Reflections

As per a recent Business Standard article – Of the 67 top listed companies not able to service interest on their debt during 2016-17 due to inadequate profits, 53 started operations in the post-1980 period when private investment was first liberalized. This analyses is based on a list of 633 non financial companies that are a part of the BSE 500, BSE Midcap, or BSE Smallcap industries. The sample further does not include Software exporters such as TCS, Infosys etc. In all, the 413 companies set up after 1980 accounted for 51.3% of all corporate debt at the end of the last financial year. Now this is a most interesting observation and research; though I readily admit that we cannot draw many conclusions from beyond what has been covered in the article {Bibliography link} – it does kindle a series of fascinating thoughts and inferences that we can draw from this. The article goes onto state Analysts attribute this to the growth ambition of these companies…. Younger companies are in...

A stunning news on a news daily, relating to an App Interface of a very popular service brand, caught my attention : Uber may have been secretly recording your iPhone screen, even when the app is closed. Will Strafach, a New York-based security researcher, discovered that the taxi hailing app had received a special permission from Apple to access the screen-recording feature. The company, however, rejected the security breach fears, stating the code was installed to improve the experience on Apple Watch version of the app . = Now this is frankly stupidity on a colossal scale; accessing a user's screen even when the app is closed ... where are we going as an industry? By what stretch of imagination, strategy, morality or intelligence is this an advance? How far are we going to allow apps, internet and computers into our lives? This has now lead me to question the entire Smartphone aspect : I think there is a need for users to take their personal lives off the Smartpho...

INTRODUCTION The telecom sector has been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons – rising stress, high debt, loss making or low profitability, mergers, job losses and lot… this sector is one of the high-points of the India Growth story. For this to happen in this showcase industry seems strange from the outside… the reality is, in my opinion, the exact reverse. The seeds of the stress were sown right at the beginning ; all hints to this reality were ignored, and by everyone. I do not recall anyone pointing these, self included; though I did come close, to be honest . Yet, when I now look back with my experience garnered since then – there can be no doubt : the seeds of the problems were inherent in the model itself… SYSTEMS & PROCESSES It wasn’t, for the most part, deliberate; the decisions that were reached were all rational decisions made by rational people. They may not have been the right ones, as we know from hindsight, but they were decisions reached with a st...

The title of this article just about says it all… The Facebook Issue . This article is coming after a long self-examination and Facebook feed examination, with the explicit purpose of putting Facebook and its contemporary utility in Social Media with relevance to me as an individual. This deep introspective examination has lead to startling revelations to myself, which is what I am attempting place here, with an intent to support my decision to move my Social Media content away from Facebook due to issues arising out of the feed and the interaction that happens on it. MY HISTORY WITH FACEBOOK But first, the background. I came onto Facebook as a means to get in daily touch with family, find old friends, and keep connected with them. It then grew into a method of chronicling important events in my life through Photographs & Posts, that I could visit later. Both the above have given excellent results, and shall continue as important aspects of my digital profile with added sec...

BACKGROUND The first Telecom Big Bang has happened- Vodafone & Idea… with this, hope is being expressed that the Telecom trade is now beginning to settle down. I wish I were as sanguine as some of my friends on this point; I fear that this may be the tip of the iceberg. I don’t lay claim that more mergers may happen; though that cannot be ruled out. There have been many exits already. But for this to translate into on-ground sanity will require a  lot more to happen… to understand this, we shall have to glance at the industry statistics in some representative parameters… SERVICE PROVIDER INDUSTRY IN INDIA There is no easy answer to this ills of the service industry in Telecom– the service industry isn’t in exactly a great shape. Let us look at a few examples to illustrate; Idea has a debt of 49K Cr, and has an ARPU of Rs. 157; Airtel has a debt of about 97K Crore, with an ARPU around 188, just to name two examples. Jio has already notched up 2,01,000 Cr Debt. Usage is...

TRAI has been publishing results of 4G speeds of various Telecom Service Providers, as reported by various news media {refer Bibliography of the article}; in the most recent update I saw, as well as the one in January, it was noticeable that most providers were providing speeds starting from 5mbps. This is surprising, and does not fully tally with my experience, tabulated in this article for the past 3 months or so. My speed tests have been done on Speedtest.net; I have also downloaded the TRAI App today to crosscheck, and while the results are comparable, there are differences.   4G : The Performance Before we look at the exact performance as experienced by myself, let us look at some history. The one caveat I place here is that while I have recorded the speeds since Nov-2016, I have not kept a record prior to this. I have used 3G in large parts of Maharashtra where I work, and Indore city my home town. I clearly recall I used to get 3G speeds between 3mbps – 5.5mbps, ...

Recently, we saw a very interesting, and for Smartphone and Telecom trade pundits and employees, monumental occurring – a recent report of marketshare showing that the top 5 brands in the Indian Smartphone market are not Indian. On top of this is a constant lament by Media and Telecomists {to coin a new term} alike, that Indian Handsets Brands are not making it; that Indian  manufacturing is not picking up in this industry. Let us try and place things in perspective first, before we try and understand what can be done to improve the situation; or, indeed, whether it can be improved. In this article, I focus only on the perspective, and an overall market analysis of the two markets in general terms as well as specifically Teleocm / Device terms. After that perspective, I then introduce the basics of the competitive scenario. The reason for that is you need to understand the two markets and their difference to make a meaningful comparison, as well as figure out the way forward....

JIO – An Analysis of Prospects and Challenges A common refrain, question, discussion point among at least us Telecom Professionals {those outside Jio at least} centers around what it is doing, what it plans to do, what disruptive impact it will have on services as well as devices and whether it will achieve whatever objectives it has set out for itself. My humble submission here is one simple statement: the key question is not among the points being pondered above; the real question is whether it, or indeed we as a nation, can afford it to fail? Indeed, does Jio have a choice in the matter except do what it is doing? Before we move into details, just look at the numbers involved: as per Telecomtalk & Economic Times articles dated January the 14 th 2017, it has infused 1,71,000 Crore into this venture; another 30,000 Crore is being planned. That brings the investments to 2,01,000 Crore. Its current subscriber base is between 67-73 Million Customers as on date, a...