Indian Telecom and its idiocies

There are enough idiots at the helm of affairs who are ruining the party; partly plain incompetence and partly, entrenched interests mean that the spread of telecom is not really the way it should be. In a recent survey, they discovered that only 3% of the North Indian population is covered by mobile services. I doubt the figures myself because the number could be far LESS.

There are many reasons and I do not want to enumerate them at the risk of repetition. At the heels of this newspaper report, which says that, Mobile phone growth is fizzling out in the cities I had mentioned back that the real growth potential is in rural areas.

The biggest problem apart from the infrastructure is the reluctance of the GSM majors to dilute their brand equity. Hutch advertisements with the dog following its master would have no relevance in rural areas. Their communication strategies need to be defined clearly. It is not that these people do not have money or resources to venture out. That is hogwash. In fact, their licenses have this mandatory clause to branch out in the rural services. Yet, they fail to do so. TRAI is sitting pretty over such violations.

In another interesting development, TRAI has moved court against its own boss- TDSAT. The other day, I was having a free wheeling discussion with a very well read lawyer; one of the most important points that came up was the Supreme Court was running the country- given the fact that administrative wing of the government had become defunct. Further discussion remains out of scope here. I still hold that clear guidelines need to be laid down, where everyone is a party to the negotiations. A clear-cut regulation regime would help everyone involved.

It happens only in India. On the other hand, maybe I am wrong!

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