The rumored plans are here and a very interesting discussion in on in the forums.

I think that they have screwed it up given the fact that BSNL has upped the ante as far as tariffs are concerned. With the imminent launch of Airtel/ Vodafone and other private players, it remains to be seen how 3G market would shape up. I think that there is a going to be a big market for the data cards given the pathetic landline access.

Interestingly, here’s something from the Tata’s end user agreement:

Mobile internet is not to be used for other activities (e.g. using your handset as a modem, voice or video over the internet, peer to peer file sharing). Should you exceed your fair usage limit or such use be detected, TTSL reserves right to take action by restricting bandwidth, and/or suspension of data browsing and/ or temporarily suspend subscriber account in case of data usage in violation of fair usage policy.

Ha ha ha. For all practical purposes, I wonder whether they can actually “control tethering”!!

I wonder where did these assholes spring from!

This is taken from the forums:

I usually refrain from speculating on the price wars or report on the “latest trends” but to be honest, these people have screwed it up totally.

Tags: 3G, Airtel, Assholes, BSNL, DTH, File Sharing, Internet, Landline, Mobile, Peer to peer, Tata, Telecommunications India, Vodafone

Piracy, in strictest sense of the term, is defined as “copyright violation”. It is strictly the realm of law to define the various provisions and it’s literal meaning. The purpose of this post is not to go in the legalese but to define the reason behind this “growing phenomenon”: Broadband.

I remember the days of pathetic 56 kbps access on the telephone modem. The dial up access was atrociously expensive, the lines faced frequent disconnections and the overall experience was laced with frustrations. I writhed my hands in despair when I heard about Napster allowing unrestricted exchange of music residing on the hard drives. While I don’t condone this (for legal reasons) but it allowed unrestricted exchange of music one never knew ever existed! Napster died a horrible death due to unrelenting legal challenges by MPAA.

MPAA is a quasi union to protect the interests of the content creators. US has been a test bed of the way this contentious issue has evolved over the years. The MPAA has garnered a lot of bad press from the people who fuel the peer to peer networks. There has been a dissent generated from the ISP’s who claim that this kind of traffic chokes their network and cite FUD campaigns to announce the imminent breakdown of Internet; that the bandwidth would soon run out with the kind of content that is being shared.

In the Web 2.0 arena, interestingly, none of the players are making serious money but follow the basic “Christy” method of “harvesting of souls“. Content is created to dumb down the masses in name of entertainment and people hooked on to the “opium of masses” (based on the loose misrepresentation of Marx). Frankly, content creation involves mega budgets and creators look for perpetual “evergreening” of “copyright” in order to milk whatever is worth it.

In this scenario, it is a double pronged attack on the people who share something that is inaccessible or content that has been blocked because of complex copyright issues. For example, a movie having a theatrical release in US quickly goes through it’s DVD sales and then released “worldwide”. Peer to peer networks (Torrents or it’s variants) has changed the game altogether. The moment a DVD is released, it is “ripped” and uploaded for all. The “seeders” abound for the “leechers” and the cycle continues.

The speeds are an issue worldwide. Primarily, the governments have encouraged faster speeds by tax breaks and other incentives to promote digital lifestyles and the positive spinoffs from that. Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan have lead the way. Recently, Australia announced it”s grand plan to push rural broadband impetus. US has had an acrimonious debate about the role of FCC (their version of TRAI) and the paltry definition of broadband access at 256kbps. Despite the intensive lobbying, nothing really has come out of it.

Piracy has kept pace with the “increasing” speeds so as to say. Legislation has not kept pace with the attempts to thwart this growth. Europe has seen some activity which led to confiscation of Pirate Bay servers and as a result the public rose in revolt against this “misstep” and formed a “Pirate party”. Interestingly, it even managed to win at the hustings and got a seat in the parliament.

I feel that “rooting” out the piracy is impossible. If Governments find means to thwart Internet access or even “slow down speeds”, there are people to bypass these issues in the name of unfettered access.

I don’t endorse piracy in the present form (to be on the right side of law) but there is an inherent need for people to share. This basic impulse cannot be wished away for times to come.

Broadband is going to change the equations in the way we connect. I don’t have any teary eyed dreams of a “global connected village” though but it’s a good feeling that resources can be shared by one and all.

Tags: Broadband, Broadband access, Digital Divide, DTH, DVD, DVD Rips, FCC, FCC sucks, File Sharing, Globalisation, Indian ISP's, Internet, ISP's, Peer to peer, Piracy, Pirate, Telecommunications India, Torrents, TRAI, TRAI sucks

Wikipedia defines Bollywood as:

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Though some purists deplore the name (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Whatever the purists might say, Hindi film industry typically sees huge amounts of money being traded every year. Of course, there would be many claimaints to the ever increasing pie. Given the fact that Indians seem to have a fixation for “song-n-dance” sequences; we all seem to lap it up with gusto.

However, more than that, I would focus on content delivery. Every year we get to see an astounding 1000 films made every year. ( Thats a rough estimate). Most of them are B grade stuff- that you would like to be caught dead watching. The others, so called big budget productions, have a lot of money riding on the “appeal” of the stars.

In recent times, producers are increasingly turning towards advertisers to sell the film as a commodity. The whole package is splashed across hoardings, multiplexes and increasingly we get to see tie ups with mobile phone companies for ring tones.

The newer content delivery is going to be Broadband.

The so called “triple play” with telephone, video and cable intertwined would soon start streaming across homes. Yet, is this model going to be a revenue earner?

The telecom companies are hoping so. With voice margins falling, it doesn’t make any sense to stick on the same revenue model. Data is the way to go. However, with the pathetic infrastructure and REAL last mile hassles, it would take time to bridge the “digital” divide in the near future.

Still, the broadband can allow pay per view or downloads based on rentals. Just like you would rent it from a video store. They could either stream the video, a narrow possibility because the technology isn’t really refined. Then of course, the telecom companies would have to invest in heavy bandwidth to individual homes. The other way could be via peer to peer file sharing; if it is legalised in India.

Whatever the distribution model maybe, it would definitely help to curb piracy and scale up serious money in unorganised Bollywood. All that matters is the way they scale up.

A potential hindrance seems to be huge funds being raised and lined up for multiplexes. I feel that broadband may not yet threaten the traditional cinemas; rather the two may co exist side by side. Still, the future seems to be exciting; even if the content is seriously dumbed down.

In this context, Reliance’s acquistion of Adlabs needs to be seen. Reliance has it’s aces up it’s sleeve. They would go to any extent to capture the market by virtue of being late entrants. Infact none of the other two pan Indian players have their plans ready for content delivery. BSNL is dilly dallying for content; Airtel as usual would scale up only when needed. Though, I must admit that their broadband tariffs for unlimited downloads is indeed appealing to me!

This year, hopefully, Reliance would go in for the big bang launch. If and when they feel the heat in landlines.

Tags: Airtel, Appeal, Broadband, BSNL, DTH, File Sharing, GUI, India, Indians, Landline, Mobile, Peer to peer, Piracy, Reliance, Telecommunications India, United States