Indian Telecom Folder

[arun]

Installed base crosses 450 Million :

Telecom sector adds 11.44 mn subscribers

BS Reporter / Mumbai June 20, 2009, 0:16 IST

The Indian telecom sector has added 11.44 million connections (both wired and wireless) in May…………………......
.
The overall tele-density, calculated on the basis of the number of people using phones for a population of 100, rose to 38.88 ………… The subscriber addition increased the total number of telephone connections in the country to 452.91 million at the end of May ………………..........

The total broadband subscriber base touched 6.40 million in May, an increase from 6.28 million in April.

Business Standard

[Tanaji]

Everyone has the right to his/ her views, but it might help to have a little more historical context in place..... as a concept, local manufacturing and development has been the model WORLDWIDE till late 80s/ early 90s, particularly in wireline (and yes, it took decades for even the US to reach universal service....... perfectly understandable if you would care to know about the economics of the industry)....... as for mobile, India was amongst the earliest to liberalize.

True, but the British got BT, the Germans got DT, the Finns got Nokia due to their monopolies. We on the other had, had ITI.. the la-la land where getting a phone was a privilege, asking for a longer cord extension was something of a VIP status. One never expected world class, technology beating products from ITI, but one didnt expect brain dead, anti customer attitude from ITI either. Linesmen were made Gods, just so that the pathetic phone line worked and you didnt get conned into paying someone else's bill.

As for the practice, do you have some awareness of how much prices of telecoms equipment crashed after C-DOT was successful in its RAX/MAX, and what all was done to make sure it did not flourish?

Er, attributing equipment price crash to RAX/MAX development is a bit of a stretch don't you think? One would have thought the tremendous advances made in processing power and add to that the increasing sophistication of foundries to deliver FPGA/ASICs would have something to do with it.

Last word on the topic, little sense in getting into a "all stupid/ all useless public sector" vs "all perfect/ faultless private sector" debate again

By the same reasoning, lets not rewrite history by singing paeans to an organization that failed in most of the mandates it had.

[Jamal K. Malik]

BSNL hopes to hear from govt on IPO soon
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Busi ... 691782.cms

[Rishirishi]

China has managed to build up at least 2 large vendors for wireless (Huawei and ZTE). They have done so by helping the companies to aquire (steal/copy/develop) by handing them out market shares.

Indias own ITI is in recievership. Now India has to pay billions of dollars to import the equipment.

Well, ITI had 100% monopoly for decades. I didnt see them do anything at all . So why go down the path of failure again ?. Lets face it. In India, the command model does not work. In China it might.

The list goes on and on. Look at ITI, Look at Air India/IA just to start with and see the damage the 100% monopoly given to "commanding heights" has caused. If we had given the equipment market to ITI we would have to wait for a mobile connection until Kingdom comes, just like we waited for a decade or so to get a telephone in the 70s and 80s, after paying close to Rs 3000 deposit (remember, back in those days, most people's salary was not even 4 digits).

It is a great misconseption that PSU's are not able to make profit. It is however true that the Indian way of managing PSU's have failed misrably (ITI, AI, DRDO, HAL, BHEL, MTNL, etc). The failure is due to the management style inherited from the British.
Singapore has many sucessful PSU's, Singapore Airlines being a star example. Indian beaurocracy and PSU's are very much influenced by Max Webers theories in the 18th centurey. A new and more responsive management style is required.

Having said that, I think India has surpassed China in telecom. Not only becasue of very fast growth, but also becasue of the service level. Becasue of competition, it is much cheaper to call in India. This makes the product more affordable and more people can make use of it.

[vina]

It is a great misconseption that PSU's are not able to make profit. It is however true that the Indian way of managing PSU's have failed misrably (ITI, AI, DRDO, HAL, BHEL, MTNL, etc)

I couldnt care less if PSUs worked great elsewhere or if socialism works great in France. That is totally useless to me. For me what I see and experience out here is what matters. It doesnt work here. Time to junk it. Period.

[Rishirishi]

It is a great misconseption that PSU's are not able to make profit. It is however true that the Indian way of managing PSU's have failed misrably (ITI, AI, DRDO, HAL, BHEL, MTNL, etc)

I couldnt care less if PSUs worked great elsewhere or if socialism works great in France. That is totally useless to me. For me what I see and experience out here is what matters. It doesnt work here. Time to junk it. Period.

The question is what will replace what ever you junk? Competition works well where there is room for several players. But in industries were oligapoly or monopoly is required, PSU's have done a good job. India will just have to learn how to run such companies.

In mind I have utility companies like Water, power transmission, public transport, railways, post and defence related companies. PSU's all over the world have done an exellent job, and provided the public with good quality at affordable prices. Private players are quick to form cartels and overcharge the customers.

Why are you confusing PSU's with socialism? Well managed PSU's function like any other company, with clear goals and a demand for results. They hire/fire/rent/buy at their own will.
Amul is an example of a well managed PSU.

[vina]

The question is what will replace what ever you junk? Competition works well where there is room for several players. But in industries were oligapoly or monopoly is required, PSU's have done a good job. India will just have to learn how to run such companies.

In mind I have utility companies like Water, power transmission, public transport, railways, post and defence related companies. PSU's all over the world have done an exellent job, and provided the public with good quality at affordable prices. Private players are quick to form cartels and overcharge the customers.

Why leave Telecom out of it?. This is the telecom thread after all. Point is you are talking about NATURAL MONOPOLIES (utlities like water, power, gas, telephones, public transport etc) . Historically, it is precisely for those reasons, they were REGULATED for greater good (stuff like USO obligations, pricing reviews, service levels etc). Think about Ma Bell /AT&T of old, the utlities like ConEd, PG&E and all the other ones. They worked brilliantly and in places like Bell Labs, AT&T, the innovation that came out of their labs literally changed the world (Contrast that with ITI and Indian PSU monopolist abysmal record)

Why are you confusing PSU's with socialism? Well managed PSU's function like any other company, with clear goals and a demand for results. They hire/fire/rent/buy at their own will.
Amul is an example of a well managed PSU.

That is because PSU and Socliasism are ideologically linked in India. PSU were the cutting edge to promote socialism and the ideology was the "commanding heights of the economy should be publicly owned" .

Notice, much of those were earlier PRIVATE companies like Air India (what have the babus managed to do to JRD's airline, my god!), TVS bus services in the south, power companies (thank god Mumbai and Ahmedabad still have private companies)..

Singapore is different. If Pakistan is an Army with a country, Singapore is a Corporation with a Country! . What works in Singapore will not work in India, and neither will what works in France work in India.

This PSU, "publicly owned for common good " yada yada does not suit the Indian genius. It might sound good as a rhetoric, and for the Limousine Liberals to mouth platitudes on. But reality is everyone suffers terribly.

[Abhijeet]

The point is correct though. There are things that the government must run, for various reasons. The Indian government had better learn how to do this successfully. Everything cannot be privatized. Perhaps OT for this thread.

[Rishirishi]

The question is what will replace what ever you junk? Competition works well where there is room for several players. But in industries were oligapoly or monopoly is required, PSU's have done a good job. India will just have to learn how to run such companies.

In mind I have utility companies like Water, power transmission, public transport, railways, post and defence related companies. PSU's all over the world have done an exellent job, and provided the public with good quality at affordable prices. Private players are quick to form cartels and overcharge the customers.

Why leave Telecom out of it?. This is the telecom thread after all. Point is you are talking about NATURAL MONOPOLIES (utlities like water, power, gas, telephones, public transport etc) . Historically, it is precisely for those reasons, they were REGULATED for greater good (stuff like USO obligations, pricing reviews, service levels etc). Think about Ma Bell /AT&T of old, the utlities like ConEd, PG&E and all the other ones. They worked brilliantly and in places like Bell Labs, AT&T, the innovation that came out of their labs literally changed the world (Contrast that with ITI and Indian PSU monopolist abysmal record)

Why are you confusing PSU's with socialism? Well managed PSU's function like any other company, with clear goals and a demand for results. They hire/fire/rent/buy at their own will.
Amul is an example of a well managed PSU.

That is because PSU and Socliasism are ideologically linked in India. PSU were the cutting edge to promote socialism and the ideology was the "commanding heights of the economy should be publicly owned" .

Notice, much of those were earlier PRIVATE companies like Air India (what have the babus managed to do to JRD's airline, my god!), TVS bus services in the south, power companies (thank god Mumbai and Ahmedabad still have private companies)..

Singapore is different. If Pakistan is an Army with a country, Singapore is a Corporation with a Country! . What works in Singapore will not work in India, and neither will what works in France work in India.

This PSU, "publicly owned for common good " yada yada does not suit the Indian genius. It might sound good as a rhetoric, and for the Limousine Liberals to mouth platitudes on. But reality is everyone suffers terribly.

What works in Singapore, can also work in India. The question is weather GOI is interested to learn from Singapore. It is not rocket science, just allowing simple and practical approach by management.

Some here seem to think that Privatisation is going to solve all problems. Well, they are living in a fools paradise. Private playes have their problems. Just look at the misrable quality of Bangalore Airport. It is miles behind Singapore airport ,which is a PSU.

I think you are underestimating Indians, with your claim that PSU's are "junk" and can never work in India. It is completely wrong. But a reform is urgently required in the PSU sectors.

Compare the Indian Banks, with their american counterparts. Free market economy ruined the whole financial system in US, while heavy regulation and public ownership saved India.

As for telecom, the whole system depends on the massiv investment made by BSNL and MTNL. Who dug up the entire country even at places that were not profitable?. Had it been left to the private sector alone, large parts of the country would have been left out without telephone services. But at the same time, the Private players have brought in price competition and better service. Take away the regulators and PSU's you may get some marginal improvement in services in metros, but no one will care about rural India.

[Suppiah]

Singapore Telecom industry and Singtel itself may be great as compared to BSNL but in comparison to more free wheeling HK, it is way behind. It is because of the concept of 'managed competition' in Singapore where all 3 telecom players are govt. linked, one way or other. Think telecom is cheap in India? Prepaid local calls in HK cost only 5 or 6 cents HK which is about 30 paise only. For a SIM card which has per minute rate of 25 cents (less than Rs. 1.50) you can call 30 countries free, including Singapore. So it is actually cheaper calling Sing. from HK mobile than from Sing. mobile itself because there the rates are about 15-20 singapore cents which is > 100 HK cents. I got a HK$50 calling card which actually sells for HK$38 (Rs.250 or so) gives you almost 200 minutes of calling to India. Unable to finish it in multiple trips! If I call back from India, it will cost Rs.6-9 a minute if not more. So India has a long way to go to make telecom cheap and it is time we hasten that by stop yelling that telecom is cheap in India. It only creates a myth.

There is one important thing that Sing. is doing which is eye opener for India. They are laying optical fibre to homes, using a consortium funded by tax payer. But this network is to be SHARED by all, including small companies who otherwise cannot afford such things. They are looking at high bandwidth offline tutoring, patient monitoring etc., which is impossible now when you pay bandwidth charges. Forget fibre to home, the principle matters here. Our BSNL uses tax payers money to build networks and keeps it for itself and argues it is grandfather property that only the parasites can enjoy for posterity. Leading to the ridiculous situation of 256KBPS 'broadband' with 1GB download limits being peddled as latest and greatest. It is like as the saying goes, a beehive on a dog's a.s which neither can the dog use nor will it let anyone use..

Singtel was paid some $1-2 billion years ago to take it and shut up. Now anyone can offer IDD services and they have to offer connectivity. It is not all nirvana of competition there (as compared to HK telecom sector) but far far better than here of course.

[bart]

Singapore has been a totalitarian state with an extremely competent 'benevolent dictator' for much of it's existence. You cant really compare Sg PSU with Indian PSU as the cultures are very different. If India was a semi-totalitarian city state led by Ratan Tata, and there were no commies or unions and and started out with a 100% literate population we could make that comparison.

[Suppiah]

Singapore has been a totalitarian state with an extremely competent 'benevolent dictator' for much of it's existence. You cant really compare Sg PSU with Indian PSU as the cultures are very different. If India was a semi-totalitarian city state led by Ratan Tata, and there were no commies or unions and and started out with a 100% literate population we could make that comparison.

I agree, this is true but this has been abused more than most such idioms. Whenever someone compares with someone else, you get to pick one of these (a) They are too small (b) They are too rich (c) They are too different (d) They are too big (e) all of above. In effect we are told just listen to Prakash karat and his bunch of commies for all gyan. Of course, when it comes to picking examples of what NOT to do, almost any comparison will do, no disqualifications will apply - Philipines failed in water privatisation, Britain failed in airlines/railway, Mozambique screwed up on private airports...you name it they will come with global examples of what DOES NOT or DID not work. Then we all become the same

[vina]

What works in Singapore, can also work in India. The question is weather GOI is interested to learn from Singapore. It is not rocket science, just allowing simple and practical approach by management.

Hmm. Sure, if a donkey can turn into a steed , it too will win a race. Until such miracles happen donkeys will remain donkeys and horses as horses!.

I think you are suggesting the impossible. Given our very different political and economic systems, you are advocating that PSU in India suddenly "operate" like the ones in Singapore. Does Singapore have independent unions (yes.. there is a PAP controlled NTUC , but it is sort of like unions in CHina), Singapore is more a corporation than a country, their PSUs like CAAS (which runs Changi airport) and SIA and Singtel etc firmly put profitability first before everything else!.

Now our commies come on TV in opposition to Delhi and Bombay airport privatization and proudly say that they told the Singapore Govt , when your country's public sector can run airports that are world class, why not ours. Just step into the loo in Changi and one in AAI run airport and you will immediately know why (just for starters). The entire mindset is different. It wont happen in India under a govt /PSU management. Look at the Air India farce!.

Some here seem to think that Privatisation is going to solve all problems. Well, they are living in a fools paradise. Private playes have their problems. Just look at the misrable quality of Bangalore Airport. It is miles behind Singapore airport ,which is a PSU.

Oh, but look at how the old HAL airport was. The new BIAL is light years ahead of it. Yeah, it might not be Changi yet, but it will get there in due course. What facilities that have been built at BIAL is pretty good. The only thing is it is not big enough and it needs more terminals, which will get built once the downturn lifts in the sector.

I think you are underestimating Indians, with your claim that PSU's are "junk" and can never work in India. It is completely wrong. But a reform is urgently required in the PSU sectors.

Oh, I am not "underestimating" Indians. Why just last week, after defaulting on "irrevocable sovereign guarantee", the govt wrote of Rs 3000 crores of ITI's accumulated debt!. Ok.Ok. The problem is just in 2005 or so, they did exactly similar thing and wrote off Rs 1200 crores to "clean the balance sheet". Let me make a big bet with you, in another 5 years, the govt will be writing off something similar. All this for just safe guarding 13000 jobs. Basically each employee had close to Rs 4200 crores /13000 , approx 32Lakhs of capital written off !. Imagine Rs 32Lakhs PER JOB! .

The numbers when it comes to Air India is mind boggling. Can anyone here PLEASE PLEASE tell me when over the last 25 years did AI make profits for 3 years in succession and what was the level of profits . Can anyone even know over the last 25 years , how many years did AI make losses and what is the total losses ?. And mind you , for much of the 25 years, the IA/AI parasites were the only game in town, lording over everyone, tilting tables, having monopoly status..

If AI and ITI cannot be put out of their miseries and killed, there is really now hope of stanching the bleeding of tax payer's money. We keep continuously pouring good money after bad and keep feeding these parasites. Enough is Enough. No more tax payer money for them. Heck, I dont get my tax refunds back from the govt (I have got only ONE refund in the years since I moved back from Massa), and I sure as hell dont want ANY of my money to feed the IA/AI , ITI kinds of parasites who basically made my life and all other Indians miserable for all those years. Time to send them to their graves.

[Rishirishi]

Until and unless India can manage to reform the way government is run, the country will never develop.

The problems with Indian PSU's are not unions/mindset/ or any other hubla bubla. The problem is the orgnizatioal framework. If you hade given the same orgnisational framework to Singaporeans, they would have turned into Indian PSU's. The principles of management are 100 years old of british legacy.

In the Indian model, the way to suceed is to avoid making mistakes. This means avoid taking chances, avoid taking responsibility, avoid change and avoid confrontation.
In any progressive organization your first mantra is mesure of output. Second mantra is weeding out the non preformers, third mantra is rewarding progressive thinking and risktaking.

3 basic changes would do wonders.

1 If the outcome is not satisfactory, get rid of it/refuse to finance it. Let people loose their jobs. (this will put preforemance presure on the whole organisation)
2 Start to use the corruption laws. Investigate and punish offendors.
3 If the outcome is better then expected, hand out a reward.

Apply thease principles to all PSU's as well as the GOI employees.

[Abhijeet]

I periodically whine about the very high cost of broadband in India. It's really quite unfortunate that in 2009 there isn't a single ISP offering multi-Mbps connections with reasonably high download caps at something like Rs.1000 per month or so. The best that seems to be on offer is 2Mbps connections from BSNL, and pretty much nothing else.

I came across an interesting blog comment that may point to one reason why broadband prices are still so high.

http://www.tech2buzz.com/internet/your- ... ted-or-not

What I think you are missing is that ISPs are charge Rs. 50/GB at NIXI to peer with other ISPs - and this is bandwidth that doesn’t even leave the country. By contrast, International Bandwidth is unmetered.

I’m building a high-speed, high-capacity ISP now (Mumbai only, at the moment) - we plan to offer from 1Mbps with 10GB data up to 40Mbps with 400GB of data/month. I would really like to do fully unlimited plans, but the Rs. 50/GB makes it cost-prohibitive.

Is there anyone here who knows whether this is true or not? If it is, it may account for a lot of the cost of broadband.

I dug up a post by bart from a few months back listing various things that may account for expensive broadband in India. I think with the exception of the peering charges above, all of these issues should have been resolved at this point.

While talking about broadband, bandwidth etc, don't forget several important things:

The DSL bandwidth which we are discussing is the last mile, i.e from your house to the service provider pop. After that the speed depends on several important factors:

-International Gateway bandwidth - about 5 years ago this was very expensive and heavily regulated and heavily over subscribed. So even a corporate 2 Mbps connection would perhaps be guaranteed only 256 kbps international. Now the situation is completely different with Tata and Reliance being owners of 2 of the largest international fiber networks and Bharti etc having their own submarine cables as well. So the bandwidth should really be cheaper than abroad but for some reason, while the international bandwidth scenario has significantly improved Indian rates are still higher than many other countries.

-Internet Exchange - Most US tier-1 providers have had this since the 80s, this is basically a high bandwidth inter-connect between various service providers so that there is optimum routing, since due to the nature of the Internet, traffic generated from any service providers customers can go to any other service providers network.For example, if you have a 2 Mb broadband from Bharti, if you are accessing a site hosted on a VSNL network you depend on the IXP between the 2 providers - your speed is going to be only that of the tightest bottleneck. At least, about 7-8 years back the IXPs were non-existent and the interconnect bandwidth was pathetic, like 2 Mbps (I think being the govt monopoly, VSNL was blocking it to prevent competition). There was talk about this some time back, but no idea how much action has been taken on this front. [Solved with NIXI, except for peering charges?]

-Content hosting - Most EU/Jap and almost all US traffic is to domestic hosting locations, so the speeds are faster, delay and re-transmits are less, and the traffic tends to go on high quality links all through. So a person with a 10 Mb broadband can actually get something out of it. Its also important from a national security standpoint. Despite huge hosting centers that have come up in India in recent years, very little of the large sites are hosted out of India. Even popular stuff like Linux/BSD downloads don't have mirrors in India. If I were hosting a small website right now, I think I would still go for a US based hosting company since it would be much cheaper and provide a lot of options. I think the govt should provide incentives to host locally like putting in some national security guidelines for critical sites etc, and also making imports of hardware used in datacenters duty free and tax free to bring the cost in line with international standards. This can actually be an area where we can make inroads into the hosting market as well when combined with increase in international bandwidth. [This should actually not be an issue since international bandwidth should be cheap, point #1 above.]

So unless the above are also taken into account the last mile, whatever it is, while important is a moot point.

Can someone here with knowledge of the Indian telecom industry comment on the Rs.50/GB peering charge claim? Is it true, and is it likely to be a major cause for expensive and slow broadband in India?

[armenon]

^^

For traffic exchange at a NIXI node between ISP A and ISP B, B will pay to A (through NIXI) an amount equal to Rs. 50 per Gbyte x [traffic from A to B - traffic from B to A]. Here, the concept of "Requester Pays" to promote domestic content. Thus the "requested" traffic from ISP A to ISP B is measured and subtract the "requested" traffic from ISP B to ISP A. It is currently proposed that the settlement of this be done by paying this money to the NIXI and the NIXI paying the net of all such settlements to the respective ISP. The tariff of Rs. 50 per GB can be reviewed from time to time as bandwidth prices drop.

http://nixi.in/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=59

[Abhijeet]

Thanks. That seems quite expensive on a per-GB basis. At this rate, if a user downloads 20GB from another ISP's network, their home ISP will be paying peering charges comparable to the user's monthly subscription (Rs.1000). In total, the larger ISPs most likely are not affected by this since the net traffic to and from their networks probably balances out, but this may be a factor in their reluctance to raise download caps.

For comparison, I couldn't find a mention of per-GB peering charges on AT&T's page. Do they exist in the US or other places in the technologically civilized world?

http://www.corp.att.com/peering/

They do say that in/out traffic must be "balanced".

Peer must maintain a balanced traffic ratio between its network and AT&T. In particular, a new peer must have:

* No more than a 2.00:1 ratio of traffic into AT&T: out of AT&T, on average each month.

[Suraj]

Didn't see any mention of this earlier - Bharti Airtel now has more than 100M subscribers:
India GSM market share June 2009

Operators Subscribers
Bharti Airtel 102,367,881
Vodafone 76,449,598
BSNL 49,073,929
IDEA Cellular 47,088,878
Aircel 21,798,375
Reliance GSM 12,401,101
MTNL 4,297,218
Loop 2,305,640

Total at the end of June is around 425-430 million cell subscribers. We should have close to 500M subscribers by end of this year.

[Vipul]

The total unique users would be 50 Million less.According to a news report 50 Million connections are being used through handests which have multiple SIM capability.

[SK Mody]

What happened to number mobility in India. Quietly forgotten?

Added later: found this link

[SK Mody]

Also from this page

MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY IN INDIA TO BE DELAYED

NEW DELHI - Mobile Number Portability will be delayed by at least three months from its scheduled implementation date as the Indian telecom regulator is still busy preparing regulations for the new system.

[SK Mody]

TRAI now wants 2mbps as minimum broadband speeds

[Abhijeet]

What about the absurd download caps? Or I'm sure we'll shortly see 2Mbps connections with 400MB download caps being offered as the hot new thing.

While I'm all in favour of the market deciding the types of products available, I guess in oligopolistic markets it doesn't hurt to have a regulator pushing things along.

[Verma]

Why Chinese phones face death

About 250 lakh handsets are expected to be out of service from April 15, as GSM service providers, including Airtel and Vodafone. These are unbranded Chinese mobiles that do not have IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers and pose a serious security risk.

All mobile phone service users have been directed by the Department of Telecom (DoT) to disconnect these phones. In fact, two deadlines - January 6 and March 31 - have already been missed by the companies. Now they have undertaken to acquire the necessary equipment to track these phones by April 15 and discontinue their services thereafter - a process that is expected to take another 15 days, that is, by April 30.

But the Chinese phones are still working well with all of Indian GSM service providers today.

[Yogi_G]

The total unique users would be 50 Million less.According to a news report 50 Million connections are being used through handests which have multiple SIM capability.

For airtel or for all of India? 50 million unique users across India sounds way too low to me...

[Vipul]

Thats for all the operators, not just Airtel.

June month saw addtion of 12.05 Million new connections.From high's of 14-15 Million new connections the run rate has now settled back into 11.5 to 12 Million.

[Vasu]

So when we track the numbers, do we track the number of mobile handsets sold or the number of new phone connections? I think its the second one.

Sorry I cant understand the 50 mn figure - is it the total number of unique individual users? added yearly/national total?

[Vipul]

No 50 Million is the total estimated number of users who have more then one sim card.

[putnanja]

Telecom scam may have cost govt Rs 20,000 cr

[arun]

Installed base reaches 464.8 Million:

Telecom users swell by 12 mn in June

BS Reporter / New Delhi August 7, 2009, 1:00 IST

The overall tele-density in the country reached 39.86, as telecom operators added around 12 million subscribers in the wireless segment in June, taking the total user base to 464.8 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said today …………..

Business Standard

[Vipul]

With 9.48 Million new additions, GSM subscriber base crosses 325 million in July.

[rachel]

The death of Chinese any-product thrills me.

Here are my ideal headlines for the next decade:

'The Death of all Chinese exports as world reels from accidents caused by low quality junk'

'The Death of PRC as Tibet and other restive areas separate, ending the Evil Empire'

Free Tibet, smash China.

[rachel]

Thanks. That seems quite expensive on a per-GB basis. At this rate, if a user downloads 20GB from another ISP's network, their home ISP will be paying peering charges comparable to the user's monthly subscription (Rs.1000). In total, the larger ISPs most likely are not affected by this since the net traffic to and from their networks probably balances out, but this may be a factor in their reluctance to raise download caps.

For comparison, I couldn't find a mention of per-GB peering charges on AT&T's page. Do they exist in the US or other places in the technologically civilized world?

http://www.corp.att.com/peering/

They do say that in/out traffic must be "balanced".

Peer must maintain a balanced traffic ratio between its network and AT&T. In particular, a new peer must have:

* No more than a 2.00:1 ratio of traffic into AT&T: out of AT&T, on average each month.

So in the USA, if the traffic is approximately balanced, no one pays anything to anyone?

[Rahul M]

The death of Chinese any-product thrills me.

Here are my ideal headlines for the next decade:

'The Death of all Chinese exports as world reels from accidents caused by low quality junk'

'The Death of PRC as Tibet and other restive areas separate, ending the Evil Empire'

Free Tibet, smash China.

what is this about ?

[manish]

Long ago, when Tanaji predicted dire straits for AlcaLu, I agreed and said that the Chinese 3G rollout would deliver a major blow to non-Chinese players, esp AlcaLu which anyway had the most to lose. Now comes the news that this is happening...
Huawei Aims for Optical Crown

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has a chance to overtake Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) for the top market share in optical networking gear, according to the latest numbers from Ovum Ltd.

The research firm figures Huawei just fell short of the top spot, building a 20.5 percent market share in the second quarter of 2009. AlcaLu's share was 20.7 percent. (Those numbers are based on data from the previous four quarters.)

That's because of strong demand in China, driven largely by 3G wireless build-outs and the associated backhaul requirements, says Ovum analyst Ron Kline.

Those build-outs disproportionately favor the Chinese vendors. So, ZTE Corp. saw revenues grow as well, by 62 percent over the previous year's second quarter.

By contrast, pretty much everybody else is seeing revenues decline, a predictable side-effect of the decline in, well, everything since October. For instance, AlcaLu's second-quarter optical revenues were down 22 percent from the previous year, and Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) was off by 18 percent, Kline reports.

My heart burns to see that we do not have any homegrown player in this arena. How tragic, considering that our market is a potential goldmine for any telco product co. If only ITI could get its act together. But then again, if wishes were horses...

[krishnan]

our babus would ride

[manish]

Meanwhile, an article by Sam Pitroda pays tribute to C-DOT
Behind India's rise as IT power lies 25 years of C-DOT

C-DOT planted the right seeds for this information and communication technology (ICT) revolution in the country a quarter century ago. The spirit of private enterprise helped it grow to a substantial industry. Now is a good time to review and reflect on what was so unique about the C-DOT endeavour.

C-DOT was essentially a bypass to the legacy system which was full of bureaucracy, vested interests, large unions, confused priorities and political interference. It was clear then that to plant any new ideas and initiatives in the Indian system, bypass was essential with catalysts to engender out-of-the-box thinking. If the same new experiment had been initiated within the Department of Telecom as one of the projects it would have been killed instantly.

^^^^ITI, anyone?

The first product was a small rural exchange to connect villages. Thereafter a small PBX was delivered for the business community. Then came a medium-sized 2,000-line digital exchange, a 16,000-line exchange and eventually a 40,000-line large exchange to meet urban needs. All of this was achieved with young talent whose average age was 23 years without any experience or background in digital communications technologies. Most of them were right out of colleges like IITs with no experience but a dream to help build the nation.

GD/vina, was this Alcatel at work?? (with their ITI tie up and all...)

Twenty five years ago the system was very resistant to new ideas from outside. The C-DOT experiment was seen with a great deal of suspicion and there were many multinational lobbying groups constantly trying to kill the initiative. C-DOT was seen by multinational companies as a direct threat to their business interests in India. It survived due to the political will of the prime minister and it got accomplished simply due to the energy of the young.

[Rahul Mehta]

.

1. How many people in India have mobile phone with active mobile connection? Will be slightly less than total numbers of SIMs (as many people have multiple SIMs and many equipment also use SIMs)

2. What % of population is "under mobile tower" ? i.e. if they are given a mobile and a SIM for free, they can right away use it?

.

[Singha]

C-dot was a highly coveted job in that era and used to recruit from best of colleges and students only. for that era , unheard of things like getting to work on sun workstations was alleged. and their salary was pretty much on par/better with what tcs/infy was offering and work more interesting for those wanting in on that field. in 1995 nit-w, the TCS gross was around 5k and INFY around 8k, wipro was 7k...we heard of one senior who joined wipro, left
in one yr and joined TI for 14k!! that was cause of amazed debate in the hostels how anyone
could earn such a *massive* salary 10k was a dream, 14k was marrying a supermodel fantasy. even in eyeeyetee, the gross offered by hughes, moto, novell, oracle in 1997 was around 12K-14k range onree with Cadence a bit higher.

I guess folks like Tanaji might have the true story of what happened in c-dot.

[Vipul]

India's telephone subscriber base swells by 14.25 million in July.

Total telephone subscriber base in the country increased by 14.25 million to reach 479.04 million in July 2009. India made 14.38 million new additions in wireless telephone subscriptions while wireline subscription in the country declined by 0.13 million.

The number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 479.07 million at the end of July-09 from a level of 464.82 million in June-2009, thereby registering a growth rate of 3.06 per cent. With this, the overall tele-density in India reaches 41.08.

Wireless subscriber base (GSM, CDMA & FWP) increased from 427.28 million in June-2009 to 441.66 million at the end of July-09 at a monthly growth rate of 3.36 per cent. Wireless tele-density stood at 37.87.

Wireline subscriber base declined from 37.54 million in June-2009 to 37.41 million at the end of July-09. BSNL/MTNL, the PSU operators own 85.99 per cent of the market share.While major private wireline service providers have increased their subscriber base, BSNL/MTNL lost 0.17 million subscribers in the month of July-09. Wireline teledensity stood at 3.21.

Total broadband subscriber base has increased to 6.80 million in July-09 from 6.62 million in June-09, thereby showing a growth rate of 2.7 per cent.

Metros recorded lower growth rate while the Circle 'C' areas reported higher growth rate, reflecting the service penetration levels. Subscription levels at 'C' category circles continues to witness higher growth rate indicating growing penetration in these areas.