Ganesh Chaturthi

I had to drop off some relatives in the railway station the night before the festival. The idea was to also pick up an idol during this trip. Having left pretty early for the 1045 train, we felt it would give us time to drop off my uncle and aunt, and then pick up the idol within an earthly hour on the way back. The traffic near National Market proved us wrong and we reached the station just in time, and thus were back in the vicinity of koramangala only around 1130pm.
Needless to say, despite a half hearted drive around, we found no idol seller. However, and that brings me to the essence of this post, what we did find open everywhere were Wine Shops. And crowded. Brisk business. I dont know exactly what the right emotions were that crossed my mind - amusement, irony, anger, disappointment... but it was a curious mix of feelings that made me write this post.
More later folks

Update

4 years down the road & time to traverse new journeys. Time to expand horizons and time to experiment in stretching boundaries. Time to rediscover oneself and time to fall headlong into chaos. Time I stopped these cliches.

Moving on is fun & scary. There's a sense of weightlessness often, as one moves from the comfortable and secure known surroundings and delves into the unknown for the sheer thrill of it. Maybe now I would contribute more thoroughly to the blog on telecom at least, no longer bound by the principles of employment & the belief in the advantage of the first mover. Maybe now I can write true gyan... as though the world is listening. But maybe now, I can really write as there is time.

Time I stopped,
Cheers!
The Digital Monk

If I could, I would...

I've been trying to get data and failing - so will go with my gut here. As media consumption habits of consumers change, especially with the younger crowds currently soaking up the internet... it would be easy to expect that in a few years time, the major media vehicle would be the internet. With the coming of more sophisticated technologies that allow for packet level inspection, the nature of targeting customer segments would become increasingly sophisticated, requiring equal intellectual sophistication in the defining of consumer segments by marketing teams - this would probably require significant reskilling or even resourcing, as the older economy generation where I include myself, have little intuitive feel on the nature of consumption of the internet by today's youth.

I guess this is the generation gap, except in an accelerated mode with the Delta-T required to elapse between generations rapidly shrinking. In fact on an aside, there must be an analytic measuring the quantum of information received per person per day, the measure of this would be an invaluable tool in making social predictions based on the nature of the information, its tagging and its recipient.

But back to the argument - in addition to the reskilling/resourcing of marketing teams that can fathom and factor the internet impact into their strategies, Ad agencies/media planning & media buying firms too need to reinvent themselves to leverage this new trend to the advantage of their clients. In the competition between agencies for the share of wallet of clients, the domain expertise of leveraging the internet will be the strong distinctive competitive advantage that the victor would bring to the table

The next big killer app

I would like to wager that the next big event on the horizon is "Working from home". Maybe its because I end up doing so much of it! But jokes apart, it does seem to instinctively ring the bell for the next big killer app. I believe that 1 year from now, when Nielsen or someone researches the internet market in India with the question "Why do you use the internet at home", the answer will move from "email & chat" to "working from home".

The mad growth rates of laptops in India as per MAIT's reports (also check out the comment from the folks at Gartner, and this phenomenon is mirrored in Asia-Pac), the construct of the job economy that is driving India's growth, the emergence of the complete high rise verticals, super high speed broadband connectivity - all these point in the single direction of Working from Home.

In the short run, simple VPN applications coupled with conferencing facilities would be the driver of adoption. Over the next six months, I believe that the market would begin to get deeper & richer with web conferencing gaining adoption... and eventually to more serious telepresence applications. The twin problems for the rapid adoption of these would be the "technological complexity" of the product, hence making it inaccessible for the untrained; and for higher end apps, the cost of the equipment will be prohibitive.

In any case, the point here is that the market is at a tipping point for the rise of the Enterprise-Home converged app, which is where Work From Home figures

Cell-Net!

Quite a complete article on the various technologies in the cellphone internet access market. CDMA's superiority is also experienced in the related wireless mobile internet market of datacards on laptops, where the speeds offered / experienced are far superior to other technologies.

But I agree with the author - GPRS really sucks in terms of the speeds it offers on datacards at least. Wonder what the iPhone would use when it comes to India - I think the US market has a CDMA version only as of now with AT&T being the provider.

Public Relations strategy rethink

Actually, the initial interest in this article was its statistics on the Datacenter market and the opportunities that such a market phenomenon creates for telco's such as mine. But then what actually got me to post was the insight into an effective and simple Public Relations strategy to adopt. What I believe is an interesting observation (interesting to the uninitiated such as I!) here is that Company X does a PR jig giving data on its feeder industry, by feeder industry I refer to the industry that is its target segment.

This allows me to redefine our approach to data-sharing-conservatism & the perils of antagonizing my "Investor Relations" group - instead of always wondering what to share and what not to, I could instead simply open up my industry research data on my feeder industries.

So... wait for my name in the press :-)

The Digital Monk rests...

Opex & Bandwidth

A neat lesson lies in managing bandwidth as seen in the story here on how one can free up spectrum for mobile phones. I presume the obvious and easy thing to do would be to move higher users of bandwidth onto separate pipes, allowing for differential policies to be applied in line with their rental commitments

This seems so obvious that I'm not sure it's being done!

MSN - Mobile Social Networking

Getting an Instant Messenger onto the cellphone is obviously the single largest imperative in the mobile industry today. The obvious reason is that even today, after more than 10 years of the internet's existence in India, the single largest reason for use remains "email & chatting". In the era of converging technologies, the cross pollination of established consumer habits across devices is a no brainer. What makes the IM of the PC all the more interesting and germane is the high rates of adoption and use of the mobile SMS communications. What remains now is to integrate SMS with the features of IM, viz. groups, buddy lists, group chats, conversation history... and so much more.

I also see the reverse trend happening, viz. the ability to send SMS's to mobile devices from the PC. The guiding principle remains the cross pollination of usage habits, with the added rule of screen size based granularization of intent, behavior & experience

More to come on this...

Mobile Advertising

Another frontier falls to the might of capitalism's unbridled exhortations to consumers! With new technologies enabling the advertising on mobiles & with the increasing capabilities to deliver wireless internet on the move to mobile devices, we are in the age of convergence.

The imperative now becomes one for the media houses to create content with granularity relevant to mobile handhelds. The only attempt by Hutch to deliver stand-up comedy sequences to handhelds does not seem to have taken off, if one could draw inferences from the lack of its being repeated in the market. However the following content streams do have potential for small-screen delivery
1. Always, always porn
2. Comedy
3. Movie trailers
4. Movie songs (in India...!)
5. Rock artist music videos

True enough, Doordarshan (Prasar Bharti) seems to be at the forefront and is already evaluating MediaFlo (QualComm & CDMA again!), one of the various multimedia streaming technologies for delivery of content to mobile devices. (Jargon Alert : DVB-H => Digital Video Broadcast -

While these are some thoughts on the entertainment front, there would be utility content which is more important. But thats another post :-)

"One VSNL"

VSNL seems to be on a consolidate & grow strategy, both happening in parallel. Consolidation of the VSNL brand - its various acquisitions & the Tata Indicom brand name. Growth through further aggressive investments in the value chain of bandwidth & acquisition targets - for which it has allocated $500Mn this fiscal.

Through these, VSNL intends to be a global player in the enterprise market... and use the brand equity leverage in the domestic homes broadband & public access market

It does seem serious in this intent!

Freedom & The Internet

The Net Neutrality battle rages on, now entering into the Wireless Spectrum auction arena, led by the Stanford law professor Lessig. I'm currently reading a mind blowing book by Lessig titled "The future of ideas", where the author argues that the way the telcos and tech firms are moving today & with the nature of IP laws (Intellectual Property) being the way they are, we are in for a control economy within the framework of the Internet, something against the spirit of the Internet which is freedom at its exhilarating best. Interestingly, the importance of the spectrum is reflected in that it has become a presidential debate issue in the US, with candidate John Edwards taking an early stand on the issue

If the debate is one of free markets, how free are the markets really as long as the media itself is controlled by private enterprise? Another excellent read in this connection is Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death...

Where will all this lead to!?!

Prepaid Wireless Broadband

Australia makes its moves further, with Prepaid Wireless Broadband. Interestingly, the tariffs in Australia seem so much higher than our own low-cost broadband options. One of the keys to making it succeed is the retail distribution of the access cards... More to come

How real are the promises?

One has been hearing often and more about "Municipal WiFi". This has been in attempt globally, I remember the original instances of Google & Earthlink trying to WiFi up all of Milpitas. However, after the initial euphoria of articles, the news in general began to get darker and less optimistic.

Summarizing this article, it would appear that the following are the primary reasons for the "failure" of Muni WiFi

a) Underestimation of the number of nodes required to provide a competitive & comparable experience to customers for browsing the internet; resulting in flawed capex models

b) Overestimation of the power of networks, thus resulting in the inability of the "waves" to penetrate the walls of places resulting in the customers needing to buy fancier and more expensive CPE, again resulting in the business model getting flawed with reduced adoption rates

c) With lower customers come fewer advertisers and hence lesser revenue to offset the costs...

And now the complete business model so far stands wiped out. Rather early pessimism too! Still, cities & states in India too are coming with their EOI's for Muni WiFi... what happens, time

Another on Railways

No, this isn't about Railtel!

Rather this is a case in the UK where the basic debate is on how to service Broadband delivery inside trains. There seem to be two options being considered - A 2-Way satellite solution on the one hand & Along-The-Track-WiFi on the other hand. The problems with satellite technology are the size of the dishes required for effectively delivering a seamless wireless experience, and thus the coin is more likely to fall in favor of trackside WiFi.

At least until there are quantum leaps in antenna technology...

80Mbps Wireless!

Just a quick link - Two points of note

a) The Australian firm Telstra plans and commits to deliver 80Mbps within 2-3 yrs time, and openly permits its salesfolk to make commitments to customers on the same.

b) There is a law of Fair Trade that allows for penalties, rather refunds to customers, for purchases made on service promises that were not delivered.

Now thats a "Service Guarantee" for you!

Free WiFi Stories

This is an interesting option for Free WiFi, The model is one where the provider ties up with specific content channels that are relevant to the location, example : Certain Websites in Hospitals, Certain Websites in Airports & Railway Stations, Complex backend software allow such customize delivery, And thus can lead to differentiated offerings!

Speaking of differentiated offerings, the article here does a nice task of neatly dividing the market into convenient-to-target niches for any player with a serious intent.

Fiber Optics & IPTV

It would seem that Aksh is pushing harder for IPTV implementations. After all, it is the primary gainer in such initiatives. The strategy at Aksh would be to straddle the value chain, why else would a fiber optic cable supplier also have its own proprietary end-to-end IPTV solution manager, branded as RollingStream; and why else would it also work on convergent billing solutions. Given the same, would IP be the route through which Aksh enters the stagnant fixed line telecom market with VOIP on Long Distance? Or would it be the prefered provider of solutions for MTNL's own play in this regard?

Watch this space...

PS : Check out our BB market share in Delhi! Rocking!

How to beat Paid WiFi!

Oh, this one is brilliant!
How to beat the Pay-For-WiFi dealers.
Reminds me of our own call center sometimes!

Evangelizing a data-driven culture

For a telco, the range of possible analytics could indeed boggle the mind, there would be 2-3 primary areas

1. Hypothesis testing based on insights from consumers/sales/frontline
2. Past trend analysis to generate patterns resulting in revenue opportunities
3. Future forward predictive analytics

Personally, 1 & 2 are quick wins with revenue maximization opportunities, Point 3 becomes an exercise in intellectual gymnastics of modeling, where soon the correctness of the model supercedes observable reality.

Often modeling is in the hands of the powerful who are disconnected from reality & conversations on the models with those connected with reality in the frontline become overtones of power & position, leading organizations from darkness to despair! Thus I would tend to put point 3 in the backburner till sufficient mastery of the processes and rhythms of 1 & 2 are developed. Current revenue enhancement campaigns across industries lack maturity as can be garnered by discussions with those in the know. As regards hypothesis testing, the skill of picking out consumer insights is hard to find...

The Digital Monk

Quo Vadis Fair Use?

Clearly, Fair Use Policies are the way ahead to effecive Bandwidth Management from 2 perspectives - First & More important - The Consumer Experience, should the vast majority suffer from the "limitless greed" of the small minority of P2P client downloaders, and secondly, cost control in terms of bandwidth procurement & provisioning. With the coming of IPTV, the need for a fair use policy is even more critical

The Digital Monk

Of Cable Operators

The route to dominance on the IPTV front would be the acquisition of a few LCO's to gain scale. LCO's are more well entrenched with the TV & CnS penetration being much higher than the landline teledensity.

The article shows that even "small" players in "Non Key Markets" are driving up their investments, since the final stronghold on the customer is with the pipe carrier in the new digital control age

The Digital Monk

Railways & Broadband

An interesting read - on how the Railways with Railtel is getting serious on fiber connectivity across the country. The article mentions "RailTel has exclusive right of way to establish an OFC network along the Railways’ Route Kilometre (RKM) networks"... They've also invested in setting up NOCs in key locations to help manage this endeavor.

Their main target segment is the Enterprise market & Telcos according to this article.

Question is how do we leverage them?

The Digital Monk

The Digital Monk

Hi folks
Just to welcome you here.
I used to write a lot earlier, lost time.
Now catching up again & hope you'll share your views & comments
Remember this is a Public blog, so the netiquette of corporate discretion would apply.

For those of you keen to know more on how you can integrate this blog with your browser & do all sorts of other cool things on your own, call me on my cell, a number you would probably have

Best Rgds
The Digital Monk