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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Let’s look at this from a different perspective and why the entry of Reliance and Tatas would affect the existing subscriber base. The telephone number portability has been announced and the plan would be affected perhaps by next year. Reliance and Tatas would roll out their services pronto pronto since they already own much of the infrastructure in form of manpower and physical assets. The GSM operators have gagged together in their rag tag association (even though their unity is in doubt) and are in effect an effective oligopoly. The entry of new players upsets their apple cart and they would be forced to introduce newer services to make themselves relevant.

On the other hand, this claim could be contested by the CDMA lobby because they have not done anything extra ordinary with their services. For example, no one single operator has a single sec pulse billing which benefits the customer. Suppose you talk at a strech for 5.03 minutes. You end up loosing the extra 57 seconds that remain unused. These are the extra seconds that are charged for without any accountability.

It isnt that the fossilised babus are not aware of the situation on ground. They have chosen to stay shut because their telephone bills are paid for by the taxpayers money. In any case, most of them end up being telephone consultants just like ex TRAI head Pradeep Baijal has done.

Hence, to round it off, I must admit that unravelling the telecom mess is bit like understanding a woman’s mind. I am not an expert but prefer to see things the way they affect us.

As the year draws to a close, the confusion in the telecom regulations persists. The ordinary paying customer is at the recieving end. As usual.

A quick low down of the ensuing events. According to the norms, the spectrum would be issued to the companies who garner the maximum share of the subscribers. This means that apart from the bloated number of subscribers, the whole mobile user base is a BIG suspect. The specturm wars broke out in the public because Raja wanted to ration the scarce resource and act God. There are often shispers of BIG money floating around but then that isn’t the focus of this write up here. At first, the government decided to relax the norms for spectrum allocation. In the meantime, it allocated 10 Mhz of “free” spectrum to the two upgly sisters, BSNL/MTNL. This was challanged by COAI, the motley coalition of the private telecom operators in TDSAT, which is tribunal body to decide the disputes. To add to the confusion in the midst was the huge number of applications that waited to get their turn for spectrum allocation. DoT decided to issue letters of intent to the new players.

In the meantime, the media jumped in the fray and raised the issue of 3G licences and there were various interpretations of the original licencing norms. Government of India thrives in controversy and no wonder that it was very happy to roll in the mud. The motley association was split right through the middle and they could not get their act quite right. After a couple of days, COAI made quiet noises about “settling” the 3G row.

Now comes the icing on the cake. Reliance got an entry in the GSM club by paying a paltry sum of 1600+crores and got their CDMA licence converted to some kind of a “universal access” crap. Whatever that means. Reliance’s entry in the cosy club and hence the scarce spectrum being gifted on the platter was too much for the association to digest. Anil Ambani and the rest exchanged verbal duels clothed in their gobbledegook. In other words, both the parties were fingering each other. When the war of words went out of hand, the DoT wanted to play Godfather and summoned the chiefs of all the telecom companies to “thrash out a solution”.

Raja realised that the game was clearly up and set up a shadow boxing competition. In effect, to announce as to who is the boss. Since there was no consensus on the telecom chief’s meet, he decided to get the PMO involved and had a smiling manmoron to back up his decision.

Thus ended the saga of the “spectrum wars”; the last word isn’t written as yet. I would wait for further news to unfold in the near future. Nevertheless, the mess persists and the ultimate looser is the public exchequer. Without going in detail about the merits of the case, I believe that this telecom mess would tangle itself like a hydra headed monster. No respite!

As usual, the watchdogs were quiet and it was only Business Standard who spoke out at length about the mess around here.

Phew!