On 09/07/06 12:36 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote: <snip>
> Ok, at this point, I cant resist putting an accountant's input. > 1. In no case is there a monopoly in internet services. The only case of > a monopoly is for cable internet because no one else can put up cable > lines (ref - cable mafia) Unless you are in an area where you only have one provider. > 2. There are multiple operators, multiple technology, multiple pricing > available to you, choose the one which makes sense to you. > > 3. Simply because they are giving a much lower rate plan does not make > them a monopoly. A monoploy means that no one else is there to provide > that service (monopoly is not linked to pricing, but availability of the > service) > > 4. I know the bandwidth and infrastructure prices in India. No player > can offer decent Internet service without data-throughput caps. If you Of course they can. Can you please put your sources online? > want to use a service with large data transmission limits, you will need > to pay for it. No one can provide you with a lunch at the taj or oberio > at the price of a thali in a udipi hotel. Erm? I didn't quite follow the idea of data transmission limits being a networking issue. That is a billing philosophy, not a networking issue. Hint: At 33.6 kbps dialup, you can do: 10382 MB of data transfer. I don't see any dialup provider trying to bill by the byte. > 5. 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 > saturated, the common man. Your saying on this forum that Airtel sucks > or that they are going to loose money and customers does not make a bit > of a difference to them. They dont care. You are not their target > customer and they cant make money by giving you service. The cost of > catering to retail is 10-12 times the cost of catering to corporate > traffic. (I went and bought Bharti Televentures shares after seeing > their marketing plan and scheme). I agree with this. If you want the connectivity, you have two choices: 1) pay for it 2) build your own. It won't be cheap either way. > 6. The small players can not set up decent infrastructure. Even in so Of course they can. See Brazil, the Nordic countries, Japan, HongKong, South Korea... > called advance markets, there are only very large players in the > internet access market. In any case, it has nothing to do with Wrong, wrong wrong. > unbundling. The cost of international bandwidth in India is at least 4 International pricing has nothing to do with this. This has enormous volumes to do with government owned BSNL, the bungling in the peering market and stupid ISP management. Local loop unbundling will allow a very large number of players access to customers for far lower costs, assuming it ever gets done correctly. > times that of western countries. And there is very little local content, > so you have to go all the way to USA for your data. Till 2010 when VSNL > / Tata monopoly over major fiber landing rights ends, the matter will > change only a little. (FYI, Reliance is ready for that, they have bought > the company that owns most of the fiber cables between India, Europe and > USA. I can only hope their corporate profit goals are same as India's). They won't be. In the Internet market, selling fat pipes is more profitable than selling thin ones. > The only reason why bandwidth prices have reduced to some extent is that > Bhartai laid fresh under-sea fiber cables from India to Singapore to > take advantage of fiber pipes from SEA to USA. But the ocst of bandwidth > for small players will remain prohabitive. Only the big players can gain > from economy of scale and volume pricing leverage. Not if you set the market up correctly. > 7. Look at players like sify. They are offering 64kbps flat pipes at > pretty attractive prices. But you get perhaps 20kbps and in most cases > the possibility of you being able to do enough downloads using that pipe > is low. Same with hathway......Airtel is only giving you an attractive > pricing that they think you will not use more than 25%, so they are > going to laugh all the way to the bank. And they are right. I use a All ISPs oversell. *EVERY* one. > reliance datacard @650 per month with 1 GB data transfer, 115kbps > connectivity speed. I use the laptop all the time, connected to the net > at least 10 hours a day, I have not even used half the data limit in any > of the last 5 months. That is the business customers, that is what they > are looking for and that is where they are going to make money. > > 8. Just for perspective, my client's branch office in Delhi was using > bharti silver internet service. We got them to change as they were not > giving anywhere close to the promised bandwidth and it was affecting > business and work. So what are you so happy about Bharti coming to > Mumbai ? Except that it will add another element of choice when you take > a connection. The only ISP that delivers what they promise is MTNL. > And do they promise anything of value? > That is my input. Hope it educated some people, and appologies to those > who are bored by it. > I still deal with this market. I don't see your numbers, and a lot of your claims are simply unjustified. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access_worldwide RTFM. Oh, and as a price point, a T1 in California costs 300 USD/mth. For people interested in debating on this topic, more appropriate mailing lists are [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
