Cable and Wireless

Indian telecommunication industry is going at a pace today where we cannot afford to think what happened yesterday. All we can think about is what is happening today and what is going to happen tomorrow.

First telecommunication meant radio, television, then in its true sense, telephones, and then, mobile phones. Even today when we think of telecommunications, first thing that comes to our minds is a cellular phone. But the fact is that today telecommunication means so much that we cannot even visualize instantly. Telecommunicationhas gone back into wires, and more amount of data than ever before is in the air simultaneously, with the existing and coming wireless technologies.

With the BSNL IPTV already in the market, and Airtel and others all set to launch theirs (Don't know if any other operator has launched IPTV), the telecommunications field has already got a new face, one that combines the information-centric internet and environment-primary television.

Internet on the go is no more a dream either, for those who really want it. With the PCMCIA cards and beautiful 1-x CDMA modems coming to a price range affordable for the middle-class, you can now find students working on their net-connected-laptops, which was used to represent business class flyers by airlines not long ago.

And then comes the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, better known as Wi-Max. The current year has seen Wi-Max starts from BSNL, Aircel, VSNL, Bharti, Reliance, and Sify. Among these, Bharti has already deployed its services in eleven cities and is planning to expand, and a lesser known Aircel has invested $1 bn in the upcoming technology.

Now we shall talk about another facet of telecommunication. The direct-to-home (DTH) service, once under the monopoly of DishTV, and later extended to DDDirect+ and Tata Sky, is soon expected to see a number of new operators with Bharti, Reliance, Videocon, and Sun TV all set to jump into the market, starting a new competition altogether.

Interestingly, DTH is a segment where we find only one or two operators in a place almost anywhere in the world. But here, four new operators are planning to start their services in a short span of time, with 3 operators already existing. And actually, I still hope they'll all find their market in the world's second largest population.

That's when we say, It happens only in India.

Changing colors of mobile telephony

Indian mobile telephony, though it has been there for a longer time of course, came to a real existence with the advent of Reliance India Mobile, A dream of Mukesh Ambani, something that brought the very concept of cellphone for every person, a company that gave away cellphones for as low as 500 bucks, and is still providing people with cellphones at the lowest rates. Though, the name of the company is different now, the owner has changed, and so is the color.
if you remember, there used to be a number of small companies in the early 2000s most of which had started during '96 to '98. Namely, Escotel, BPL, Oasis, Spice, Orange, Essar, Aircel, Hutch, even Airtel. But then times changed and BSNL and then Reliance came up with services, threatening small companies to an extent and thus came the era of M&A, that is, Merger and Acquisitions in the mobile telephony, and the colors really started changing. With this new era, a race started off, prices fell, fundas like airtime came to an end forever, and the number of users grew exponentially. From thousands to lacs and finally, to crores. In this game of M&A, Airtel turned out as the largest company, crossing Reliance and BSNL both. In the race of getting the top position, Airtel bought Oasis (Rajasthan), Aircel bought RPG cellular (Tamilnadu), though it is itself a small entity, and Hutch made a pact with Essar. The light colored Escotel was bought by the relatively new Idea cellular and changed to a beautiful light blue. Whereas the orange Orange and orange Hutch changed into a green background pink when an egyptian partner came in. The Hexacom's Oasis, active in Rajasthan, turned from a light blue (as long as I remember), turned a Vibrant red when Airtel bought it. Last year, the blue circle BPL also changed into Hutch. But one of the major changes was brought by the split between Ambani brothers when the dull looking Blue-green RIM was converted to a Vibrant red-Sky blue logo of ADAG with two big A's in the centre.

And now, the Hutch puppy that followed us for so long, has been given a new shining bright red home by Arun Sarin's Vodafone, changing the ages old logo of India's big brother company, Hutch, to a new Red comma, seen majorly on the England Cricket team's t-shirts till date.
Anyways, happy new home, dear puppy!