Life & Marriage vis-a-vie Telecomm India

I work mostly around telecom and during the day today a friend of mine sends me the following:

Life and Marriage
Life before marriage is like AIRTEL : 'Aisi Azadi Aur Kahan'
Life during engagement is like RELIANCE : 'Kar Lo Duniya Muthi Mein'
Life during Honeymoon is like IDEA : 'A wife can change your life'
Life after one year of marriage is like HUTCH : 'Whereever you go your wife follows'
Life after 10 years of marriage is like MTNL/BSNL - 'The subscriber is not reachable'

I could so relate to it. These are the catch lines of the different mobile service ads.
Full credits to the owner of the analogy.

Its been all great ... but until when?

More than 7 million users a month - July 07, I think. Reasons being - lower price due to high competition, lack of fixed line connection and improved lifestyle for all.

Have you ever seen a regular Hindi movie? Its all good and good and then the boooom .... something goes wrong - villain appears, someone has an accident or an old boyfriend shows up unexpectedly. The theme changes - its now a sad story.

Same will be the story with Indian Telecom! I think the good part is almost finished. The bad guys have made their appearance. The main issue ... Spectrum. Who has it ... Defence Dept. Telecom Ministry has requested, then asked, then ordered that the spectrum be released. But why should they? They have had it for free for as long as they can remember. Now suddenly someone orders the Defence Dept. of the country. Irrelevant is what they have and they need to give. But they are the defenders of the nation and how dare somebody orders them! And given that Defence Dept releases the spectrum, the Telecom Dept does not know how, to whom, when and at what price to sell/auction the spectrum.

Operators are willing to pay for the spectrum needed. They have seen the value. They have made the money and are willing to risk more money.

Who suffers? As always the people - you, me and us. And this case, may be the nation as well. Cell phones have changed the lifestyles of so many from roadside vegetable vendors to freelance cooks to on-the-move CEOs. Connectivity has reached to far off villages who thought talking to anyone in the city meant walking for days to first see then talk. Definitions changed. Talk could happen with small devices, the so called "mobile". Airtel was everywhere. Reliance brought the tariff down. Anyone and everyone could afford a "mobile".

Will operators suffer - Not at all. They invested. Their ROI (return on investment) has been spectacular - way more than what they had anticipated. With no new spectrum, they will squeeze as many users as possible in the given spectrum. They will increase tariff. Hutch and Airtel has already increased SMS prices. Thenafter they will move on. End of the day, they are entrepreneurs who knows how to see the opportunity and make money. They have made enough to finance their next venture. If not telecom, they will do petroleum, steel, retail ... whatever will make them money.

Government - they come and they go. Need I say more?

So, with the lack of spectrum resulting in low voice quality and many dropped calls ... the bad guy has definitely made an impact. Now we got to wait and see if the "hero" - Telecomm India will be able to come up victorious or will it just be great growth story we will tell our kids and grandkids.

Number portability

When will number portability start? I am sick of Airtel - they charge you for so much more than you use. And to see your complete call lists you need to pay Rs. 75. So what if they charge Rs.1 per call ... they know of ways to make money.

If there was number portability - I would definitely not be AIRTEL today. May be HUTCH? May be MTNL? May be even Reliance ... even if I would have to buy a CDMA handset.

Have you had any bad experience with your operator? Want to tell me before I make another mistake .... ?!?!?

Telecom Operators in India

I use Airtel. And I know about Hutch because of its $20billion deal. Reliance is a CDMA operator. But I wanted to know who else are big players in the telecom field. And this is what I found ...

I did not know about BPLmobile. I think Aircel is big in South India and is also venturing into WiMax. Dolphin - not heard about this. And ... I see that TataIndicom is missing in the logo collection above. Any guesses as to where I might have found the logo collection? Think think ... its a big well known website!

cricket world cup 2007

Sms is big in India. Contests, polls, live updates, ringtones ... many things happen with sms. And when it is the World Cup Cricket going on, SMS can't be quiet. True that almost everyone is either watching or listening to it somewhere in the radio. So the question is who is using the SMS to get the updates and live scores. But in a country with more than 150million cell phone subscribers, sms cricket update is ALSO big. So next time there is a big match and you are not too keen to be in front of the TV or radio - which is very likely given the way India is playing with Srilanka - I am watching while writing- 255 to win and 112/6 @ 28overs - Yuvraj Singh just got run out! 5th wicket run out! Unbelivable DHONI out on the 1st ball ... I hope I saw it wrong ... phew --- Dravid can't believe it! Neither can I ... I think - I am almost sure - you will need the following SMS numbers to get your cricket update. How interested can you be to watch all the way now that India is out of Super 8!!!!!

Yahoo India Mobile
Sms: cri to 8243 : Recent score of all international teams.
Sms: cri country to 8243: Recent score of a particular team.
Sms: cri sch to 8243:: Schedule for the next week.

Sify
Sms: cri to 4545: Latest live scores.

Indiatimes
Sms:CRI to 8888 : Ball by ball updates for Indian matches.
Sms:MAT to 8888 : Live score updates on cricket matches from across the world on your mobile through SMS.
Sms:CRI SCH to 8888: Match schedules.

Happy SMSing.

Ombudsman

Facing flak over increasing consumer complaints, telecom service providers on Monday announced the setting up an Office of Ombudsman for telephone users.
Consumers will be able to directly take their complaints to the Ombudsman and the decision taken would be binding on operators. If you are not satisfied by their decision, you are free to take their grievance to any other forum like the consumer courts.
So bother with the Ombudsman when there is consumer court - because consumer court deals with all problems and not just telecom related; might take while for your case to be addressed.

What is Ombudsman?
According to dictionary.com ombudsman is -
1. a government official who hears and investigates complaints by private citizens against other officials or government agencies.
2. a person who investigates and attempts to resolve complaints and problems, as between employees and an employer or between students and a university.

Top 10 advertisers

I was reading the Tele.net January 2007 and came across a lot of statistics on Telecomm India. Subscriber growth, ARPU, market share ... many of these were given. What got my attention was the top 10 advertisers (January - November 2006). Here is the list

Television
------------------------%share
Bharti Airtel -------------- 25
Reliance Communications - 23
Hutch --------------------- 21
Tata Teleservices --------- 13
Idea Cellular -------------- 11
Spice Communications ----- 2
MTNL --------------------- 2
Matrix Cellular ------------ 1
Aircel --------------------- 0.8
BSNL --------------------- 0.5


Print
--------------------------- %share
Reliance Communications -- 35
Bharti Airtel --------------- 13
Tata Teleservices ---------- 12
Hutch ---------------------- 11
Idea Cellular --------------- 9
BSNL ---------------------- 9
Aircel ---------------------- 5
BPL Cellular --------------- 2
MTNL --------------------- 2
Spice Communications ----- 2

I believe this statistic does not include the cell phone manufaturers like Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson!

IEEE 802

Last week I was at the 802 meeting. This time it was in Florida. Beautiful place. Lots of technical discussions. Different companies trying to find a spot for their proposals in the standards.
The IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee develops Local Area Network standards and Metropolitan Area Network standards. The most widely used standards are for the Ethernet family, Token Ring, Wireless LAN, Bridging and Virtual Bridged LANs. It consists of many Working Groups. An individual Working Group provides the focus for each area. Well known groups are the 802.11 and 802.16 groups.

Representatives from different well known companies like Nokia, Motorola, Samgsung, LG, Intel, Qualcomm, Netgrear, NextNet, Panasonic, Fujitsu, France Telecom, ... and from different geography participate. However, it was surprizing to see that there was noone from India. Of course there were many Indians; but not actually from India.

Then, I started thinking does it even matter what gets standardized and what doesn't. India has become a big telecom market; but it definitely is not the decider. Tried out and tested systems come to India. It is a very cost sensitive market - cheaper is better anywhere in the world but cheaper is the only way in India. Yes, Rs50000 phone gets sold in India. But the point is what gets sold more - its the Rs1000-Rs2000 phone. For a full time enigneer out of college the salary is in the range of Rs5000-Rs10000.

So, ya the conclusion I drew was ... what gets standardized does not bother/depend on India. But if a standardized system becomes big in India, then the companies with their IPR (intellectual property right) in the standard do make a lot of money.