Published on
15th Sep 2008 in
Tata Indicom and Tats Communications.
Tags: 3G, Airtel, CDMA, GSM, India, Indian Telecom, Rediff, Tata, Tata Communications, Tata Indicom, Tata sucks, Tata Teleservices, Tatas, TRAI, Value Added Services.
Poor idiots! They had to sell to DoCoMo, a leader in the 3G services. With the policy as announced, the duds had it in them. They had to sell out to the highest bidder. Very soon, the whole landscape of the Indian telecom would change. We would not have homegrown company like Airtel but instead this would be a battle ground for the big global majors to fight it out for customers.
The size of the deal is pegged at $1.5 billion (about Rs 6,700 crore), translating into a $6-billion (Rs 26,000 crore) valuation for the company that runs networks across the country and is planning to expand into GSM mobile services in the near future. Tata Teleservices is a loss-making company. Between 2005 and 2007, its cumulative losses stood at Rs 5,604 crore
This India story has been done to death many a times. There is no real addition of the 8-9 million customers per month. It is simply not possible. Most of the metros have choked and jammed. It is saturated. In order to expand into tier B and tier C cities, telcos need funds and assured returns. For all practical purposes, I dont forsee the market “hot and happening”; although the 3G services would assure monetised returns and would ride on the value added services.
It is no secret that Tatas claim their superiority of services based on some abstract benchmarks. There are people who would swear to God not to ever think of Tatas as their service provider. Frankly, TRAI has been unable to implement its own customer friendly norms; trying to get anything out of the useless idiots manning the customer service is a herculean task in itself.
Tata is a weathered story. They have lost it and the writing on the wall is as clear as the sunlight illuminating the dark dungeons of their minds. Telecom is a failed venture and they ought to accept defeat and ship out of business.
Media reports are rife about speculation that Reliance Communications (RCom) has had a soft launch of their GSM mobile business. They have awarded a huge contract to Huawei (stupidity) and is being financed with Chinese money to expand their services. Incidentally, they own the company to lease out the towers for both the CDMA as well as the GSM services. It all remains in the “family”, so as to say. It’s pretty incestous.
I am eager to know about their service levels as well as their plans. They had shaken up the mobile industry earlier in their avatar and the space is all set to grow. Lets see how this unfolds.
I have been with Vodafone for over three years now. Unfortunately, this company is best among the worst of the GSM operators in the country. So far, I have not had a “moment of delight” with them, either with the customer care or the responses to the emails concerning the network.
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.
Published on
03rd Apr 2008 in
General Thoughts and Telecom News.
Tags: Airtel, Airtel India, Airtel sucks, GSM, GSM association, GSM India, Idea Cellular, Idea Cellular India, Idea Cellular sucks, India, Opera, Vodafone, Vodafone India, Vodafone sucks.
I have always maintained that GSM services are cartelised. Despite the hype about the “fastest growing mobile telephony business” (bah!) we have the highest tariffs in the world based on the purchasing power parity. There is no point in repeating the statistics and I’d request interested readers to dig in the archives.
Anti Monopoly watchdog MRTPC issued notices to Airtel , Vodafone and Idea Cellular regarding the price increase on the same day! Here is the frigging legal flotsam if you are interested:
The DGIR said this was a Restrictive Trade Practices by the operators as it distorted the competition and recommended to take action against the three operators under section 2(O) read with 33 (1)(D) of the MRTP Act, 1969.
It’s hard to imagine that any action would come out of this. The legal battery of these companies would swing into action and perhaps settle out of court. They would get a mild rap and it would be business as usual.
In the whole scenario, it is the suffering customer who would keep his mouth shut and not rise up and demand that the prices be rolled back and that they get paid back in kind. Sheesh. I have never come across such a mass of people who choose to suffer in silence and let the operators get away with open loot.
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.
I usually don’t make political statements on this blog but long timers here would already know that my political leanings are towards far right. For all the abuses that have been heaped on Narendra Modi, none of it has actually stuck on to him because much of it was pure BS.
He has single handedly transformed Gujarat and propelled it to the path of prosperity. The pseudo secular mafia was at loss for words and the mainstream media started blaming the people of Gujarat for their choice! How preposterous can it get? Messrs Sardesais, Barkha Dutts, Roys et al were spearheading the “remove Modi” campaign. It only goes on to prove their ignorance of the fact, their shallow understanding of the polity and futility of thier trade. At best, they can wow a certain section of the drawing room chatterati over a glass of whisky.
Nevertheless, I am linking the main stub to the post that appeared in Offstumped; a good blog dealing with issues of national importance. Infact, one of the few topical blogs that I follow on a regular basis.
This write up was “motivated” by Modi’s speech in Chennai. You could watch the parts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6); the last part clearly details the initiatives taken by Modi for spreading broadband in the rural areas. Thats the kind of commitment to governance that we need. For those who are not having “high speed” broadband, here is the link to what Modi said.
Shobhana Subramanian of Business Standard has concrete numbers about Reliance winning the game of spectrum wars. Worth reading. Except for the fact that I had raised the same issues in my earlier posts and now you know why I was dead right about Ambani making it really big.
Apart from maximising the revenues, GSM would help them to acquire more customers. I am sure that they would want to leverage the power of GSM and CDMA networks and introduce consolidated billing. For example, they could offer wireless internet on CDMA and voice calls on GSM; some kind of a switching mechanism could be developed.
Unless Anil Ambani wants to call it quits and screw up. Who knows?
