Tag Archive for 'Hutch'

Hutchinson’s Foray: iPhone killer?

Published on 10th Oct 2008 in Indian Telecom. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I am not a fan of wireless access because it cannot support faster speeds for a wide user base. Not yet. 3G is a big disappointment wherever it has been implemented and is still facing teething issues.

No wonder, I was surprised to read about INQ phones to be launched by Hutchinson in the Indian subcontinent as the next “iPhone killer”. Businessweek has a habit of spawning up controversies or issues when none exist. These planted stories in the media usually have a smiling face of an overpriced CEO alongside with “emphasis” on his “far reaching vision”.

I have nothing against these phones but with cheap Chinese crap flooding the Indian market, they are a real terror threat. For starters, none of them have IMEI number which helps them to be tracked. Further, there is no confirmation about the degree of radiation they give off; since they dont conform to the established standards.

The Chinese are bunch of slitty eyed idiots; they need to be kept at an arms distance from India. Specially, when it concerns our national security.

I doubt whether the operators would be keen to open up their “walled gardens”. The WAP was such a lousy experience that I swore off the other methods of access except the wireline. With the 3G hoopla, I remain circumspect to the newer developments. Businessweek needs to better define their priorties in black and white though.

Vodafone India: Billing hassles

Published on 11th Jul 2008 in Other Frustrated Customers and Vodafone India. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Despite their brilliant advertising claims, Vodafone India has made a mess of it’s customer care. Why doesn’t it translate into effective delivery at the ground level?

I had made a payment for my mobile phone elsewhere; outside from the home circle. I was assured that the billing system would be updated. As luck would have it, the system didnot update the payment and I started getting messages and calls from female “recovery agents” to pay my dues. Surprisingly, they have a knack of calling in at such odd hours; they start off without even extending basic courtesies. I insisted that I had paid for the amount and I directed them to enquire from their Vodafone Store where I had paid the cash. They did not make any effort to trace the amount but instead chose to lay the entire blame on me.

All said and done, they barred my outgoing calls and I had to make the payments under duress. Although, the phone was working again after much cajoling; they took an entire day to get it “activated”.

My credit limit is more than sufficient and they made me run around like a scared rabbit. What is clear from the entire episode is that despite their claims, they did not bother to check their backend (literally and figuratively) and rectify the issue. It could have been very simple to call up the dud on the other line (through proper channel in their parlance) and find out the billing details as well as the payment made. Although, in the routine cases it sounds audacious because they have to take care of “millions of customers” but the fact is that they cannot afford to loose loyal ones. I have remained with Hutch for over 3 years now only because of their talk plans. So far, I have not had much of the issues with their billing per se but this one off incident has shaken my faith in the company. So much so, that its more of a hurt than anger that’s bothering me.

There are many other stories like these replicated day in day out across the country. With an ineffective regulator and lack of awareness, most of these nitwits are having a free run.

This is the problem with having oligopolies. The customer isnt the king any longer.

UPDATE: I have been updating on the forums as well. So far, no reply from the company.

Virgin India Mobile: New service that never happened

Published on 09th Mar 2008 in Indian Telecom. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Virgin Mobile was deflowered by Department of Telecom for not complying with licence norms. For those who have come late, Virgin Mobile is a mobile virtual network operator. They tied up with Tatas and wee about to start off their services here in India.

I fired an email to their PR division. Their comments came in an attachment; not a good PR strategy in my opinion. They should have sent a seperate email or should have had a logo prominently displayed.

Here is the exact copy. My comments appear in italics in paranthesis.

1) Is Virgin a Mobile Virtual Network Operator independently acting in India?
Virgin Mobile services are being offered to consumers by Tata Teleservices through a brand franchise with the Virgin Group. This means that Virgin Mobile is a brand of Tata Teleservices. This brand franchise is within the permitted norms of license agreement of Tata Teleservices (Confused statements. Nevertheless, the supposed licence agreements have been invalidated by Department of Telecom in their wisdom. The email from the PR division came in before this happened).

2) Do you have a tie up with Tata Teleservices?

Virgin Mobile India is an equitable partnership (then what is the brand frachise?)between Virgin Group and Tata Teleservices. Virgin Mobile India will provide Tata Teleservices with experience and expertise in designing, marketing, and servicing Virgin Mobile branded products for the youth segment.

3) Who has designed your website?
Need inputs (Ha! They don’t know the name of their web designer!!! This has been prominently displayed on their home page. At first, I realised the futility of the question AFTER I had sent the email. However, even I was not prepared for their answer. Anyone with the right brains could have easily figured that out. Despite all the flash, it is choked of coding errors- a common refrain of most of the websites not designed to comply with web standards).

4) Why do you make service guarantees for network availability? Are you 100% sure that your network would not fail as compared to other service providers?
Virgin Mobile places huge importance on ensuring that we deliver a high quality service to customers. This philosophy pervades in everything that we do- quality of network, range of handsets, value added services on offer, customer care etc. We chose Tata Teleservices because we believe it has the best quality network in India (Who decides that?). According to published reports (where?), Tata Teleservices has the lowest dropped call rates and one of the lowest blocking rates in the industry(how?). This means that ‘Virgin Mobile’ branded customers will reliably be able to enjoy clear calls, a fast connection and low dropped-call rates(Low dropped call rates? Despite the network, customers would still experience call drops! Even though, they may be low by industry standards!!!).

5) Why did you choose to go ahead with Virgin?
Virgin brings extensive experience and expertise in targeting the youth market across 7 countries over the last 8 years. It is this experience, service innovation and ability to catch the pulse on the youth market that makes Virgin a perfect partner for our ‘youth’ brand.

All in all, it remains a perfect example of PR crap. Tata seriously needs a reality check. They have honest intentions; they need to tap the youth market. Their perception in the market is jaded and also ran; which is different from say Hutch. Most of the companies are aspiring for “youth tag” and hope that it would add “zing” to the company.

Why youth? They aspire for a better lifestyle and if a brand fits in their perceptions of being the “right one”, they would splurge on it. It remains true for the metros as well as the smaller towns and cities. However, Virgin Mobile would need massive advertising money to cause a “brand recall”, just like they have associated a dog with Hutch. For the same reason, having Shah Rukh Khan for Airtel has not worked well because he endorses many other brands. Further, Airtel’s marketing division is pits.

I feel that the PR divisions needs a better infusion of brains than the current crop of retards that presently infest them. They need to tone up their language primarily because flowery English doesnt work. Unless someone is looking at impressing some starry eyed nut.

By the way, their website designer is bcwebwise. It speaks very highly of it’s boss who is an ex journo and has ventured in web designing. It has jarring colours and as usual coding errors :) Not a very comforting thought to pay dollops of money to those who cant even ensure compliance to web standards.

Update: I got an email from their PR agency saying that the attachment was sent by mistake. They wanted to send a further email from their PR agency regarding the new development of licence norms. They wanted my telephone number in order to speak to me and clarify issues.

Incidentally, Virgin India came with front page advertisement on 10/03/2008 in Delhi edition of Times of India. They are paying the customers to recieve incoming calls. In my opinion, this is basically a gimmick to lure in customers initally; their call rates are almost similar as that of other operators.

I shall keep this post updated as and when newer developments happen.

Year End 2007

Published on 28th Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This year draws to a close in another 3 days. It would not change anything except for the dates. I call this as perverted optimism because I keep on looking forward for some miracles. It’s truly a make believe fantasy world.

COAI finally mustered up guts and filed a lawsuit against Department of Telecom. As usual, the media was frothing at it’s mouth and made this the headlines. Reliance jumped in the fray and counter challanged DoT with their own version of lawsuits galore. It was free for all till they decided to call it sober down and indulge in some back room dealings. Lawsuits have ceased to make any more news for the time being.

Spectrum is the main cause of the “fights”. I have repeated this ad naseum and it makes no sense to highlight this fact that spectrum is a scarce resource and the way Government is frittering away it’s advantages should call for an open discussion. The fossilised babus are barely going to move their butts and would be happy to gather moss. The only people who are happy about the opacity of the laws are the lawyers.

Broadband is a non starter this year too. Airtel introduced their 8 Mbps plans with some assinine download limits. I believe that this seems to be a marketing strategy in order to create a buzz around their product. All the while, most people who sign up “shockingly fast broadband” (or whatever the ads claim), they would become aware of it’s potential. Which means that word of mouth publicity would get them more customers. I am not sure that this is their marketing strategy. I believe that this is stupidity of the first lot to make the available resources scarce and not catering to the existing pent up demand. In any case, their broadband pricing leaves a lot to be desired. Airtel has the bandwidth and the mojo and the works. Yet, it is staffed by perhaps one of the worst idiots who ever sat on a gold mine.

Tatas made a lot of news and perhaps for the first time they made it to the Asshole of the year on this blog. Congratulations to them on winning this coveted award and here’s hoping that they would keep up this record. They had their intentions set right and I remember reading in Business World about their grand plans to set up metro ethernet and their deals with Cisco. This was one off news and it wasn’t mentioned subsequently. VSNL lost it’s dominance in international distance calling cards and then Reliance gave them a good competition for international landing stations.

Speaking of Reliance, they made news for all the wrong reasons. They got into acquiring Adlabs and then fancied making movies. There was a talk of convergence and “lightening fast” broadband. (Notice the way they describe their pathetic products). So far, there has been NO shaking news about broadband; they are stuck in the 128k era. Ouch! Reliance has not ventured much in landline business and they are holding their cards close to their chest. At best, they set up shadown companies like Swan and Cheetah Telecommunications (what names!) to bid for the telecom licence.

Anil Ambani has been a true “also ran” in the marathon all the while trying to carve out some “niche” for himself. He knows that he is being compared to his elder sibling and when crores of accounted and unaccounted money is at stake, blood is thinner than water indeed. Mukesh was sensible to exit out from telecom and focus instead on retail and gas. It was Anil who still seems to be glamour struck (remember Tina Munim nee’ Ambani?) It shows for him.

HFCL Connect is a small time player along with Spice Communications run by Modis. They seem to have mustered up enough courage to apply for pan India licence and spread their wings. They remain, at best, marginal players and would interest the foreign companies in case they wish to set up shop here in India.

Hutch became Vodafone after protracted legal battle and it was a personal victory for Arun Sarin. However, the change of the name and rebranding has not changed anything with this company. I have been after them to improve the quality of their services but then nothing has changed. As usual.

I had expressed hope that the year 2007 would be the year of Broadband. However, this was not to be. This was more about spectrum wars, legal wranglings et a which I am sick of reporting here again and again. This has also resulted in slowing down of the posts here. I believe that the best news of this year is the announcement of number portability, initially limited to the metros. It would be scaled up at a later date to rest of the country. I hope that with low migration charges, the competition to retain the customers would be intense and it would be the quality of services that would speak for itself.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Vodafone India: Sucks to the MAX!

Published on 03rd Dec 2007 in Indian Telecom. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

If there is any survey for dissatisfied customers, HUTCH (and now Vodafone) would clearly come out trumps for sucking to the max.

Over the past few months, I have been emailing the bozos to register my complaints with the management regarding the dismal quality of call services. I have been experiencing frequent call drops and disturbances which makes calling below par. So far, I have been getting varied responses to my queries. At one point of time, they even decided to sanction the ‘in building” solution to my place of work; I have not got the assurance in writing as yet.

The worst off is the customer care; I had to wait for almost 15 minutes before my call was attended to. It becomes extremely difficult to deal with a dumb moron trying to make “sense”. Much of my efforts are wasted in trying to frame a query that he would understand. It would be a perfect situation to let off my steam to a jerk who is almost suicidal or on the brink of being one.

I truly wish I could rap their knuckles nice and hard in order to make them understand that it takes a lot of time and hard work to acquire a customer and none whatosever to loose one. I am desperately waiting for some more competition to catch up so that atleast these buggers are forced to improve their services.

Screw them indeed.

Hutch becomes Vodafone

Published on 21st Sep 2007 in General Thoughts and Indian Telecom. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

This is another example of foreign imperialism. Slowly we ought to get used to the limey lingo and their products. Vodafone in India (albeit by backdoor) is a perfect example of how sovereignity of my motherland is being butchered by the bastards.

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.

Madness

Published on 30th Aug 2007 in Indian Telecom. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This announcement was something similar to a bamboo stick loaded up with chillies and thrust on their sorry orifices. The department of telecom seems to have woken up to the menace of the telecom firms. Mercifully better sense prevailed and spectrum allocation guidelines have been rationalised. Atleast in theory.

I was expecting and it happened. The COAI chief reacted on expected lines and cried foul. Reliance is waiting in the wings to get the GSM licence for pan India licence and is willing to fork out astronomical sums of money for the same. Real estate developer Parsavnath has thrown it’s hat in the ring.

All for a simple logic. The “relaxed” norms for the foreign ownership is bound to attract the global majors. We have already seen Vodafone owning up the Hutch brand. It makes sense to scale up a brand new service, share towers with the existing incumbents and then sell out at a profit. What else explains this? It isn’t the crap aboout the “fastest” growing market but for the existing segmentation of the customer base. It becomes easier to identify a set customer base and lure them with a better service offering than their existing service provider. All the while it’s the incumbent that spends huge amount of adver tising to get them on the network, the new players lure them with “better offers”. More so, I feel that it might be as well that Indian market may get to see the segregation of the services. For example, we might have new players exclusively for data services rather than plain vanilla voice applications.

It is now being whispered in the Indian media about the inflated subscribers; a fact that I have been talking about ever since this blog came into existence.

It’s more than 3 quarters of the year now. No new initiative on the broadband front except for the customary noises about IPTV. Bah. What do customers really need?

So far, Raja (our “hon’ble” minister) has not been able to exert himself. He remains a pale shadow of former M(o)ara(o)n. If the Indian Government falls to the blackmail of the screwed up commies, expect our broadband dreams to be rolled back by another decade. Most of the operators would hold it because they would be more interested in knowing the exact “policy” of the new guy who warms his ass on the chair.

Madness indeed.