Bharat Rakshak

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/world ... ia.html?hp

Once upon a time, there was A Raja...

Cellphones may put your child at risk of brain tumor
http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report_c ... or_1477722

Absorption of electromagnetic radiation from a cell phone (frequency being GSM 900 MHz) penetrates the skull of an adult by 25%, that of a 10-year-old by 50% and a five-year-old by 75%, says a report on cell tower radiation which has been submitted by an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, professor to the department of telecommunications (DOT).

“The younger the child, the deeper is the penetration due to the fact that their skulls are thinner and still developing. Hence, it’s critical that children under 16 use cell phones only for short essential calls as they have much bigger danger of getting a brain tumor,” said the 30-page report written by Girish Kumar, electrical engineering department, IIT, Bombay.

Stating that currently there are over 50 crore cell phone users and nearly 4.4 lakh cell phone towers to meet the communication demand in India, the report recommends tightening the radiation norms, which must be simultaneously cost-effective without causing inconvenience to the users.

“A person should not use a cell phone for more than 18 to 24 minutes daily. This information is not commonly known to the people in India, so millions use cell phones for over an hour per day without realising its associated health hazards,” states the report.

“In India, we have adopted very relaxed radiation norms of 4.7 W/m2 (watt per metre square) for GSM 900, whereas serious health effects have been noted at as low as 0.0001 W/m2. It’s not just human beings, cell tower radiation can also adversely effect birds, animals and the environment. Though cell operators continue to claim that there are no health issues, it’s time we realised the seriousness of the health hazards due to radiation from cell phones and cell towers,” said Kumar.

China may or may not be building white elephants with its infrastructure (I don't know enough to say), but we should be wary of holding India up as any kind of example on rational pricing of essential infrastructure.

This is a graphic (ha ha) illustration of just how pathetic the state of broadband in India is. There is clearly a lot wrong when the second poorest country on this list (I think Vietnam has a slightly lower PCI) has by far the highest prices for bandwidth.



Interesting stat: 18.6 Tbps of submarine capacity to India available, 91 Gbps used (about 0.5% of the available capacity). And the highest prices for bandwidth. Sounds like textbook artificial scarcity to me.

$38/ month appears awfully high. From this link below the fee appears to be around $11 only (which is still high).

http://www.bsnl.co.in/service/new_BB/BB ... ne_lim.htm

What am I missing?

Bandwidh prices are artificially high because of VSNL Monopoly. VSNL (Tata owned) has monopolised the availability, as it has the gateway rights into India.
Had the GOI freed the market, the prices in India would have dropped like a stone.



How to bring internet to the mases, within 6 months.

1 Break up the VSNL monopoly for international Bandwitdh
2 Allow the local "cable Whallas" to distribut the IP traffic (They know how to put a cable and that is about the knowledge you need).

Violla, the prices would drop to 250 rupees for a decent speed connection.

Those are crippled plans with a low bandwidth cap. They are not particularly useful for broadband applications, and should not be advertised as broadband plans.

BSNL 2Mbps is Rs 500 per month. ($10 per month).
Minimum 250kpbs is Rs 250 per month. I don't know what the article is talking about.
I think the main problem with broadband penetration in India is the fact that people need computers which are expensive for the common man, language barriers since English dominates and the general lack of need for ordinary SDREs.
Even the poor spend around Rs 300 per month on mobile phones. So the broadband prices are not too much of a barrier.
The whole of India using 91Gbps is totally false. It is much more than that.
The article is poorly researched.

The article is not far off the mark. It might even be sugarcoating reality. Far as I can see from BSNL's website, the company does not offer broadband as available elsewhere in the world. What it sells is a very limited service that may be enough to support a couple hours of high speed data traffic (less than one movie's worth) at best.

Are you sure of this? I thought VSNL's monopoly run ended way back in 2002-03 itself. Didn't they run crying to the courts for reprieve after GoI pulled the rug from under their feet? Or was that for ILD only? Are other players like FLAG (RCom) and Network i2i (Bharti-SingTel) with their own undersea cable networks and landing stations still dependent on VSNL?

I doubt it.

I think VSNL (now Tata Communications) is not the only guilty party here since their status as the gatekeeper seems to have weakened significantly once the other guys got their infra in place. I have always believed that the high prices prevailing now are mainly the result of a cartel-like situation in the market - I think we need a 'per second billing' type of revolution in that market as well.

A shakeup is abdly needed, but I guess the incumbents are all OK with the status-quo.

2 Mbps is data capped. You need to look at UL plans. UL 750 is 512 Kbps for 750 bucks, unlimited which is around $16.

A commercial plan with unlimited data usage and 2Mbps speed costs Rs.4000 per month (12.5% tax extra) in NCR. 512 Kb home plan with 6-7 GB per month limit, cost Rs 800 (12.5% tax extra). Cable net access for 256kbps unlimited costs Rs. 700 per month (12.5% tax extra). Commercial leased lines with speeds 2Mbps or less cost anything above 1 lakh pa (absolute shoe strings budget).
Service is pathetic and no redress of complaints even if you are a high value customer. Only thing some of the ISPs are good at is getting their executives to call up at all kinds of inconvenient hours. Most don't even bother.

Internet penetration for the masses is a bloody joke.

Manish, a bit dated but take a look at:

http://gigaom.com/2005/04/02/india-broa ... il-1-2005/

Things havent changed me thinks, but then I am not that much in tune with the Indian market

BTW, on another note:

Does anyone know if in the proposed 3G deployment in India , any operator is planning to roll out HSDPA/HSUPA?

To be frank, I do not know the situation as of today. But this whole issue with expensive/poor service bandwith in India, is due to some imperfection in the market mechanisms. all the majour cables are connected with with (the same ones as in Singapore and HK), but prices are still very high.
In Europe and elsewhere 512 kpbs is not even considred as broadband. Usually nothing starts under 2 Mbps. Having said that, the cost could be arround 1500 tp 2000 rs for this (but then you get the real speed, as promissed).

Some of the problem with India, is that a lot of the traffic is actually international, rather then local (because few, if any serverparks exists). In US, for for example all the mail traffic will be local, but for India, all the Yahoo, msn, Facebook, youtube etc will be international.

There are many ways to "fix" the problem, if the government was serious. You want more serverparks then.
1 Make availalbe server halls with good power supply and demand that players like VSNL allowes them to connect at commercial prices.
2 Give tax insentives etc.

The bandwith and partly telecom problem of India, is simmilar to the situation of Aviation some time back. GOI policy was more focussed on protecting Air India, then serving the customers. Hence they choked the supply to keep AI alive. Likewise BSNL and MNTL are the babies of telecom department and they are protected.

VSNL/Tata doesn't have a monopoly on landing stations -- Sify and Reliance also own landing stations -- but as the graph shows, the number of landing stations has gone up only marginally in the last few years. That oligopoly probably has a lot to do with high bandwidth prices.

An organization called NIXI also enforces an interconnect charge of Rs. 25 per GB (this has actually dropped from Rs. 50 per GB) on the net traffic flowing between the networks of two ISPs. This may be another factor that makes ISPs reluctant to allow high speed unlimited connections, although it is less of a factor if most traffic is international.

I'm really surprised that there is so little awareness about how slow broadband is in India. Where are the breaking news exposes on the major news channels about the fact that we are so far behind the rest of the world?

Note that the Chinese boom in Internet usage (starting in 2001) began when it was at about the same per-capita GDP as we are now, and they had an even worse language problem. So the argument cannot be that India is "too poor" for the Internet. Internet cafes can quickly bring the Internet to people who can't afford PCs, assuming cheap, robust and shareable high bandwidth connections are easily available.

Mobile broadband industry focusing on cloud ---- Huawei says network evolution crucial to differentiate an operator
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/1 ... ml?hpg1=bn

Huawei to invest $2bn in India
http://telegraphindia.com/1101215/jsp/b ... 302342.jsp

Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st October 2010:

*Total Telephone subscriber base reaches 742.12 Million
*Wireless subscription reaches 706.69 Million
*Wireline subscription declines to 35.43 Million
*18.98 Million new additions in wireless
*Overall Tele-density reaches 62.51
*Broadband subscription is 10.52 million

TRAI Press Release

In any case the telecom regulation authorities MUST imediately demand that the prices are dropped to international level. If the prices come down 75% for bandwidth, the internet revolution will finally start in India as well.

Thanks to corrupt telecom officials, India is again losing out on growth. Shame on them.

There is another aspect of this bandwidth problem that is not much spoken of or understood - the way it skews jobs,business and everything, in favor of bigger cities and bigger companies. Not just bandwidth, there are a host of other issues but bandwidth is a big one.

You can hear of companies anywhere in US often in boondongle places. In India in all but big cities, bb is unavailable, too damn slow to be useful for business and more importantly too unreliable. And for all but the big companies, totally unreachable because workarounds such as dedicated lines, satellite etc., are usually only viable for big ones.

This is why we have cities turning into massive slums where people eke out subhuman existence and prices are so crazy they dont seem to reflect the overall GDP size or poverty , they seem to be from some city in Switzerland or Monaco. My apt. costs 2cr but when I step out it is on cowdung...you know what I mean...

I was surprised to learn recently that TATA via it's Teleglobe acquistion, runs one of the largest Internet backbones in the USA. Which means that they have access to all the tech they need. Perhaps the problem with broadband rollout in India comes down to a lack of investment in the underlying infrastructure required to push massive amounts of data within the country.

There is no other logic to the high bandwidth cost in India, appart from profit making monopolistic business interest. There are umpteen ways to make internet available at very low cost. some examples:

1
If the prices are dropped 80%, then the private local cable whallas will be able to distribute the ip network, locally. the equipment is very cheap. so far there is no interest, becasue of high bandwidth prices, that local consumers cant afford.

2
There is already in place a very good fiber backbone all across the nation, that can handle the internet traffic. In villages etc, one can make use of microwave equipment (again very cheap, where the greatest challeng will be to provide electric power).

3
Where people cant afford their own computer, internet cafes are ready take up the challenge.

Millions of businesses could benefit from the net. From e-banking to reservations, paying bills and what not. A huge industry would emerge.

RIM Rebuffs Report, Can't Give India E-mail Access



If it is for protecting national interests than scr*w RIM royally. No mercies.

Let's see if pacnet delivers on its promise or will join Tata, Reliance and Bharti in extorting high price for international bandwidth.

Pacnet promises lowered internet prices in India

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/busine ... 39165.html

..Pacnet plans to invest USD 150 million, individually or with partners, to extend its submarine cable to Chennai in India. Once the new cable becomes operational by 2012 the supply of international bandwidth available to Indians will vastly increase, with increased supply hopefully leading to lower end-user prices.

In Philippines, says Barney, international bandwidth prices for businesses crashed 70-80 percent from $17 million for a 10 Gbps line between 2001 and 2004. One of the triggers for this was the connection of Asia Global Crossing’s (one of the two companies that merged to form Pacnet) EAC submarine cable and the building out of land-based fiber-optic network to carry traffic within the country. Cheaper bandwidth prices played a big role in making the Philippines BPO industry globally competitive.

Pacnet hopes to do an encore in India when its new cable becomes operational in 2012.

The reason high Internet prices coexist alongside an oversupply of international bandwidth in India is because just three companies control the infrastructure to sell it — VSNL (owned by the Tata Group), Bharti Airtel and Reliance Globalcom. These three companies are the only ones that operate “landing stations” (state-owned BSNL operates one too, but for a cable connecting India to Sri-Lanka alone) — facilities where inland cables are connected to submarine cables and managed round the clock.
..

I've been following the COAI/AUSPI numbers for the past few months, so just wanted to share my quick calculations with you all.

COAI comes up with the previous month's numbers fairly quickly. It came out with the November numbers in the second week of Dec. AUSPI on the other hand came out with them only in the 4th week. Also, all Reliance and TTSL numbers are reported by AUSPI, they still being CDMA and WLL providers, despite having a considerable GSM subscriber base now.

These numbers are fairly accurate (rounded off to the nearest thousand), and directly based on the numbers provided by COAI/AUSPI. Note these are only wireless (GSM + CDMA).

Total Cellular Subscribers in India at the end of November 2010: 723,750,000

Airtel: 149,394,000; Market Share: 20.64%

Reliance Communications: 122,363,000; Market Share: 16.91%

Vodafone: 121,163; Market Share: 16.74%

Tata Teleservices (both GSM/CDMA): 82,598,000; Market Share: 11.41%

Idea Cellular: 78,826,000; Market Share: 10.89%

BSNL: 78,194,000; Market Share: 10.80%

Aircel: 48,739,000; Market Share: 6.73%

Uninor: 16,198,000; Market Share: 2.24%

These are the top eight operators in the market. Other than Uninor (13), Idea (17) and BSNL (not present in Delhi/Mumbai where MTNL operates), all the operators are present in all the circles.

Idea Cellular overtook BSNL to be the 5th largest cellular operator by subscriber base. Earlier, Tata Teleservices had already overtaken it. BSNL is slowly showing itself to be just another incompetent PSU after showing much promise. Both BSNL and MTNL totally wasted the first mover advantage on 3G, having hardly created a ripple.

I looked at the FY2009-10 financials of BSNL (year ending March 2010), and I really couldnt believe they had Rs. 9,200 crore of depreciation, but it makes sense given they were the only ones who managed this country's telephony for a while. UNfortunately, they have little money for capital expenditure, and need a bailout, and very importantly, a change in leadership and strategy.

Interesting competition between Vodafone and RCom to be the second largest operator in the country. RCom has grown rapidly in the past, but mainly based on very low tariffs and huge discounts, thus giving them one of the lowest ARPU's in the industry.

Among others, Videocon seems to have grown rapidly as well, showing 6.744 million subscribers at the end of November-10. MTS, a pure CDMA player, stands at 7.78 million. Etisalat, Middle East's biggest player, has a total sub base of 1.32 lakhs, but they are only just launching their services under the "Cheers Mobile" brand. Uninor has done well too, growing to 16.2 million subs.

If anybody can get a fairly reliable number for India's population at the end of November-10, then we can do a quick cellular penetration as well.

India's population is 1.17 Billion.

For that you would need to know the penetration of dual sims. I believe the subscribers mentioned in the report are really Sims that are sold...

As far as I know, all subscriber data listed for any country is the count of sims sold. That's why several countries list >100% cellular penetration rate - Russia being one example. See:
List of countries by number of mobile phones in use

IIRC the number of unique (non-dormant sims) cell phone subscribers is 20% less then the total cell phone figure reported.

It is the 20% number that I am skeptical about. Western countries have free sims, I dont think India has that, but then it has multiple sims. I am just interested in where this 20% figure comes from, and how it was calculated.

Strictly speaking the industry should have these numbers since they are required for proof of Id before sim allocation so sims to pop ratio should be accurately available.

The number of actual users may be even less.

http://telecomyatra.afaqs.com/news/inde ... ubscribers

yep, you are correct. The 60% figure we hear in the media is the subscriber penetration. Taking out the multi-sim effect, it comes to much lower.

In fact, the most accurate number is the one that TRAI recently released - the total VLR subscribers, which was about 70% of the total subscriber base at the end of september-10. Vipul, thats the percentage you are talking about I believe. I think we can safely assume that of the 724 mn subscribers (aka SIM's), only 70% have been active in the past 90 days (I think that is the criteria after which the number is struck off the VLR).

I dont know what the scene is now but till last year, companies went all out on the prepaid lifetime validity SIM card, so a lot of those must still be counted, even if not used.

What ever the number, fact remans that:

1 Most of Indias population can get a connection within hours.
2 The cost is probably lowest in the world (including China, where the government controls the telecom cos)

Gone are the days, when the consumer had to stand cap in hand and beg for a connection from the PSU's.

In my opinion the wireless telephone in India is a sucess as great as it can get. India beat China on this one (because of price).

wireless technology has in fact helped the entire third world bridge the knowledge and connectivity gap. They have bypassed most of the capital investment that developed countries have made over the decades in wired technologies and laying cables. Now the only cables being laid today are the ones between continents carrying many TB's of capacity in them.

What has been witnessed in India will probably be witnessed in Africa now. Till now, African telecoms scene was mainly dominated by European/Middle Eastern companies (both regions with very high ARPU's), and MTN (itself from the most developed African market). With Airtel, and to an extent Essar, operating there, the Indian model should slowly take over.

That means we've over 750 million subscribers now, since Nov.2010 figures were 729 million plus change, according to wikipedia.

The total telecom subscribers number is also scheduled to touch the 800 million mark this month.

No need for laboured computations . The official telephony data for November 2010 is out. TRAI Press release:

But you have to let me do some calculations for the December data, which is out on both AUSPI and COAI sites. Since i am in the telecom industry these days, its fun doing all these stats crunching.

AUSPI December Data Excel

COAI December Data Excel

Based on these and only these, wireless subs at the end of December 2010, this is what I get:

Airtel: 152.495 mn
Reliance: 125.652 mn
Vodafone Essar: 124.255 mn
Tata Teleservices: 84.233 mn
Idea Cellular: 81.779 mn
BSNL: 81.388 mn
Aircel: 50.169 mn
Uninor: 18.510 mn
MTS: 8.434 mn
Videocon: 7.320 mn
MTNL: 5.115 mn
Loop Mobile: 3.045 mn
STel: 2.316 mn
Ping Mobile (HFCL): 1.615 mn
Cheers Mobile (Etisalat): 0.265 mn
National Total: 746.59 mn

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/ ... y-12334444

So Blackberry has finally said No and dared GoI to act.

I seriously wonder why they are so adamant: is it because they know that GoI will blink? And why the reluctance to provide the same deal that they gave to Saudi Arabia and UAE? The impression seems to be if you are a barbaric nation we will roll over and play ball but if you are a democracy then you can go to hell.

The whole affair is quite strange. We probably arent been given the exact reason for BB's refusal or what GoI demanded.

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