Published on
26th Oct 2008 in
Indian Telecom, Tata Indicom and virgin mobile.
Tags: Advertisement, Advertising, Broadband, BSNL, DTH, handsets, India, Mobiles, Opera, Tata, Virgin, Virgin India Mobile, virgin mobile, Virgin Sucks.
Virgin Mobile is going full throttle with it’s advertising blitz; I remember, there was some issue with it’s licence because it was a virtual network operator. Tata claims that it isn’t. The truth, as to who fathered it, is not known to anyone.
The “bastard” of this company is trying to grab attention like an unwanted company. It makes tall claims about it’s “superior network coverage” and it’s “young outlook”. Pooh. Who the f*** cares about it anyway? On what basis has it made these claims? It’s hard to discount it, nevertheless, we could take it with a pinch of salt anyway.
Their website is an overdose of flashturbation. Its a bad idea to attract the dudes who have no decent access to broadband. In anycase, it chokes on my crappy bandwidth of BSNL at home.
I have no clue about the new “execs” at the helm of the affairs but if their CEO is a rich bored millionaire who has nothing else to do excpet launching himself in hot air balloons or dance with skimpy chicks, it speaks a lot about the professional attitude of a company. It doesnt promote the seriousness with which it needs to be taken; instead I have a creepy feeling that they are just fly by night operators.
The idiots need to realise it that a strong message doesnt go by having whacky advertisements. Drop down the prices, subisdise the cost of the handsets and bleed the new players by being able to offer services based on quality. I still have to come across a subscriber of this company who has said anything positive about there efforts. I wouldnt be surprised if they give in free mobiles with a rider of a locked in period. Unless they have enough balls to do it.
I have lost the link but companies are hiring “image managers” to manage their portfolio online with all the negative publicity flying thick and fast. I wonder what would Tata Broadband do about being featured in my blog? They have a lot of explaining to do to their customers as it is. Having a fancy ad agency to do their bidding would not improve their services as complained by the users on the forums or on the feedback.
Its been always a depressing scenario for access here in this country.
Published on
15th Sep 2008 in
Tata Indicom and Tats Communications.
Tags: 3G, Airtel, CDMA, GSM, India, Indian Telecom, Rediff, Tata, Tata Communications, Tata Indicom, Tata sucks, Tata Teleservices, Tatas, TRAI, Value Added Services.
Poor idiots! They had to sell to DoCoMo, a leader in the 3G services. With the policy as announced, the duds had it in them. They had to sell out to the highest bidder. Very soon, the whole landscape of the Indian telecom would change. We would not have homegrown company like Airtel but instead this would be a battle ground for the big global majors to fight it out for customers.
The size of the deal is pegged at $1.5 billion (about Rs 6,700 crore), translating into a $6-billion (Rs 26,000 crore) valuation for the company that runs networks across the country and is planning to expand into GSM mobile services in the near future. Tata Teleservices is a loss-making company. Between 2005 and 2007, its cumulative losses stood at Rs 5,604 crore
This India story has been done to death many a times. There is no real addition of the 8-9 million customers per month. It is simply not possible. Most of the metros have choked and jammed. It is saturated. In order to expand into tier B and tier C cities, telcos need funds and assured returns. For all practical purposes, I dont forsee the market “hot and happening”; although the 3G services would assure monetised returns and would ride on the value added services.
It is no secret that Tatas claim their superiority of services based on some abstract benchmarks. There are people who would swear to God not to ever think of Tatas as their service provider. Frankly, TRAI has been unable to implement its own customer friendly norms; trying to get anything out of the useless idiots manning the customer service is a herculean task in itself.
Tata is a weathered story. They have lost it and the writing on the wall is as clear as the sunlight illuminating the dark dungeons of their minds. Telecom is a failed venture and they ought to accept defeat and ship out of business.
Published on
15th Aug 2008 in
General Thoughts.
Tags: Advertisement, Anil Ambani, Broadband, India, IPTV, Landline, Opera, Reliance, Tata, Tatas, Value Added Services, Virgin.
Viewers are spoilt for choice. DTH is a credible option and at the start of the day, I had no frigging clue to the pent up demand for the same. The Direct To Home players like Tatas and Zee have spent oodles of cash on advertisements and hardware roll out that it appears unlikely that a newer player would be able to get a toehold.
Here in the grand strategy of Anil Ambani unfolds. He got the ad labs, poured in money in content creation and would make a huge moolah out of “exclusive” deals with media players. The value added services is a growing market and there is a HUGE space for exclusive content; I was surprised to know that there is a seperate channel for gardening; Tata has one for home tuitions. Although, it cannot replace the classrooms but then parents are keen for any degree of experimentation.
Coming back to IPTV. Does anyone of you readers think that this could make any degree of impact on the viewership? I feel that most of the people mistrust the landline outages (which are so frequent) unless there is a fibre to home coming to their homes with simple instructions to operate the set top box. The present hardware is designed to confuse the first time users; somewhere it ought to ring the bell to make it as simple as possible.
I would reserve my comments on the two competing platforms till the market matures up. Reliance is lying down low with it’s broadband offering. I am still wondering as to what has been the issue at their end. Why are they delaying the commercial launch? There are any number of ideas floating around and if they claim to be India’s number one network as far as the coverage is concerned, they ought to focus on their cherries. Or else, it would die a virgin.
This is a link to Rajesh Jain’s blog; Emergic. I am glad that he has started blogging again, although he is doing to promote his venture called as Netcore. He used to post across links daily to various tech columns and had amassed a good amount of readership. One of his employees is Atanu Dey who blogs regularly on his own site on Deesha. I am not sure how they are joined in the scheme of the things but Rajesh Jain does have his own crack team.
He does some numbers on the mumbo jumbo that is Value added services and I am more inclined to believe these stats as compared to the crap that gets dished out in the media. All in all, it is not the billion dollar industry but a more sedate estimated $200 million dollars. The number of subscribers may be “booming” but the real revenues are not. The mobile industry is playing a volume game and the new entrants realise it.
I feel that as the market matures and regulation becomes more pro active (i.e. there are no two centres of power- TRAI and DoT), it would be more fruitful for the customers. For starters, we would have more representation in the regulation from the customers; a real watchdog on lines of Ofcom who would penalise the lousy shit heads called as honchos and fair play instead of favouritism to likes of Reliance.
VAS (value added services) would help to extend the utility of the handset. Instead of downloading ringtones (which is an absolute no brainer), the likes of m Commerce might take roots. I had written an article on the same ages ago; Tata had plans to launch it in India. Somewhere along the line, the lost that game and became just another company with a fancy mobile telephone infrastructure.
If the market has to grow, there has to be a shift towards the basics. m Commerce can happen via secure sms based transactions. If the acceptance grows, I am sure there would be a good amount of money to be made in this.
I have no clue as to why the Indians are obessed about snapping up deals with South Africans. Although, it’s commendable when Indian companies snap up struggling European majors; the same that Tata did for Corus and Tetley Tea. Although, I still insist that it makes the worst cars on the road in the planet and I shudder to think about the imminent launch of Nano bringing about a nightmare on roads.
Minus all the hoopla, Tata announced that they had acquired a 30% stake in a South African firm called as Neotel. Big deal? It aims to consolidate it’s corporate offerings for video conferencing or data managed services, yada yada. I must admit that it suffers a total erosion of brand image among the retail customers as it has among the worst form of Internet access ever known to mankind.
A lesson for Ambanis? It pays nothing to get into shadow fighting for whatever amount of money you have. All in all you make a suckers of yourself and the fair name of your family.
They came with a bang and ended up with a whimper. There were many people to take on their claims and their initial “thrust” seems to have slowed down; I hardly see their advertisements in the media. TRAI questioned about the “intentions” and it seems that Tata’s efforts to roll out a “brand exercise” fizzled out. I haven’t recieved any official communication from Virgin India mobile but their PR division seems to be active online.
This is in response to the earlier post; their PR division has hired some lady called as Priya. She minces no words when she leaves comments on this blog like “fucking losers”. She claims that she is being unduly victimised online on this blog and something like this :
i suppose this blog has got u some sort of clicks since its a bunch of pansies taking on a girl online…otherwise “crap” and “fart” as usual.
It’s easier not to bother about the punctuation. As far as “pansies” taking a girl online, speak of gender equality!
I gave adeqaute coverage to their point of view as well; unfortunately, they chose to complicate the matters in the email and then claim that they don’t want to reach out to independent bloggers. I can’t help someone’s perception of calling us names; it only exposes their own shortcomings to come to terms with life. People of this bent of mind are often suicidal and have desperate tendencies. They are the ones who end up having nervous breakdowns, grope in dark and extremely prone to hurt themselves and the people around them. Such people need to be handled with care under the expert supervision of a shrink.
Get some life sweetheart. And stop feeling deluded about being persecuted.
