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.

Related posts:

1. Apple iPhone: Another feather in their cap I was positively impressed by this technology. I saw one...
2. Apple iPhone This is from the “iconic” Steve Jobs who has a...
3. Apple iPhone: Reality Distortion This was part of Steve Job’s famous “reality distortion field”...
4. The “killer app”? The favourite quote of the paid columnists to create a...
5. Back to Telecom! Is Bharti planning DTH foray? Is Bharti Televentures planning to enter the DTH market? The...

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.

Related posts:

1. BSNL: Billing hassles galore I chanced on this story on IBN (mercifully without it’s...
2. BSNL: Billing hassles 2 Things seem to have calmed down a bit. I managed...
3. BSNL: Billing hassles galore I signed up for a BSNL Broadband connection after I...
4. Vodafone India: Fined for it’s VAS It sounds too good to be true. Some “vigilant” NGO...
5. Vodafone India: The “jesus” phone iPhone (or the “jesus” phone) would be marketed here in...

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.

Related posts:

1. Mobile operators need to tone up Recently, I decided to check out the different websites for...
2. Update on BSNL Broadband Service Update on BSNL Broadband Service BSNL has finally rolled on...
3. Apple- Mobile phones? Now this is one of the hottest topics across the...
4. Mobile Internet This is indeed the “future”; even though I don’t suck...
5. Mobile phone mania. Moiles were initially started off as a lifestyle statement; with...

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.

Related posts:

1. Asshole of the year 2007 The final nominees for this years most coveted awards are...
2. The year that was I hate to end on a pessimistic note. The year...
3. Year 2006 forecast It’s difficult to forecast anything for the new year. Specially...
4. Year end blues The year is drawing to a close. Customarily, most of...
5. 2007 Let this year be for Opera on desktops. I’d love...

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.

Related posts:

1. Hutch becomes Vodafone This is another example of foreign imperialism. Slowly we ought...
2. More on Vodafone It seems that Vodafone is creating more ripples than it...
3. Debate and BSNL sucks Business Standard finally wakes up to some reality and commisions...
4. Hutch: Sell off Ending two months of speculation, Vodafone enters India by buying...
5. Who works in India? This is an interesting email I recieved and I thought...

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.

Related posts:

1. Hutch: Sell off Ending two months of speculation, Vodafone enters India by buying...
2. Hutch making life worse? The recent change in colours from ornage to pink made...
3. Business World : Rankings and Hutch Ho hum. Don’t we all know about the truth behind...
4. More on Vodafone It seems that Vodafone is creating more ripples than it...
5. Hutch: Sale of the year? It may be a good news for Ruias who hold...

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.

Related posts:

1. More on Spectrum madness “The best things in life are for free”. For the...
2. Smaller Telecom Operators in India Smaller Telecom Operators in India In the complex telecom muddle,...
3. Reliance, Tata and Indian Telecom Reliance, Tata and Indian Telecom The dust seems to be...
4. More Mess in Indian Telecom More Mess in Indian Telecom The recent cabinet decision for...
5. Indian Telecom is a Farce Indian Telecom is a Farce The old adage of the...

Primarily, the most exciting development is development of Opera Widgets (which is as simple as designing a web page) and make it work with Opera 9 and Opera Mobile browser. This means the content of rich applications suite that can be easily developed by the web masters in terms of Value Added Services or making the mobile browsing more feature rich.

This post was initially intended to compare the showdown between Opera Mobile and the new development suite from Microsoft. Opera definitely has taken a lead and the battle for the next playground is your mobile handset. The details would be too technical and I believe that it would defeat the purpose of this blog. Suffice to say is that Apple’s iPhone strategy is being carefully watched and anything can be commented upon only after June/ July launch. It has definitely opened up a vast range of possibilities for feature rich ownership experience. The new smart phones can also connect on to the telephone networks to make calls.

It holds up a lot of promise for India. If the price of the web enabled handsets come down sufficiently, we could see aggressive marketing from the mobile companies to get people signed up for the same.

Mobile companies have started getting on an advertising binge. Hutch is promoting this as “live search” and expects to reap benefits from increased usage. There have been dissertations written about mobile search and I don’t want to add anything to confusion. However, we were happy anyway without the “search” happening in any meaningful manner earlier on and most of the search engines index only a fraction of the net. Nevertheless, this is first for an Indian mobile company and for the partnering portal to generate revenues for their investments. (This is in no way an endorsement for Hutch).

The companies ought to explore the Wireless internet in much more meaningful manner than games/ringtones or logos. While they would remain a money spinner, people would find ways and means to circumvent the controls on the media. I am not opening up the debate for Digital Rights Management; content alone (or means to index it) cannot remain the exclusive purview of the chosen few. Hence, it makes sense to keep the content free from the walled portals and instead allow free access. The companies retain the right to charge for the access or as “enablers”. This would make much more sense than pooling in money to create “exclusive portals” as one stop access.

Coming back to applications, a feature suit of software for mobiles would do much good. Ubuntu recently announced development of a mobile edition for mobiles; I am sure that the likes of Microsoft would be shitting in their pants and sharpening their knives for their FUD campaigns.

The possibilities are endless.

Related posts:

1. Indian Telecom- Mobile developments I have been looking at the evolution of mobile phones...
2. New developments These are the changing times. For sure. This quarter has...
3. Linux on Mobiles I am not happy with the current crop of handsets....
4. Mobiles in India: The next future? I don’t like to be optimistic. Like every “big” story,...
5. Mobiles :Your next PC? Rajesh Jain has posted a series of articles on Mobiles...

Roaming charges have a rip off for years. I was wondering as to how does Airtel or for that matter any other company could declare profits (obscene profits) for years on end quarter after quarter. Sunil Jain has written an article in Business Standard which has been reproduced on Rediff.

Much of it was motivated by TRAI’s consulation paper. However, this paper is full of legalese and in case you don’t have patience, read the salient features below. (Emphasis mine)

The government, the order goes on to say, reduced the carriage costs (an important determinant of roaming costs) in February last year, but this “does not appear to have been fully reflected in the retail tariffs applicable for long distance calls and roaming services”.

Similarly, the sharp reduction in access deficit charges on long-distance telephony (again, a significant cost) was not fully passed on to customers; the sharp reduction in licence fees, from 15 per cent of revenues to just 6 per cent, was not passed on, either.

Just how much all this adds up to can be seen from the fact that while the GSM (cellular) firms charged between Rs 2.89 and Rs 3.09 a minute for outgoing local calls while roaming, Trai reduced this to Rs 1.40 in January this year; outgoing long-distance calls were charged at Rs 3.09-3.79 a minute and this was cut to Rs 2.40; incoming calls were charged at Rs 3.09-3.99 a minute and this was cut to Rs 1.75 a minute.

As for the funds-starved argument, the tariff order cites various reports, including one done for the Cellular Operators Association of India, to show this is not true. The PWC/COAI study, for instance, says EBITDA margins of the industry have grown from 15 per cent of net service revenue in 2000 to 44 per cent in 2005.

Trai has estimated this cost and it ranges from 7 paise per minute for the most efficient firm to Rs 1.09 for the most inefficient (for seven firms, it is around 25 paise and for five it lies between 30 and 50 paise).

While you’d expect the regulator to benchmark against the best, Trai decided to use a cost of 75 paise (of the 17 firms, only two have a cost higher than this-one is 76 paise and the other is Rs 1.09). So there’s a huge cost benefit already. In the case of long-distance outgoing calls, the benefit allowed is even more.

Even after taking an inflated 75 paise cost of roaming, Trai arrives at a total cost of just Rs 2.05 per minute-yet, it has allowed the firms a ceiling tariff of Rs 2.4 a minute. Trai says the costs incurred by the telcos when their subscribers send SMSs do not increase when they’re roaming, yet it chose not to regulate this-as a result, telcos charge Rs 3.45 for outgoing SMSs, a number that is far more expensive than even a phone call!

And the piece de resistance: Trai’s cost calculations were based on the 2003-04 subscriber data. Since the number of subscribers has trebled since then and the call minutes by even more, it is obvious the costs of offering roaming (the 7 paise to Rs 1.09) would have declined even more.

These firms are in hand in hand with the media and the Government to rip off the consumers and as highlighted above, none of the benefits have been passed on to the customers.

Sunil Jain then raises a pertinent point:

As for not having funds for funding capex, how do you explain the world’s largest cellular operator buying Hutch at an enterprise value of $20 bn if there aren’t huge profits to make?

So there it is. I have been vindicated. So far, the exact costs have never been reflected in the mobile bills. You get to pay a lot of “shit money” to pay those “executives” and line their pockets. All the while they shed crocodile tears about loosing money.

This is nothing but oligopolies and shutting out the new incumbent who would otherwise have to pay huge licence fees and administrative costs to set up brand new infrastructure.

(Another interesting article appears on the regulatory bodies for infrastructure on Rediff; while not related to the present write up but would nevertheless give you an idea about the way Government of India escapes accountability).

Related posts:

1. One India It misses it’s mark again. At first, I was apprehensive...
2. Mobiles in India: The next future? I don’t like to be optimistic. Like every “big” story,...
3. GSM majors cut roaming rates This account appears in Rediff which says that despite the...
4. One India plan:Now leftist pressure I couldn’t resist citing the entry in People’s Democracy which...
5. Linux on Mobiles I am not happy with the current crop of handsets....

So expect a new “wave of advertising” crap to be unleashed soon with the “re-branding” of the merged identity. Hutch changed it’s colours from Orange to Pink with an expensive ad campaign in order to ” re-energise” their brand image without any corresponding improvement in their customer service. I have been mailing and requesting their customer care to look in the issue of some network glitch in the place where I work without any response from them. Perhaps they don’t think that it is the customer that matters the most. I have been forced to give up my number and shift to Airtel.

Shifting to Airtel was without much of a hassle. Although, their Interacive Voice Response System tends to drone on for hours together. So far, there has been no complaint about the network and my request for keeping me out of the advertising spam has been fairly adhered to. Otherwise, with them, it is a continuous barrage of messages, much like the spam I get here to increase the size of my privates (as if it would really make me a better lover!). Mercifully, they have not yet stooped to such lows.

In my opinion, it would make sense to finally issue the orders for number portability (something that has been introduced in Canada recently). Perhaps in the future, with the unbundling of local loop, we might be able to choose our own ISP’s. However, issues which are “customer friendly” are hardly adhered to and this is something that I have been stressing here often.

I was surprised to get an email from VSNL which insisted that they wanted to discuss some issues related to the blog and wanted to set the record straight. They wanted my contact details; I asked them to follow it up on the email. So far, they haven’t reverted back.

Interestingly, VSNL Broadband seems to be on the Sify way and I fail to understand that why don’t the Tata’s see the clear writing on the wall to ship out of a sector that they have bungled. I have always held this notion that they would perhaps sell out at a later date. Of course, it would be a usual media circus and despite the old bag of tricks, it is the GSM lobby that is persisting over the CDMA players.

I believe that much of it has to do with the exciting range of the handsets available which limits the choice with the CDMA players. Plus, the high royalty fees that they have to pay. In my opinion, it would have been worthwhile to sink in a few crores to set up manufacturing units or own system of standards instead of paying the royalties. So much for the “management gurus” who mouth the prescriptions so passionately.

Some big mess! It would take ages to untangle the whole thing that we have landed ourselves in.

Related posts:

1. Some thoughts about Airtel Broadband Some thoughts about Airtel Broadband Bharti Televentures is the fixed...
2. General Thoughts The high international call rates are under threat- if VoIP...
3. Random thoughts Blogging has become “phenomenon”. I was surprised to read that...
4. Snippets from the Telecom Situation in India Snippets from the Telecom Situation in India At the height...
5. Smaller Telecom Operators in India Smaller Telecom Operators in India In the complex telecom muddle,...

What we are seeing here is a gradual consolidation of the Indian market leaving the consumers with less and less choice. In hte future, the so called “churn rates” would cease to have any meaning given the fact that we are being left with no choice.

Vodafone’s entry in Indian market has been followed by British Telecom’s entry in the national long distance calling arena. I doubt that with increased “competiton” we would get to see any drastic fall in the prices. Not until we have carrier access codes giving the people a real choice to carry your voice traffic from your preferred operator.

I have no idea about the mode of BT’s delivery of services. Would they lay down the copper cables or the national backbone or tie up with a company like Airtel? Is there any real need to have another player in the muddled waters? Time alone would tell. I believe that we would hitch up to provide “global managed services”- whatever that crap means.

Vodafone’s entry marks another interesting point- something that I didnot realise earlier. They would be willing to provide cheaper international prices something that other operators could loose out. They made all the right noises about the rural market and dirt cheap Chinese phones (YUCK) from ZTE.

Another “point” raised at Gigaom was the expectation that Vodafone would enter the Broadband market! Not only this is off the mark but presents the writer in a very poor light as far as the “anal-ytical” insight goes. From a pure play in the mobile arena (with one of the lousiest data plans in the market) to a fixed line provider starting from a clean slate in the fixed line business would only call for a suicide. Arun Sarin could manage the funds from the sell off in minorty stakes in other countries to raise the cash for Hutch buyout. This cannot be glossed over in the light of their 21 billion Pounds Sterling last year which has put Sarin under much fire for mismanaging the entire show.

Vodafone’s strategy would perhaps be based on the consolidation of 2.5 G services and then leverage it’s strength in the 3G applications from experience in UK and Europe. All the while it hopes that consumers might just want to make that quantum shift all the while by overpricing the services delivery.

This idiocy on the part of people having huge resources at their disposal refuses to die out.

Related posts:

1. Advertising Trends in Indian Telecom Advertising Trends in Indian Telecom The way telecom firms advertise,...
2. Future Trends in Telecom in India Future Trends in Telecom in India Over the past few...
3. Back to Telecom! Is Bharti planning DTH foray? Is Bharti Televentures planning to enter the DTH market? The...
4. Reliance, Tata and Indian Telecom Reliance, Tata and Indian Telecom The dust seems to be...
5. India Broadband and Telecom Update There is a lot of noise in the media without...

In my opinion, it is a small user base among the Internet users that bitches and moans about the Broadband Narrowband crap stuff. It doesn’t mean anything to the thick skinned idiots. If you are reading this, a middle finger for you.

Related posts:

1. Hutch making life worse? The recent change in colours from ornage to pink made...
2. GSM Hassles For long, I was stuck on CDMA. Until my Nokia...
3. Corporate Gibberish I was aware of this website during my early days...
4. After a long hiatus I wish I could have more time packed in the...
5. Mergers & Acquisitions It was the mother of all acquisitions- Hutch bought out...

In my opinion, Hutch has been over valued; I have a reason to doubt the numbers since the methodology of valuation has not yet been mentioned. Why does this deal make headlines for reasons other than obvious?

It makes sense for Vodafone to buy out an existing telecom network (and it’s infrastructure sourced from European manufacturers) than to upscale a greenfield project from a scratch. In other words, the Hutch subscribers (and that includes me) were sitting ducks for acquisition. Vodafone is very keen on getting their 3G services (marketed under Vodafone Live!) to India. If I am not mistaken, Vodafone’s Arun Sarin was under fire recently for it’s bitter turf wars and under extreme pressure to show up quarterly profits. How does India fit in their radar is beyond my reasoning as of now.

Still, I would oppose the entry of British firms of all hues in Indian telecom industry. Interestingly, Reliance lost out on the bids. It must have been a major setback for Anil Ambani who must now question his well publicised visits to the temples along with his mother. While I don’t doubt his spirituality; I wonder whether it was a wise move to have your pictures splashed trying to please the heavens. That leaves out Reliance out in the cold.

We would wait and watch as to how Vodafone would unfold it’s services here in India.

Interestingly, the Brits are such nuts- they haven’t updated their website (nor the press release) to announce the acquistion of the stake. It only reflects poorly on their work ethics and their professionalism.

Related posts:

1. Hutch making life worse? The recent change in colours from ornage to pink made...
2. Hutch: Sale of the year? It may be a good news for Ruias who hold...
3. Business World : Rankings and Hutch Ho hum. Don’t we all know about the truth behind...
4. Corporate Gibberish I was aware of this website during my early days...
5. Mobile operators need to tone up Recently, I decided to check out the different websites for...

This is from the “iconic” Steve Jobs who has a master stragetist behind marketing Apple’s products. In the recently concluded Mac Expo, this phone was unveiled. It is hoped that it would be shipped by mid of this year in an exclusive tie up with Cingular. Apple plans to support more protocols in future.

Apart from the “oh-so” design, what is so special about the phone and why has it been featured on this blog? I believe that Apple wants to get to the fast expanding world of Wireless. These guys could have manufactured this beaut earlier on. They didn’t. They were waiting for a perfect roll out of their iTunes store with music videos and songs so that it becomes a compelling proposition for Apple to sell a device which could play their wares on their hardware.

It is a win win for the telecom companies and Apple. Telecom companies can drive up the sales for their horrible tech called as EDGE/ 3G and have a reason to lobby for extra spectrum. Apple can crow about it’s iTunes and it’s phone. People would be willing to either show off their new tech toy or get hooked on to watching streaming video (in my opinion it gets boring after a while unless the people in question are stone dead morons watching reruns of “Friends”). It is this critical mass of idiots that Apple wants to target. And it is the same mass that is more comfortable with mobiles than computers.

iPod has become critical to Apple’s soaring stock market and it’s fortunes. Till recently, the only innovation has been in increasing the hard disc size or adding a tiny screen to it. For the same reason, iPhone would be so called “iconic” and “ahead of it’s time”.

Why is it important for India? I believe that value added services mean a lot to the telecom companies for their cash generation. And morons are to be found everywhere

It took a company like Apple to design something different and market it as if there is no tomorrow. What would stop a company like Reliance/ Airtel/ Hutch to get this in India? However, since we don’t have a portal like iTunes specifically for Indian market, it would take a long time to fructify it’s plans to make things happen here. Still, I wouldn’t like to discount any development of this sort here in Indian market.

Picture taken from the Apple website.

Update: Robert Cringely has written on his blogechoing my own thoughts. He obviously makes much better sense than I do.

I take the liberty of quoting him from his write up.(Emphasis mine)

Cisco’s trademark infringement lawsuit, as well as its recent introduction of new iPhone models, shows the company has no intention of giving up the iPhone trademark to Apple. And since Cisco has a prior claim, just as many lawyers, and more money than Apple, one can only guess that Cisco will prevail. So why did Apple start this fight in the first place? Publicity.

Further, Robert asserts :

This leaves us with the mystery of why Apple deliberately hobbled the cellular Internet capability of its iPhone, Apple Phone, whatever. As described this week, when the iPhone ships it will only work with Cingular’s EDGE network, which is its 2G Internet service that maxes out at 170 kilobits per second on not just a good day but on a day that is so good it never happens. I’ve used the EDGE network and it feels like dial-up to me.

The iPhone is this amazing connectivity quad-mode device that can probably make use of as much bandwidth as it can get, so making it suck through the little straw that is EDGE makes no sense from a user perspective. But remember that the parties involved here are Apple and Cingular, neither of which is 100 percent allied with user interests. Cingular has a 3G network called BroadbandConnect or “MediaNet” if you buy Cingular’s associated Cingular Video service….It comes down to an accommodation. Cingular wants an iPhone exclusive and is probably paying Apple money for that privilege. Mobile phone carriers are eager for video to succeed on their 3G and 4G platforms because it represents a major new source of revenue. Apple’s iPhone is the best handset yet for displaying that video. But Apple isn’t going to allow this to happen without Cupertino gaining a substantial piece of the action.

Apple doesn’t intend simply to enter the mobile phone market, they intend to dominate it, and ultimately to gain service revenue through iTunes, no matter whose phone you buy.

Related posts:

1. Apple- Mobile phones? Now this is one of the hottest topics across the...
2. Update on Apple Mobiles Apple Insider reports the imminent launch of Apple iTunes enabled...
3. VSNL upsets the apple cart In a clear indication that smacks of abuse of monopoly,...
4. Future Trends in Telecom in India Future Trends in Telecom in India Over the past few...
5. Convergence at cross roads One of the most promising applications of broadband is convergence....

The year 2006 was in many ways a sad reflection on the telecom trends. We haven’t been promised the Mbps speeds; Reliance isn’t scaling up; Airtel is becoming slouchy like BSNL; BSNL has refused to up the stakes for others; TRAI is being subverted and we are seeing an all out war for consolidation of oligopolies.

The consumer, i.e. you has already won the asshole of the year award and this isn’t the right tone for shifting in a new year. How so much I try, I hate to admit that there is no “India shining” anywhere around here. Not atleast with the Congress in power.

Yet, the promise is around the corner. We would be f***ed harder for our hard earned money, the congestion in the networks is bound to grow and with the increased entry of the telecom majors, our national security is up for a song. A country like Pakistan just has to turn off our vital communications set up and we would be on our knees in any time.

If I can see the “predictions” right, Reliance is going to slow further on it’s landline business. Arguably, it is a business proposition which is on a loosing wicket; BSNL’s monopoly is well entrenched. Reliance’s CDMA business is not giving it’s returns (I suspect) which should have been well profitable much more than their expectations. GSM provides the scale because it makes it easier to fudge with the sale of the GSM cards and show increased number of subscribers. Its all about valuations and gloating rights.

Much of it has already been explored in the earlier write ups.

What we basically need is the power back to the consumer to take effective decisions.

As we move in the new year, the sale of Hutch is imminent. There are many suitors for the slut and who gets the “cake” is difficult to predict. It’s making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Whether or not it is the “new wave” of Indian Telecom is for you to decide.

On the high note, most of you have asked me about the swearing on here. I believe that this delivers the message far more effectively than saying that I am frustrated by the lack of serious pace around here. Our collective wisdom collapses like the Indian cricket team; which in my opinion mirrors the Indian psyche effectively. We are all bunch of wimps when it comes to taking effective decisions for ourselves.

I believe that the next thrust of the growth would come from the wireless Broadband (or whatever crappy name you want to give it). As the telcos scale up investments in “air” (literally), the growth of Wifi would perhaps mirror the growth in the number of subscribers. However, with a low user base of laptops or access points, I may be contradicting myself. WiMax is all hot air though.

As for the BSNL Broadband, the promised Mbps speeds are in order. Though they are only offering it for Bandwidth on Demand. The unlimited plan subscribers are out of the ambit for the time being. I think, the games portal would be up soon and we’d see even higher latency times for them. IPTV has made it’s presence felt this year; I still have to get a positive feedback from the users. If this is not backed up with a portal for one access, it would be a sheer waste for access. Indians aren’t really getting around and spending cash online. It would need a technology enabler to make this happen. Much like the IT hype (which is of no fucking use to this nation), the telecom hype is bound to peter away.

Sigh.

Still, I hope the new year brings forth happiness and cheer in your lives. For me it is majorly a chnage of calendar; I still have to go for my rounds tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. Year 2006 forecast It’s difficult to forecast anything for the new year. Specially...
2. Year end blues The year is drawing to a close. Customarily, most of...
3. Asshole of the year award 2006: Final nominations I had a cool thought about this one. I was...
4. Asshole of the year award Finally, it goes to the Indian consumer. It doesn’t include...
5. Hutch: Sale of the year? It may be a good news for Ruias who hold...

What we need now is number portability. That ability to change service providers without changing mobile numbers would be awesomeness.

That would be the best way to get the companies to give the best values to the customers. They don’t want to but they would have to. If only TRAI goes ahead and implement it.

Related posts:

1. Mobile phone companies asked to publish directory This is interesting development. Mobile phone companies have been asked...
2. A decade of mobile services It’s 10 years since the first mobile call was made....
3. Mobile Gaming Rashmi Bansal has an interestiing take on Mobile Gaming on...
4. Indian Telecom- Mobile developments I have been looking at the evolution of mobile phones...
5. Broadband Blog- now mobile! There is a nifty Google Utility which allows you to...

In my opinion, if I am right, Ambani would drive his CDMA in the rural hinterland given the price advantage that CDMA can afford. GSM would be his mainstay in the cities- the erstwhile Hutch driving his brand strategy. Plus give him access to the lucrative Mumbai market with a ready made subscriber base.

Airtel’s Mittal doesn’t want to loose this golden goose and wants to convert Hutch into another crappy service provider called as Airtel. It is all about the subscriber base isn’t it? Millions and millions? I am sure that the valuation would be far less than that is being reported in media. Media of course, has it’s sources but then one can never trust them. Hence, there are wild figures being quoted; in the range of billions.

The excat quantum of payments made would perhaps be never known. These are private companies and their shares are not publicly traded.

Ruias ran ESSAR steel which ran in debts. They were another wannabe big shot industrialists who just happened to invest in telecom as an afterthought. It clicked.

Why is it a bad idea for Hutch to be sold off?

I believe that it would create very strong oligopolies. As it is the companies don’t give a hoot to TRAI, the so called regulator. Further, these oligopolies would resist any consumer friendly initiative. Primarily, number portability. They would see the churn and shift of the subscribers would need additional investments hurting their “profits”. Ambani, like a rampaging maniac, would turn this company into another ‘reliance’ and make a mess of it.

I believe that Government should step in and avoid any sale in the best interests of the subscribers. I believe that the subscribers should have a say as to whom they would want to manage their affairs. We are just quoted as ‘numbers’ and nothing else. A price to be paid for.

On an afterthought. What would be Hutch’s communication strategy post sale to any other company? I would surely miss the pug. Imagine Ambani claiming that it was his “papa ka sapna” (father’s dream) or Amitabh’s voiceover crowing about what Reliance has done. It would be a sorry state of affairs for a company that had the potential to make itself better but screwed it up with lousy plan intiatives.

Related posts:

1. Hutch making life worse? The recent change in colours from ornage to pink made...
2. Business World : Rankings and Hutch Ho hum. Don’t we all know about the truth behind...
3. Year 2006 forecast It’s difficult to forecast anything for the new year. Specially...
4. Year end blues The year is drawing to a close. Customarily, most of...
5. Mobile phone companies asked to publish directory This is interesting development. Mobile phone companies have been asked...

However, behind all this, there are teething troubles. As I have mentioned earlier on, there is no content to speak off. It would be hard to implement the promised speeds of 1 Mbps and above in order to sustain the user interest. Then again, the critical mass is far less in terms of users who would be mobile enough to access the internet streaming in air. I wouldn’t be surprised if all this comes off as hot air and the project being put off “indefinitely”.

This “teaser” brings us on to another glaring deficit in landline business. It’s been over a year and a half and we still have plain vanilla “broadband” to speak off. BSNL is putting up the advertisement banners on it’s home page promising the next best thing to have happened ever since they launched “Broadband”. They seem to have finally set up the gaming portals and hope that enough users would be entinced to put in their money where the keyboard (and mouse) is. The unlimited plan is still capped at 256 k with an awful ratio which makes it a horrible experience to share the torrents.

It is the systematic failure of thought process because the whole decision making process is handled by incompetent assholes or glorified babus. It seems that no one wants to take the ‘risk’ of sticking out their necks- the buffons are clearly out of tune with the existing realities elsewhere. We have a floundering fixed line telephony and the rural divide seems to be widening like Mallika Sherawat’s legs apart.

Ditto for the jammed networks in the metros/ cities. To overcome the “shortage” and probably hoping to catch on the media inspired “mania”, everything 3G/ Wi wi thingy is a stuff of legend. To keep up the hopes alive for the possible onslaught of the advertising campaigns, we are being made to believe that 3 G is going to be a manna from heaven. It isn’t true but we all tend to believe it.

Sunil Jain has as usual argued about the pricing of 3 G and 2G spectrum charges. It does make for a sorry reading of present affairs. Even though the points raised seem to be “confusing’, in order to cut the crap, the present impasse is clearly suggestive of muddled thinking and havoc with the public resources.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India had declared that the air waves are a public property. We as the ultimate users have no say in the matters at all! The appointed babus/ politicians are supposed to take care of our interests and not the Hutch’s/ Tata’s/ Reliance’s of all hues. Argued that this is a highly technical debate, but is clearly acting out on our own interests. Look at the way the companies tend to treat in their customers and you would know the true extent the way they loot us to line their own pockets.

We do need a debate on the issue of implementing untested technologies- spectrum is a scarce resource and it would be patently absurd to sink on capital at something that is unproven anywhere else. Or loot the scarce public resources.

Related posts:

1. Broadband in India: WimaX ready? The last mile access is the holy grail; this is...
2. India Broadband and Telecom Update There is a lot of noise in the media without...
3. Spreading Broadband in India Spreading Broadband in India I came across an advertisement in...
4. Wimax and 3G The current fascination for 3G services doesn’t abate. I have...
5. What Broadband can do for India? What Broadband can do for India? Over the past few...

I still can’t promise anything on a regular basis partly because that the Indian Telecom market has become moribund. There seems to be nothing new happening. We are not seeing any fresh initiatives as yet and the broadband scene is hopeless. VSNL has definitely cut in rates for the international bandwidth; it failed to enthuse any furious write ups even in those financial dailies that swooned over the corporate chutzpah.

Hutch was embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with Essar holdings over the sale of Mumbai licence recently. Though it did get a significant coverage, the whole issue died down a natural death in a couple of days. Mobile phone connectivity seems to have taken a hit after the intelligence agencies deemed that growing subscriber base without proper verification could hurt India’s security interests. The fall out of this was on expected lines. Once the subscriber verification could be underway, it would expose hollow the claims of the Telecom operators about their fabled valuations and the millions of subscribers. It could hurt them right between their legs and each one of them could cut a sorry figure. Except for Tata’s who have nothing to loose and were insisting that the verification indeed should be carried out.

BSNL Broadband has introduced no new tarrifs except for making some gentle folks getting mad with exasperation. We are still stuck up in the kbps mentality without making any head or tail out of it. Their customer care could take the take for easily being the lousiest idiots on planet Earth.

Mercifully, the One Laptop Per Child Project has been called off for India. Someone somewhere in the deep dark recesses of the babudom realised the futility of this approach and announced that India wont be a signatory to Negraponte’s maniacal illusions.

Open Access and Open Source still has the same acrimonious debates happening for itself without any solution in sight.

Japan is coursing ahead with the roll out of Fibre to Home connectivity. Europe is embracing Wifi in a big way. Internet is making supposed pots of money for the video hosting sites. US is about to see trial runs for WiMax with Springtel (?) planning to invest in bug bucks for the same. Gigaom has seen a transformation of all sorts and they have morphed into some kind of a online publishing company. They have a “dedicated” Indian “correspondent”, a title that was “bestowed” on me some time ago. The fat chap hasn’t lost weight (or so it seems).

Surprisingly, the entry for Tata Indicom- Looting Customers? is seeing a second rank in Google search for Tata Indicom Broadband. Given the number of comments, it seems that they are making a mess of themselves.

Last but not the least. I read about the clumsy net censorship being put across. The babus (or anyone of their ilk) brought out a blank order against blogspot, I believe. They could be easily circuvented by using anonymiser services or RSS feeds. If it isn’t laughable, what else is? They could have either ensured complete ban or else avoid being ridiculed across the blogosphere. The commies find freedom of expression to hard to bear. Luckily, your “favourite” blog wasn’t on the banned list. Either the telecom companies like being drubbed about and called names or they are being staffed by lobetomised morons incapable of acting in good faith and wisdom. I’d favour both the scenarios in equal proportions.

Related posts:

1. Long hiatus After a long hiatus and downtime with BSNL broadband (after...
2. Taking a hiatus I’d be gone for a while; you can waste your...
3. Future Trends in Telecom in India Future Trends in Telecom in India Over the past few...
4. Reliance Infocomm Reliance Infocomm Reliance started a virtual war when it entered....
5. TRAI wakes up to pass rules on Broadband and Telephony TRAI wakes up to pass rules on Broadband and Telephony...

Type in any random string and let’s see the results for Hutch.

At Hutch, we have come to know how to streamline extensibly. The e-business, C2C2C Total Quality Management factor can be summed up in one word: scalable. If you actualize perfectly, you may have to expedite intra-vertically…..Hutch is the industry leader of visionary super-partnerships…Hutch practically invented the term “social networks”. Our feature set is unparalleled, but our intuitive bandwidth and easy use is often considered a remarkable achievement. Your budget for seizing should be at least three times your budget for whiteboarding.

This is just the “tip of the iceberg”. I have a feeling that most of the “business leader types” cross refer such customised generated gibberish, with the sole exception of “misleading”.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Hutch making life worse? The recent change in colours from ornage to pink made...
2. Mergers & Acquisitions It was the mother of all acquisitions- Hutch bought out...
3. Business World : Rankings and Hutch Ho hum. Don’t we all know about the truth behind...
4. Mobile operators need to tone up Recently, I decided to check out the different websites for...
5. GSM Hassles For long, I was stuck on CDMA. Until my Nokia...