Experiences with Reliance Broadband in WebWorld

I admire Reliance only for one thing; their vision. For them the ends matter, not the means to achieve the same. It was with this object they had set up their vast optic fiber network across India. Early on, they realized that for effective delivery of services, they need to have company owned outlets. Hence the concept of WebWorld was born. It was envisaged to be one stop for all the telecom needs. One could apply for a new telephone connection as well as surf the internet at “real broadband” speeds.

True, the advertisements come as “Real Broadband” speeds. However, broadband for most of the people means that their Internet Explorer is loading up pages faster than their dialup. That probably explains the crowded WebWorlds across the country.

However, today I had a taste of the real broadband that they were offering. As I entered the WebWorld, I was greeted by a pretty young thing with yellow teeth grinning back at me. She asked me to choose the starter pack. I wanted to download the Live CD version of Ubuntu Linux, which is a massive 640 MB download. I asked her about the charges to burn the CD. It was amazing 40 bucks! That too after one provides own blank CD. A bit of haggling and it came down to 15 bucks. Still I feel that it is on the higher side.

Then came the actual brass tacks. After logging in the password, I had to contend with Internet Explorer. Even though I do not like it, I could not install any Opera because of the administrator privileges. This is acceptable to majority of the users, still I always prefer Opera. Using any other browser is a crime! After requesting for the particular page, I sat back and clicked on the download page for the image file. Of course, the pretty young thing kept on hovering near me, which is a strict no no when one needs to surf online. I found that distracting. This said and done, the actual “broadband” speed hovered near 30-35 KBps. For a while, it touched a high of 120 KBps. I thought I was getting my moneys worth. Yet this happiness did not last for long. Suddenly the Explorer refused to respond. The download stopped midway.

After flurry of phone calls to the local tech and in Mumbai, they finally discovered that all they needed to do was to switch off and switch back on the router! Time wasted enough because the people hired to oversee the smooth functioning are not trained to troubleshoot. What if any problem comes during surfing? The standard answer is that for everything they call back Mumbai!
While I was at it, the Internet got back to life. The optimism about Reliance turned to despair. For some time I felt that, I was surfing on Sify “broadband”! The image file to Ubuntu was not loaded and it would easily take in about 6 hours more. I had to request the assistant to manage it for me. Somehow, they agreed! Maybe it was my way of persuasion or they were being helpful, I cannot decide about the same. Hopefully by tomorrow I should get the stuff I wanted. End of pity party!

Reliance has indeed a brilliant business plan. It has set up video conferencing in order to help the smaller businesses to achieve economies of scale. I was told, in the course of conversation, that there were very few people who utilized the services. In the same vein, gamuts of electronic resources are being provided. Yet it remains high priced for an average user. For power users who are used to see speeds zipping in MBps factor would be sorely disappointed. I believe that bandwidth at the user end is good enough for video chat on Yahoo. I d agree about the LCD monitors though. They are good enough for the eye candy and I have found no issue with the same. As regards to Windows XP, it is up to those people to deploy it on such a large scale. I have not played any games on the web because I was not happy with the quality of peripherals. Some of the keyboards refused to work and the mice at times were non-opticals. It was not a happy experience altogether.

What Reliance urgently needs to do is to train the end user assistants. Perhaps change their dresses. In greenish overalls and blue trousers, most of them looked like lost peacocks. It ultimately depends on the assistants as they reflect the company’s image. Reliance should be aware of the same. This is bit controversial here because the average user usually does not mind these bloopers. For me, like most of us browsing this article we need one thing. Bandwidth. If this is satisfied, I am a happy Joe. If this is not, expect more whining on the same!

Discuss on: Reliance Broadband

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.

More on: Broadband in India

The influence of Reliance Infocomm on the Indian Telecom Scenery

Reliance industries have straddled the Indian economy like a giant. Dhirubhai Ambani knew the value of political contacts. There was a write up on him recently, which Rediff had carried out. It is clear from his public pronouncements that he valued political contacts for furthering the established businesses. For the same, he was known to have “managed the environment”. In effect getting regulatory approvals from the hair brained idiots who had choked the growth of the industry because of their narrow vision. How he created the world’s largest grassroots refinery at Jamnagar, Gujarat is a story in itself. Reliance has always thought big and achieved its aims; the one it sought out to do.

However, platitudes apart, the thrust of the post is on the telecom venture. I had earlier mentioned the concept of choke point. Having interests in the petrochemicals, Reliance has artificially raised the ceiling prices for its products. This has a detrimental effect on the economy. The monopoly does not affect us directly, and out of scope here. Yet the basic ingredient of this post is that Reliance is capable of leveraging its might to capture the market at any cost.

Realizing the potential in Telecom early on, Reliance set out its GSM network in the Northeastern states. However, that was the pet project of the younger brother and is not really much in the news. I had heard someone that the customer service remained excellent, yet the prices were excessively high. I may be wrong since it was not a direct experience. However, these people know the value of first mover advantage that I have been repeatedly mentioning. This explains their breakneck expansion in areas where BSNL had set up their exchanges. By the end of the year, they hope to cover 3/4th s of Indian land mass.

Reliance got a fixed operator license and used the same to provide “mobile” services. The head on collision arose with the GSM operators when Reliance offered, “Roaming” facility using its call divert feature. After the outcry settled down, the government of the day announced a change in the telecom policy and ushered in the ear of unified services. The timing of course is a suspect. Reliance got the spectrum dirt-cheap by paying the license fees for fixed line services. They converted the same into full-fledged mobile services by paying a meager amount that did not hurt them in any way; given the massive plans of 25000 crores investment. Contrast the existing GSM operators who outbid in their enthusiasm to provide “cheap” services to Indians.

The initial foray to provide services was a dampener. The demand projection was over projected and advertising was slack. Then came in the all-infamous Monsoon Hungama scheme, which saw the fastest addition of mobile customers’ Indian telecom ever saw. The reason why it was “infamous” was that people signed on in little realizing the fine print when they would have had to surrender their phones. The billing system threw up glitches that took a long time to rectify. I feel that Reliance’s strategy was right considering that it has healthy mix of post paid and pre paid customers. In fact, unlike GSM operators, who relied on pre paid services to ramp up volumes, Reliance has a winner at its hands.

The launch of pre paid created the real buzz in the market. The prices saw a real drop across board for all the customers. I believe that part of the reason why people remain with the previous operators is that they do not wish to change their numbers. If the number portability across the networks becomes a reality, it would be a serious competition to other established GSM players.

Driving the growth is Reliance’s strategy to dominate the entire spectrum of Telecommunications market. With this objective, it bought over Flag telecom. It laid down its optic fiber throughout the length and breadth of the country. Very soon, it may be launching its broadband. In fact, from insider sources I gather that it may be as early as next month. Yet, the same can be postponed, and cannot be said with certainty. In the scheme of the things, they plan to offer streaming video and triple play over the optic fiber.

All this points towards their quest for dominance and act as choke points. Any ISP needs a gateway; it would have to go to Reliance. Any operator needs a gateway to route its international calls, would have to go to Reliance. Any customer down the line needs to access cable TV services would have to go to Reliance. It is a distinct possibility because Reliance is very aggressive in its approach towards customers.

The financial engineering that its owners did is a case that stands out like a sore thumb. By routing investments illegally, Mukesh Ambani made sure that the Reliance investor indirectly invested in his telecom business. The same was reported extensively in Business World. Though the company has denied such claims, it remains to be seen how this could be sorted out. The matter had barely settled when Reliance was accused of diverting the international calls as local in order to avoid paying the Access Deficit Charge. It is surprising that despite all these events, Reliance managed to get award for corporate excellence! None other than by Business World! Irony of fate; sad reflection on the state of media.

Admittedly, there many issues that need to be pointed out, yet this venture of Reliance is worth looking out for. If media reports are to be believed, Ambani might just sell this off given the right valuation. This remains the topic of speculation and I do not wish to go further in the same.

Discuss on: Sify Broadband, Tata Indicom, Airtel Broadband, Reliance Broadband, MTNL - BSNL Broadband, Dial Up, Others

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.