Ratan Tata got a lot of flak for his association with the corporate PR specialist; per se the association is not illegal but motivated agendas are. He’s the head of Tatas who had earned a good corporate reputation over the years with the tag line, “We also make Steel”.

Over the past few years, they entered into Telecom; bought over VSNL for their broadband and international telephony needs, misread the market, entered into CDMA and then forked into GSM with two competing brands- Virgin Mobile and Tata DoCoMo. While Virgin Mobile had it’s CDMA avatar (now in GSM), Docomo is spearheading it’s 3G foray.

In all the hoopla, it has carved a niche for itself by being an idiot and super idiot at the same time. There is no parallel in the world (not to my knowledge) where a same company would fight for the same customer pool. Leave aside it’s mobile business (which is opaque as far as the revenues are concerned), it’s broadband strategy is in tatters.

Hence when Forbes India came up with the cover story on Tata’s Telecom strategy, I was eagerly awaiting the web version because this crap is not worth the paper it is printed on (and hence not worth the money spent on this tattered crap rag). I was proved right when the “journalist” in question hammed on the same issue time and again; perhaps without even realizing that one needs to have an in-depth understanding of the sector. The title says a lot about the “telecom strategy” but sadly these morons on Forbes have restricted themselves to “mobile segment” alone.

I refuse to account for the sector changes or even track the people involved in decision making. This is not my specialty or my interest. My only interest is to get a better deal as a customer; see it through the prism of my own understanding and spout out my “wisdom”.

The whole article talks about the sectoral changes due to Mobile Number Portability or Spectrum charges being traded in “business publications” elsewhere. It does not make even one fucking cursory mention about it’s strategy elsewhere; where it has met it’s waterloo and has been drubbed by customers square- Broadband.

I don’t understand; really don’t understand as to why these idiots cant scale up the platform. They have DTH; they make tonnes in carriage fees (as per the media reports) and burning huge amount of cash in customer acquisition. A proper broadband access (and a portal) with content cross ported from DTH (if you take care of the license issues- what the fuck is their army of lawyers doing?) and you have a sure fire recipe for success.

Of course, this has to come with a balance of right targets and marketing. Last mile access alone is a major issue but not for the class B and class C cities and towns where they could have become the default broadband service providers. But because it needs funds, long term vision and skill of execution, Tatas are found wanting.

Forbes India disappoints me. Not that I had expected a stellar reporting from them but at least SOME bloody semblance of balance in the story. It only points towards the idea bankruptcy, lack of sectoral understanding and oodles of stupidity.

Tags: 3G, Broadband, Broadband access, CDMA, DTH, EDGE, GSM, Idiots, India, journalist, Media, Mobile, Mobile Number Portability, Spectrum, Tata, Tatas, Telecommunications India, Virgin, virgin mobile, VSNL

There is a huge variance in the numbers being reported by different news papers. One of the major fall out of mobile number portability is that you can spite your existing telecom operators face; if you are a high value post paid customer, it would be worth it.

We would never know the true numbers because they would be under reported. DoT would not get in the game and the right from the word go, everyone is claiming that mobile number portability is a no show. I disagree. This is one the huge game changers in the long run and once the hoopla settles down, it’s best to switch providers. I would want something like Google Voice (one number) and get rid of the crap services but I am destined to suffer at their hands.

This also means that I have the full freedom to shift over to rival networks who would provide a better seamless coverage for that occasional data access.

Business Standard has a full page story on this issue It says:

The biggest loser was Reliance Communications (both GSM and CDMA), followed by state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Tata Teleservices (CDMA and GSM). Reliance lost 9,837 users, while 192 chose to join its network..

So, no one likes Reliance Telecom. Anil Ambani, here’s one for you; how not to run a damned network.

Industry experts feel MNP will not be a game-changer. Even operators are not expecting the churn due to MNP to be more than one per cent, as against the current rate of four-five per cent. This is based on their experience in the Haryana circle, where MNP was launched in December. Haryana has seen a churn of about one per cent.

Where the F these experts come out from? They are either some way side idiots or “consulting firms”; would the news paper please stand up to explain who are these experts who have been quoted?

Tags: Anil Ambani, Business Standard, CDMA, DoT, Google, GSM, Idiots, Mobile, Mobile Number Portability, Opera, Reliance, Tata, Tata Teleservices, Telecommunications India

I have been having a very interesting exchange of ideas with Mathew Carley who is the owner of Hayai Broadband. He needs no introduction on the forums and I owe a lot of good deal to him. However, I must defend the user’s perspective and a blog post follows.

He writes:

1. FUP is not illegal, and there is nothing legally wrong with what any ISP is doing when it wants to keep it’s network under control – it is perhaps unethical to advertise a broadband plan as “unlimited” and apply an FUP. I prefer (and use) the term flat-rate, which refers to pricing, not usage.

TRAI, the regulator defines Broadband as “always on with a speed of 256kbps”. They have supported this definition that has been taken from ITU web site. The whole point here, from an end user’s perspective is that the definition has remained static. I think the FCC definition has also remained stuck here. However, the push for “faster speeds” has mainly come from academia and the realization among the telcos that serving content through their dumb pipes can be very lucrative, net neutrality be damned.

All the more they ALSO realize that it pays in the long run to get the customers hooked on to “speeds” AND “content” and then make money out of “traffic shaping” and the works.

Yet, if you look at the pdf from ITU (opens up a link in your pdf viewer), do check out the page 19 (under pricing) where it clearly states the success of South Korea broadband has been because of “flat rate”.

Here BSNL (others and your probably included) have different tiers with a “limit”. Now this limit can be argued. As I had mentioned that majority of your users would be content with social networking / email you would hardly see the “abuse” of network. However, BSNL is a public service. Which means that the network effectively belongs to public and for arguments sake has no say in the way it overlords it. Thats my opinion.

You would be owning the fiber and its for you to come out with what ever plan/ideas you wish to.

As far as TRAI is concerned, it does NOT mention the word “fair usage policy” which is again in contravention to license terms (as all the ISP’s are regulated by TRAI/DoT) and hence ILLEGAL. So you are right too except that it sugar coats the bitter pill.

2)

Many sites – even many India-centric sites, are hosted abroad. This is where the “strain on the networks” usually comes in.

Yes, I know it. Koreans have much of it hosted inside the country because they are not too comfortable with English. Duh. We are among the largest speaking country in the world by the way; still it is not a huge net market.

3) BSNL only has an International cable between India and Sri Lanka – it doesn’t have any going anywhere else. It buys almost all of it’s bandwidth from VSNL – 65% from VSNL/Tata India, 14% from GlobeInternet (a subsidiary of Tata in North America), with the rest from a small assortment of other ISPs both domestic and foreign through it’s various arrangements.

Thanks for letting me know this. I am waiting for official confirmation including the break up of prices.

4. We can safely assume that they’re anticipating about 300GB of usage on their FTTH plans, at Rs10/GB. Cheaper than what I can get it for, but they’ll already be getting the volume discounts I’m aiming for.

Network usage varies WILDLY. I cannot nail even an “AVERAGE USE” but well, it can possibly be predicted once the metrics are clear, the amount of traffic flowing in your fiber and the works.

7. If you’re an ADSL customer, 768kbit/s is pretty much all you’ll get out of a DSL line anyway, unless you’re really close to your DSLAM. ADSL2+ is meant to go up to 3.5mbit/s upload speed, but in NZ I’m 300m away from my cabinet on fairly decent quality lines, and I barely hit 900kbit/s. Since the default upload speed they provide I think is 256kbit/s and you purchase more upload in 256kbit/s increments, this probably is to cover their ass so as to prevent people from trying to buy 1 or 2mbit/s upload and then getting about 768k.

Thanks! The wording on the web site sounded as a “limit” without mentioning the technical reason. Let them confess in writing that it it still is ADSL and then I can question them as to why it is taking delay in introducing ADSL 2. I can file as many as RTI’s I want!

@operamaniac Right of way and civil works costs a fortune. I mean that quite literally – about 75-80% of our laying of fiber to homes goes towards these two things: the fiber and equipment to run the network are negligable costs by comparison, and since it can be crores per kilometer, it won’t take many kms of fiber for us to reach 1,000 crores.

The sad fact. It is the job of municipalities to lay down fat ducts throughout and just offer it to the end users. Simple. Far sightedness is not a virtue in this country. It comes at a premium from those who are NOT in this country.

Interestingly here’s something from Wikipedia entry for ‘Internet in Japan’. It says and I quote:

Operators struggle to maintain enough bandwidth to allow maximum usage of the service by customers. Even the largest operators have capacities in the region of tens of gigabits while customers with gigabit FTTH services (or higher) may number in the thousands. This problem is further compounded by limits caused by internal router bandwidth. Estimates of traffic based on data collected in May 2007 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications set total network usage at approximately 720 Gbit/s combined. The report further states that by May 2008, total traffic will exceed 1 Tbit/s.

Woooo. But then these are 2008-09 figures. Similarly the ITU report that I alluded above is 2003. Much has changed in past 7 years; we are still stuck in the kbps and well….. Time to change the tune, the gears and tracks.

@ Operamaniac a.k.a. my dear web master. 3G is not in my radar right now. In fact, I wanted to ask them as to how they have utilized the USO fund and what is the state of broadband connections in the rural areas. I know for sure that they are spending disproportionately on 3G services and neglecting the land line when it should be reverse. Lets see how they react. At least it would be a basis for seeking legal remedy or anyone who wants to file a Public Interest Litigation.

Cheers!!

Tags: 3G, API, Broadband, BSNL, DoT, DTH, FCC, India, Internet, ISP's, Net neutrality, Opera, S Band, Tata, Telecommunications India, TRAI, VSNL