I rarely cover the mobile Internet on this blog. Part of the reason is my antipathy towards a highly inefficient medium of communication that has been sold as “standard”. As well as persistent ad spends to try and increase usage. The real shit is in Broadband folks and we don’t see any action on that front.

Nokia India is seeing a decreasing market share because it is staffed up by inefficient morons who have no clue where the technology trends are heading for. Even on their “low end 3G handsets”, I don’t see mention of Opera Mini, a Java based browser, but their inane persistence towards technological harakiri. Hence the rise of alternative technological platforms to access mobile internet.

Even in the huge market, the per capita consumption is barely 7MB per month which may be true (reflects my own usage on Docomo that I have). The idea behind having Mini installed is that it efficiently compresses the page before it is rendered on your handset. Nokia has not been able to get ANY traction in this market and Opera is seeing millions of page views per month through it’s data centre.

This of course worries me as a Desktop user. Even though it grows in popularity in mobile space and earns revenue from Google for it’s searches, it does not seem to have a spill over in the desktop segment.

Although they have done everything to open up the extensions framework but it seems that it is bound to be doomed the way Opera Unite/ Opera Widgets were. There is no palpable excitement in the blogosphere about this.

Apart from this, IMHO, mobile internet has a huge potential to grow in terms of “apps”. These little widgets are a rage and out of all the mobile operators only Aircel seems to be doing something right. At least they have created a framework for the same to spur on internet usage. To be honest, I haven’t seen their application in real time but their advertisements are a pointer towards the same. Yet, if they were REALLY smart, they would open up their application framework

Tags: 3G, Advertisement, Aircel, API, Broadband, Google, handsets, India, Internet, Java, Mobile, Opera, Opera Mini, Telecommunications India

This perhaps generates more cynicism than anything else. Over the past few months, I have become increasingly bitter with the telecom landscape in India. We have “expounded myths” about “millions” materializing from thin air to headlines dominated by three major trends

1) Smart phones and Android taking center stage with Nokia dying a slow death.

2) 2G spectrum scam

3) 3G mess.

There are tonnes of web sites scattered all around to tell you about Android’s home coming. I am not getting in the debate about what is good or bad but Apple (across the lines) remains aspirational because of it’s perceived value.

2G Spectrum scam has also been mentioned extensively with the political fall out affecting Congress and it’s cohorts; again the debate has been frittered away to be of any consequence.

3G Mess is bad. Really bad. Partly because it has been sold on lines of “only Internet access” you’d ever need. As mentioned in these columns (and comments) that none of the devices support advertised speeds of 21Mbps; more so, in absence of clear definition of what 3G speeds are, you would not really see much traction there. The operators have dreamt of fat profits accruing from the sales and perhaps are marketing different plans for mobile handsets and wireless modems. Docomo even explicitly prohibits “tethering” mobiles to laptops citing it as “violation of terms of use”; as it they can “prove it court of law”. Assholes.

4G is on the horizon and as such the media reports were peppered with what technology to choose. There are of course competing issues; I am not qualified enough to explain the merits/demerits of each.

Another highlight of this year was the final recognition of menace of telemarketing calls and sms (with sms rates being usurious and companies raking in huge profits from what is essentially free for them). I have written about it earlier but there are others in space who have written about it more extensively (Rajesh Jain on Telemarketing and SMS Spam[1,2,3,4,5])

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) would be a big issue in 2011. Although it has been launched in Haryana, there are not enough media reports about the impact of MNP on the same. Is it surprising? With telecom companies leading in advertisement spends, they hold enough leverage to influence reporting the issue. Hence I would remain blocked out on the same unless it becomes a major issue. However, they don’t give a shit to the users because there is no REAL choice between the service providers. Most of the new operators have yet not launched their operations (and hence got notices for the same) so it is difficult to comment on the same. I foresee a lot of activity in next year in terms of new players and mobile number portability to affect them. Yet, with the rise of cheap “chinese manufactured- Indian branded” hardware with dual and three SIM card slots, issues like MNP don’t hold much promise. Hence this too would remain a lot of hot air with some speculation towards “power to consumer”.

I have written extensively to TRAI, Department of Telecom and various stake holders in media about why need broadband and what is basic policy flaw in the system. This has also been a subject of my RTI applications being filed with them. At risk of sounding repetitive, we all need a proper system for growth of the nation and that is a foregone conclusion. However, the system is designed not to provide but to deprive the users from opportunities. If public good were at the heart of policy makers (and politicians), we would not have been a kangaroo republic (mistaken for a democracy).

I fail to understand the stupidity of media houses not to push for all inclusive growth in Broadband; since their own very future depends on it. I have briefly toyed with the idea of setting up a NGO; there is no scarcity of ideas that need to be implemented. What is lacking in this space is will to implement those ideas. The whole scenario is lumbering around like a giant iceberg. Yet as monotony in this space grows, Internet access is fuelled by explosive growth in social networking to Facebook’s data servers. Here in lies the rub. Media in India is even lacking in this space and focusing instead to try out experiments in their own walled microdomains expecting the advertisers to come on in hordes and expecting to rake in millions of dollars from advertising click throughs.

However, this dream lies shattered with corpses of media houses dotting the landscape instead. Content is supreme and while we retain the numero uno position for generating mountains of crap in terms of bollywood export, this has not found a “release” except from traditional channels of multiplexes and to some extent, DTH. Instead, we don’t have a Hulu or Netflix like player capitalizing on this aspect of delivery. 3g cannot do it. 4g cannot do it. Wifi perhaps. Broadband on wirelines- definitely.

This blog has also seen some write ups on the need to tone up internet exchanges, need for TRAI to jig up it’s broadband policy and a call for Public Internet cafes. Interestingly, we also saw NDTV’s programme on broadband which we linked on to and perhaps the first in a long long time coming in from mainstream media. TRAI did talk about “fair usage policy” although in context of telecom tariffs. Another highlight was my post on online education and something on cloud computing in respone to Chrome OS.

This, by and large, what I had written with some guest posts. I have already filed in RTI application with BSNL as listed and I am awaiting their response. My only aim to get to root on pricing on Broadband, the mess and perhaps get a better deal on it in the long run. The first step is perhaps to re-define broadband from it’s present definition. I am also planning to involve TRAI in this loop along with perhaps Department of Telecom and see how they differ. Although TRAI is the regulator, the real power lies with DoT. Yet, it is a blame game that they are likely to play. DoT would say that TRAI has to come up with regulations first. TRAI would say that DoT is the real boss and they have to come up with a “circular”. No one wants to work and consumer gets the fuck of his life.

I have seen the Indians from close quarters. They would suffer all the insults with great temerity and humbleness. Perhaps it is the servile attitude that is ingrained in their psyche. Neither we are going to see a good amount of activism to make the public institutions deliver nor are the companies going to make any efforts to tone up their services. It costs real money to keep up with after sales service which actually eats up the profits and hence customer service is perhaps the last of ideas on their minds.

This post by itself is a huge huge post in a long long time! Maybe perhaps, I have written about trends subconsciously which I feel would impact the telecom landscape in some way or the other. The market is not geared towards course correction but is littered with asymmetric information to disadvantage of consumers. Sadly proactive approaches, either at regulator level or mass media or even at consumer level is sorely lacking.

The new year is not going to change this scenario in any manner whatsoever.

Tags: 1Mbps, 3G, Advertisement, Advertising, android, API, Assholes, Broadband, BSNL, Chinese, Computing, Department of Telecom, DoT, DTH, handsets, India, Indians, Internet, laptop, mainstream media, Media, Mobile, Mobile Number Portability, Mobiles, NDTV, Opera, scam, SMS, spam, Spectrum, Telecommunications India, TRAI, Web Sites, Wifi, Wireless

A couple of days back I had written about cloud computing; whether or not it is relevant to Indian scenario given the state of the broadband networks and how they function. 4G is not yet launched and we still have to see it’s widespread deployment.

It can also be argued that Cloud computing offers a “cheaper alternative” for net access. For all the noise behind Chrome OS, it remains a re-worked implementation of Linux under the core with fancy “apps” and the browser as central to the computing experience.

To be honest, I hardly use my laptop for anything else. My computing time is solely meant for web access and once Google Voice/Skype have sense enough to implement the technology across the browsers, the other mode of “desktop applications” would become redundant.

It can also be argued about Google OS to be a cheap and effective way to roll out the product or say something like Airtel coming up with a fancy idea of having Airtel-Google branded laptops or netbooks being given “free” with contracts. However, for all this optimistic line of thought, I feel that the market is still not ripe to jump the gun.

Lets see what does Eric Schmidt has to say about it:

With Chrome OS, we have in development a viable third choice in desktop operating systems. Before there was no cloud computing alternative—now we have a product which is fast, robust and scalable enough to support powerful platforms. It’s something computer scientists have been dreaming about for a very, very long time. The kind of magic that we could imagine 20 years ago, but couldn’t make real because we lacked the technology. As developers start playing with our beta Cr-48 Chrome OS computer, they’ll see that while it’s still early days it works unbelievably well. You can build everything that you used to mix and match with client software—taking full advantage of the capacity of the web.

Ignore the brave words.

There is a competing product from Google: Android. It can again be effectively argued that they are separate and none can be adapted for other usage. I digress.

Android, despite ruling the roost on the mobile handsets, needs a lot more polish and push from Google to make it auto upgradeable. I own one from Samsung and hate the loaded crapware. I’d have to flash the ROM and install something else but that’s left from some other day.

Yet in this saga, can Google ever hope to monetise it’s offering? I can assume that after the Chrome OS reaches a critical mass (if and ever), it would be flooded with advertisements. Owning a laptop with loaded Chrome OS is the perfect platform for targetting those niggly ads that guarantee you a better erection in bed. In any case, the volumes are going to come only from the enterprise and that is not going to change in a hurry.

Brave words indeed but here’s a sampling of the common sense that has prevailed in the dark corners of cyberspace:

And any reasonably competent IT executive can plainly see that Google, for all of their algorithmic might, isn’t known for product longevity.

Sure, their core web products have been around for a while and aren’t going anywhere. But they launch a lot more products every year that we quickly forget about, and many of the unsuccessful products are quietly discontinued a few months or years later.

Google’s just not in the business of providing long-term support for an unsuccessful product line. It’s part of what allows them to keep releasing new things all the time while geeks declare Microsoft a boring old dinosaur. But IT departments need their platform vendors to behave much more like Microsoft.

Sad but true.

Hence, in this scenario, I don’t foresee a bright future but it seems to be another flash in the pan from the mavericks. It’s hard to say how this shapes up, how they advertise or strike deals with the manufacturers or how they wish to tone up their advertising platform.

Tags: Advertisement, Advertising, Airtel, android, Broadband, Computing, crapware, Google, handsets, India, laptop, Linux, Microsoft, Mobile, Opera, operating system, Telecommunications India