets hammered about the all pervasive Internet access. And understandably so. They are only concenterating in metros and class A cities. This means that the poor guy getting his fix of porn in Jhumritalliya via dial up Internet would still have to wait for atleast another generation before Broadband reaches him.

This becomes interesting. Much of the energy is being squandered away in setting up parallel networks. Railways has a HUGE optic fibre network and while there was a lot of hue and cry about spinning off a seperate arm to provide a backbone, nothing seems to have come off it. While most of us are still bandwidth starved for online applications. Guys, if speeds of 2 MBps are “fast” enough, imagine what Gigabits speeds would do to your Internet access.

Spectrum issues are difficult to get rid off. It is next to impossible to imagine a situation when Indians would think rationally. It is a “me too” syndrome affecting all the nuts who control your access to Internet. Reliance, VSNL (yeah, those morons too), BSNL (the bastardised sonofabitch of Department of Telecom) and what not are jumping in the fray. I read about BSNL were holding trials in Pune. What came of it?

There are people who claim about selling Wimax “enabled” notebooks to ensure “always on” connectivity. If I am not mistaken, Intel has sunk in millions to create a “standard” for Wireless access and their future stock prices (and hence profits) hinge on the early adoption of this “standard”. I condemn this for all practical purposes. Because, we would be locked in a certain format and the airwaves are a public property. How the F*** they decide to dictate us the laws of the game? In my opinion, the Wireless Access Standards should be based on Open Source (if there is any) so that the public property remains in it’s hands. Since the custodians in the form of Government have already sold off their souls to the Devil incarnate, it makes no sense to petition to them. Yet what the F*** the media watchdogs are doing?

A single company by virtue of it’s dominance should not be allowed to rule the airwaves just the way it is doing. In a way, all these companies would have to pay their “taxes” to the “patent holder” and we would be subsidising their efforts. A sad scene anyway.

In any case, the Wireless Internet sucks. It would be a novelty indeed but ask those people who have been using GPRS enabled handsets to access Internet. With snailish speeds (if the access can be called as a speed), it is akin to two snails “f***ing” away to glory. And trust me, that takes forever and forever!

I hope that better sense prevails and wireline networks get rolled out to challange BSNL’s rat infested networks. This is the least I can expect; anything more would be a disaster!

I believe that the future might as well belong the Blackberry like devices. They allow you to stay connected with your email- big deal really? It is an expensive toy (with expensive subcription fees) and comes as an add on to the moronish grey suited corporate types who act as if they are important. Arguably, Airtel wanted people to adopt this on a mass scale and recently reduced the rates for the same.

Reliance once held a promise of “fast download speeds of upto 144kbps”; though those who are spoilt for speeds (even though on so called wireline broadband) would find this a chore to connect to their email accounts. GPRS sucks majorly; even though this has been sweetened to some extent by the excellent Opera Mini browser. ( I would endorse Opera anyday). The best deal in Wireless remains for Wifi in India. I believe that community powered wireless, providing free access to the people (as opposed to the likes of frigging ISP’s like Sify) is the way to go. Jaipur is in the process of introducing the wireless Internet in the future and I shall be looking forward to know about it’s progress.

One of the reasons for this post was Mozilla’s chief commenting that mobile internet is a dead dodo. Even if they comments were quoted out of context, I am sure that there is a reason to give him a benefit of doubt. Mozilla sucks anyday as a browser and it is a clear cut case of grapes turning sour. Being beaten hollow in the browser innovations, Mozilla is sucking to whatever it can.

Meanwhile, Cingular is offering streaming video clips to it’s subscribers in US; thus ushering in the 3G networks in US. The content providers never had it so good. Though, I am seriously wondering as to who would want to watch the whole episode of Lost ( some kind of a sitcom which excites the brain dead Americans) on a teeny weeny screen. I am sure that content moghuls would find some more innovative ways to monetise their collections.

P.S. There are interesting articles posted on Business Standard though their URL’s don’t seem to last forever. I would definitely want to have permission to copy and paste their write ups. Does anyone know how to apply for the permission? Any information would be surely appreciated.

Much like the classical “chicken and egg problem”, it is difficult to build up a case for higher speeds than current 256k. The biggest problem is that there is no built up ecosystem that could possibly sustain the need for content; higher speeds are not going to solve any problem.

For the same reason, the latency to access the game servers is horrendous. As I am told, it is timed in hundreds of milliseconds; which only means that local cache or game servers need to be set up within India to host the massive online multi player games.

However, higher speeds have no meaning for the gentle folk whose sole purpose is to check email or talk. Video Chats would be jittery, but those blue button hitting morons (who abound in abundance on the face of this earth) would hardly notice. I have personally seen people signing up for GPRS access just because their mobile supports that! Beyond that, their access is limited to chatting.

What can you do with higher speeds? Watch videos online? Anything else? File sharing? That is akin to shuffing up a chilli laden object up their backsides. Hence, they would only seek to block you actively. VoIP is good enough in 256k.

Hence, there has to be a strong case for MbPs. The demand has to be created by localised content developers. All this boils down to a very small installed computer base which would make it useless to invest money; something that is not guranteed to bring in the revenues in the short/ long term.

We could blame the PR spin and gibberish spouting from the telecom companies when they hold expensive campaigns and press conferences to crow about the ” in thing”. IPTV is an alien concept and has not been tested as yet on a large scale. Or the scale that Reliance has been talking all about.

This brings us to another question. Which is more important? Content or Distribution? Distribution is far more powerful; witness the near monopoly of your local cable operator and you’d know. They cannot be reined in and mafia money is invested heavily. In the tug of war between the content creators and distributors, it is the consumer who is forced to cough up huge sums and pay for the “paid channel” with ads screaming in full glory.

This is the reason why the majors have invested money in distribution. Zee has Dish TV and their Sity Cable; Star has it’s Hathway and to- be- launched DTH. Reliance has invested/ investing in it’s IPTV and DTH- Bluemagic.

Broadband or higher speeds could radically alter the contours of the content. In my opinion, the next progression would be towards the so called triple play. However, the current last mile access hassles means that laying down optic fibre cable would be an expensive proposition.

Unwittingly, we need to depend on BSNL to make any first move. Given it’s sloth that could shame a herniated tortoise, it can’t be expected in the near future.

Hence, I can only foresee being stuck in the 256k gamble with a awful capped upload, to be the order of the day. We could only swallow the insults they heap on whatever little intelligence we have.

Spice. Among the first few mobile operators. It had licences in Punjab,Karnataka and West Bengal. They subsequently sold off the Calcutta circle to Airtel and concenterated on Punjab and Karnataka.

Priyanka Chopra is the current mascot for Spice. Despite her awful acting/ screen presence, she stares and smiles from bill board hoardings where street dogs pee every day. Including some species of humans. (Humanicus Indicus). This isn’t saying much for a company whose service levels have seen a massive nosedive in recent times. It is often joked that Spice is turning in another Cell One (the “sarkari cell phone service”). It is nothing to be proud of!

Hutch has consistently been showing a good performance. While it definitely trails behind the other operators, people have been sticking on to it like goo on the wall. In other words- loyalty to the company. However, their charges for GPRS access are atrocious which makes it a joke to call it as an access anyway. Rest all, it heavily advertises for it’s value added services and as a result need to re coup it’s ad spends. Stupidity? Or increased ad spends leading to higher usage? I have no firm answers.

However, there was a refreshing change from Spice to Hutch. The customer care numberwent in through the first attempt- a rarity otherwise in Spice. This happened a couple of times. The “executives” or the glorified idiots knew their work anyway. So, less of glorified idiots or higher up in the evolution scale.

Now, the initial impression with Hutch was good. They had a slick welcome booklet and obviously, they have taken great pains to communicate their product.They do have an website- however, painfully slow to respond to any queries. It’s been over 50 hours I sent a mail which hasn’t been replied to. That isn’t saying much for a company at all.

Spice was in the pits. With network congestion becoming worse day by day, it became a routine to see “Error in network”, “No network” et al. It almost reminded me of crashing Microsoft Windows. Just like it gave “fatal errors” and refused to budge. Of course, Linux is class apart….

I hope the impression with Hutch stays good. I d keep you informed