Tags: Airtel, BSNL, Reliance

Tragedy of Indian Telecom

Much has been made of the rollback of TRAI order by TDSAT. In my earliest column on Indian Telecom fiasco, I had argued that mobile roaming rates were among the highest; there was an ample scope for reduction in the same. The companies resort to every trick in the book to evade the same. In that, I had raised the issue as to who is the real boss.

On the rollback of the international leased line rates, there were two opposing views. One by Financial Express that cheered TDSAT; it argued on lines of free enterprise. VSNL had dug out some analysts report and made a hullabullo about it.

The other one by Business Standard, which insisted that TRAI has been given a boot by one and all. It depends as to which camp you are. Free enterprise or restriction of monopolies?

Indian Telecom is headed for cartelization. It is sure. One has to be blind to see that it has not happened. More on that later.

Coming to roll back, I had criticized TDSAT’s order because the market forces have not ensured the full benefit being passed on the end consumers. Broadband remains just a hoopla. Coming at the heels of media reports that BSNL is lagging behind the roll out commitments. This has been attributed to extremely shoddy marketing, planning, and execution. Plus of course, the demotivated ground staff.

It is the natural monopolies that companies tend to protect. I fail to see any logic behind keeping the prices artificially high. I have argued, in my opinion that increased volumes would more than make up for any shortfall in revenues. Again, Airtel and Reliance have not uttered a word on the same. Defies logic again.

As I mentioned a little earlier, Indian Telecom is headed for cartelization. The bigger players swallowed the small fish; the ones who jumped on presuming that it could be a cakewalk. First, this deprived the consumer of any choice. Then, the big fish decided to gang up together and try every trick in the book to increase their profits by hook or crook. So much so, that there is little differentiating factor in any of the GSM service providers. To complicate the matters even more, they allowed free hold ownership by foreign companies. Hence, we are at the mercy now of the even bigger fish. It would be extremely difficult to enforce the rules as any order is challenged straight away; given the leverage of power, TRAI has been eroded largely.

Sunil Jain in his article lays bare the truths. I doubt whether there is anything different from what I have been saying all along. Yet, his has been a good expose. Damn. Those who claim the “free enterprise” and instead prefer to get paid for the frills, they are doing a great disservice to Journalism. People like Sunil Jain repose my faith in the same. Keep up the good work!

Read More

This is out of place here. I have been enamored of Apple Computers ever since I worked on a Macintosh about 5 years back. Since then I have been tracking this company for any new developments. I could start a full-fledged Blog on the same. Yet, I wish I had more time to devote. Anyway, I came across an analysis of Apple’s Tiger vs. Microsoft A good read for sure.

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.