Set the interconnect issue right

 Communications minister’s ‘India One’ scheme has everyone excited. While the minister himself cannot stop gloating over the Re 1 per minute call from anywhere to anywhere in India, several others see it as no more than a political stunt. Whether the common man will really benefit from this move, it’s too early to say. But if experts and analysts alone are heard, most feel it’s a move, which, if not ill conceived, is at least not fully thought through. While BSNL may hem and haw about the loss of revenue and others may point to the fine print saying it does not really help anyone except the big users, and that too only if you are on the same network and that the hiked rental offsets any advantage that the common man may really have had, there are more pertinent issues which seem to have been disregarded. For one, as this paper pointed out in a column a while ago, the primacy of India’s telecom watchdog to set tariffs has been undermined yet again. From all available information, the Trai was not consulted on the issue, unless the minister considers informing the watchdog as consulting. In any case, shouldn’t something like this be left for competition instead of pushing it through with an official diktat? Secondly, and most importantly, if there actually is a spurt in telephone usage, as the minister so proudly has been claiming it would, it would create havoc with interconnectivity. It is no secret that the main cause of deteriorating call completion rate in the country is the abysmally inadequate interconnectivity capacity available. Why then has India One been pushed through without even pretence of tackling this issue? There is not much difference between what Maran has done and what the tourism ministry had done with the Incredible India campaign. The snazzy campaign raised hype about the nation’s tourism potential to a new high even as the situation on the ground remains shameful. While it may have helped attract more people to India, it has also put off a great many who came here expecting the sky, only to be delivered an unpleasant experience. The only reason it has not yet backfired is because the country has so much to offer that visitors are willing to overlook the shortcomings! But this cannot go on. The situation concerning interconnectivity is worse. Forget rural areas, even between the metros, the situation is alarming.

Respect Indian ingenuity

 The wheel has turned full circle. Once India’s premier telecom R&D outfit, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), has tied up with the French telecom outfit Alcatel to develop “broadband wireless access systems”. The new venture, to be a “global research and development centre” is likely be christened AlcaDoT. The whole exercise is ironical, in more ways than one. C-DoT, when it came up in the late ’80s, was conceived with the aim of taking on the MNCs, who were the sole suppliers of telephone exchanges to India then. These MNCs often milked India as there was no local substitute and they could charge what they felt like. C-DoT changed all that. As Sam Pitroda utilised his friendship with Rajiv Gandhi to ensure political patronage, and coupled that with the redoubtable telecom mind of G B Meemamsi, things began to take shape, which shook the MNCs. Alcatel, which was the main supplier of telephone exchanges to India, and had a tie-up with ITI for producing switches, felt the most threatened. One remembers the shenanigans of these MNCs, who felt they might lose their toehold in what had the potential to be a huge market, and the subsequent setting up of a committee under K P P Nambiar. The committee, instead of lauding C-DoT for what it had achieved for the nation in terms of rural exchange and other developments, chose to damn it for sins it never committed. There was little doubt at whose behest these moves, designed to scuttle C-DoT’s meteoric rise, were made. However, despite that, C-DoT delivered. India has around five million fixed telephone lines currently. C-DoT accounts for perhaps 30-35% of these. The real impact, however, is far greater. The ubiquitous STD/ISD booths dotting our rural landscape as also the NHs are the gift of C-DoT’s rural automatic exchange. If telecom connectivity is the engine of an economy, C-DoT made that possible. Add to that the bargaining chip that it provided resulting in the cost per line plummeting from over Rs 9,000 per line to under Rs 2,500 now. Sure, there are other reasons for this drop in prices such as competition, lowering cost of technology and others, but the initial push was undoubtedly provided by the fact that we could always say, “else we have C-DoT.” But what did it get in return? Step-motherly treatment from successive ministers, who thought of it as no more than a small ego massager to be used to satisfy their whims. One wanted it to be used for developing mobile switches, and the present one now wants to do something as long as it is done in his home state. One look at the initial clauses that the JV was supposed to work under and the casual approach becomes clear. A close look almost shows that some clauses were anti-national. One such clause stated that the shareholders would not compete with the business of the JV company. Nothing wrong with that, except that C-DoT affiliates were defined in a manner that it included R&D initiatives of Isro and DRDO as well. The hawk eyes of a couple of governing council members caught this and it has apparently been confined now to telecom R&D institutions under the communications ministry.