Dinesh Joshi wrote: ** deleted ****
Read my post carefully. Airtel is the only operator with certain plans which none of the other operators are offering. Hence a monopoly.
Dinesh, you read carefully first. Making a commercial offer at a lower in price than competitors or different term is not monopoly. Your definition is wrong. Monopoly is like BEST in Mumbai, where no one else is ***allowed*** to ply public use bus services. If 2 cable tv companies, one offering a bundled service while others are offering a per channel cost, does not make the first guy a monopolist. Its a commercial offering, nothing stops others from offering the same, if they are not interested in offering that rate, it also is a commercial decision.....it does not make the other company a monopolist.
eg - BSNL offers a student mobile connection at a flat rate of Rs. 100 per month. No other company makes that offer. But that does not make BSNL a monopoly.
- I know the bandwidth and infrastructure prices in India. No player
can offer decent Internet service without data-throughput caps. If
Excuse me, FLAG and TYCO were acquired by Reliance and TATA respectively. TYCO alone has like 11000 Gigabits of /unlit/ capacity. And were you aware the TRAI cut the prices of bandwidth ( leased lines ) twice? Once it was by ~70%.
TRAI cut the price only because VSNL had monoploy right over the landing station signed 15 years ago. Before that, lease line prices were 20+ times higher than international rates. Besides, the cut was on account of distorted pricing levels between large and small users. The actual cut in rates was done by VSNL while it was still owned by the government. It will still need to come down to 1/4 of what it is today.
- The internet service providers are going to provide services first
where they can make more money. First they will target corporate business, then upmarket housing complex and when that market is
Right. Did you know the ARPU for their mobile operations is ~600INR? While their potential ARPU for their BB operations can be ~1000INR or more.
Mobile voice arpu is around Rs. 240. It was 600 a long time ago. Worldwide, revenue shifted from voice to value added and data services. But I dont think the arpu for broad band is not Rs. 1000. Most of the connections sold in India are lower.
- The small players can not set up decent infrastructure. Even in so
called advance markets, there are only very large players in the
***deleted ***
Wait right there. Are you quoting those numbers just like that or do you have any basis for them?
I have done good amount of work in this sector. The figures are based on facts and figures from projects and reports.
Look at my first reply. Leased lines in India are now costing nearly the same as that of the international markets
No. Anyway, it is not local leased lines, it is international data lines that make the difference. Do you know the cost of providing cable internet services in mumbai ? -You need to buy a bandwidth (Bharti, MNTL, Reliance). at 1:1 and not 1:4 compression -Then you need a local loop operator and pay local loop charges to the locality -Then you need to create and implement an POP (Point of presence) -Then you need to have fiber from the POP to the building -Then you need to local access point in the building to terminate fiber -Finally you will need to take a local wiring to the subscriber's place ***deleted ***
With VoIP being legal in India they are fearing that their Telecom business will take a hit if they give out broadband connections. Who in their right minds will pay a telco for a telephone call when he can make free PC2PC, PC2POTS calls at dirt cheap prices?
PC2POTS calls will need to have a termination charge (see my previous mail). Termination Charge in India (local call) is 30 paisa. Add that to VOIP call cost, well, BPL charges me - Rs. 49 per min. MTNL charges Rs. 1.20 per 3 minute Mumbai to Delhi. VOIP still has a benefit only in International Calls. ****deleted****>
Well that is your usage pattern. But some people do like to contribute to the legal torrent networks out there. Some people do like to stream music, videos, have online conferences and like to watch online clips. Some people actually use the internet for fun. Some people actually visit youtube.com. Some people actually need to upload large files to FTP servers for their work. Some people like to download, update their favorite Linux distros. And some people do use Fedora Core 5 whose installer / updater is configured by default to use YUM as their back end and it becomes PAINFULLY slow when one has to wait several hours for something to download and install.
Such people will therefore need to pay for the additional usage. That is the rule world wide, you pay for what you use.
****deleted*** Wake up and smell the coffee! This is not the shell era anymore. The web is a rich multimedia experience which is hampered only by these slow / data limited (but fast) connections. I wouldn't mind if these operators put good amounts of download limits. I mean 40-60GB cap on a 256Kbps connection is decent...
The connection is available is available, MTNL provides it, but you need to pay for it. 2 mbps, 60GB data limit....... Dont expect to get what you are not willing to pay for.
You see, I smell the coffee every day. I work with numbers and with the kind of data you dont have and can only hear about. We use rich cross continent client application in our clients offices, We do voip and video conferencing, we upload and download files which are at times in GB. We work on massive databases and huge graphic imageing files, flash and streaming content files (all ofcourse at our clients offices as it is their work, not mine). Some time back, we did a marketing campaign run for a client where a rich image email was to sent out to 1.8 million registered users of a service. That is huge bandwidth requirement.
But in each case, we are willing to pay for the bandwidth, you want to use the same bandwidth but do not want to pay.
Regards Saswata
On Sunday 09 July 2006 21:54, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:
Dinesh, you read carefully first. Making a commercial offer at a lower in price than competitors or different term is not monopoly. Your definition is wrong. Monopoly is like BEST in Mumbai, where no one else is ***allowed*** to ply public use bus services. If 2 cable tv companies, one offering a bundled service while others are offering a per channel cost, does not make the first guy a monopolist. Its a commercial offering, nothing stops others from offering the same, if they are not interested in offering that rate, it also is a commercial decision.....it does not make the other company a monopolist.
I'm sorry, I didn't want to do this but here we go...
Formal definition of a monopoly: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. By definition, monopoly is characterized by an absence of competition - which often results in high prices and inferior products.
Strictly speaking a monopoly is a market containing a single firm. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
So by definition, Airtel has a monopoly since it has a product which no other company has.
TRAI cut the price only because VSNL had monoploy right over the landing station signed 15 years ago. Before that, lease line prices were 20+ times higher than international rates. Besides, the cut was on account of distorted pricing levels between large and small users. The actual cut in rates was done by VSNL while it was still owned by the government. It will still need to come down to 1/4 of what it is today.
I dont have the figures at hand but I am pretty sure TRAI cut the rates by upto 70% so that the leased line prices in India are on par with the international prices. But I'll take your word for it that the prices need further reduction.
Mobile voice arpu is around Rs. 240. It was 600 a long time ago. Worldwide, revenue shifted from voice to value added and data services. But I dont think the arpu for broad band is not Rs. 1000. Most of the connections sold in India are lower.
Are you sure its 240INR. I am pretty sure Airtel, Hutch have ARPU of 600INR atleast in Mumbai. And I had said, the _potential_ ARPU _can_ be 1000INR.
No. Anyway, it is not local leased lines, it is international data lines that make the difference. Do you know the cost of providing cable internet services in mumbai ? -You need to buy a bandwidth (Bharti, MNTL, Reliance). at 1:1 and not 1:4 compression -Then you need a local loop operator and pay local loop charges to the locality -Then you need to create and implement an POP (Point of presence) -Then you need to have fiber from the POP to the building -Then you need to local access point in the building to terminate fiber -Finally you will need to take a local wiring to the subscriber's place ***deleted ***
Yes, thats why I every sane person was screaming to the govt. to unbundle the local loop. The high cost of creating your own local loop is stifling competition. The government is forcing private players to create their own loop. The private players can't afford to create fibre optic loops so when the rest of the world is moving to fibre op we are laying more and more copper.
PC2POTS calls will need to have a termination charge (see my previous mail). Termination Charge in India (local call) is 30 paisa. Add that to VOIP call cost, well, BPL charges me - Rs. 49 per min. MTNL charges Rs. 1.20 per 3 minute Mumbai to Delhi. VOIP still has a benefit only in International Calls. ****deleted****>
Ofcourse, I was talking of international calls and not national ones.
Such people will therefore need to pay for the additional usage. That is the rule world wide, you pay for what you use.
No its not. Infact, most retail (home) connections are given out without stupid download / port caps. The only catch being they are shared generally with a 1:4 ratio. Good examples being Sweden, Netherlands, US, Japan and Korea. Their ISPs are definitely not going out of business and they are offering ridiculously high speeds of 10-100Mbps.
Some do put download caps but they have sane caps such as 80-100GB which increase proportionately as the speeds increase.
The connection is available is available, MTNL provides it, but you need to pay for it. 2 mbps, 60GB data limit....... Dont expect to get what you are not willing to pay for.
I refuse to pay them excessive $$ when everywhere else in the world we can get unlimited connections at much less cost. And especially when there are other operators who are offering better services but not available currently in my location.
But in each case, we are willing to pay for the bandwidth, you want to use the same bandwidth but do not want to pay.
Well it is your choice to get ripped off. I wont.
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Dinesh Joshi -
Saswata Banerjee & Associates