city02

I dont think 1,000 Cr is possible for RIC this financial but 100 C net profit is much more realistic depending on how conservative they get with their accounting... revenues wise they crossed a billion $ (Rs. 4,400 C) by march 05 so at least they will be beyond a billion euro (Rs 5,500 C) this fiscal. the main point is the treatment of bad debts of 2 billion $ approx. logically it should be absorbed by RIL to make it a little more fair (currently about 3/4th of the profits, cash flow, and market cap of the group is with RIL).

my guess is theft/damage issues determine such policies. since most customers in india don't make a big fuss about such service shortfalls, the companies can afford to get away with this...

'There are three kinds of lies in this world: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!' - Mark Twain just goes to show you can 'prove' anything by multiplying out all assumptions. according to this, KBC2 alone would become the largest company (revenue earner) in India in a year! let's see if they can even make a billion dollars (Rs. 4,400 Crore) in SMS revenue. i highly doubt it ...

'reducing unnecessary taxes' will INCREASE the deficit! 'reducing the subsidies' is good economics but bad politics which the left will vehemently oppose 'reduce the size of the state/central government' is again politically impossible since wages/salaries/pensions/benefits form the biggest portion of the costs 'disinvest from lose making Public sector organizations' is again opposed by the left even if its in the CMP... 'Indian citizens who want to be 3G customers any way' this is patently untrue in the case of India - MOST customers are quite content with the cheapest possible voice services and data is barely 5% of ARPUs (of which almost 3/4th is just SMS).

CDMA may be newer tech but is not always better. It has a capacity & cost advantage in dense metro areas but is actually more expensive to deploy in sparse rural areas than GSM. The handset problem is an artificial one created by RIC unlike GSM where one can sign up with any operator after buying a handset from any shop. By making a bottleneck on handset sourcing, the number of new models introduced is controlled by RIC and they also dont allow activation on competitor's CDMA networks. All these issues hurt the consumers and only marginally help RIC. Until dual tech CDMA & GSM handsets are introduced here (they were just launched in China recently), this problem will persist. 10-20 models is simply not enough choice for the 10-15 million customers. It should be around 30-40 models at least to cover all price points & features.

the cheapest handsets in mumbai are rs 2 k (CDMA) are u talking about NEW handsets for 1.5 k? if so where can we get them?

just found out its not available for LG 6000 handsets ;(

the different CDMA frequency issue will be harder to resolve since it requires compatible handsets but at least those countries that have the same CDMA frequencies should become available in phase 1. phase 2 could launch multi-frequency CMA handsets and phase 3 could cover GSM countries currently a 7,500 deposit is required for int'l roaming. it should be reduced to 5 k for those with no balance due (post paid) and 2.5 k for DAPO customers who have paid on time... pre-paid should be simply handled through larger denomination vouchers like 1 k, 2 k, etc

as i had mentioned earlier: they don't have HBO & 'Disc T&L' but most of the rest (115 in total) the interesting ones are: NOW (network of the world) bloomberg NBC, ABC, CBS, & PBS from southern california (local networks) launch expected around this diwali - Q4 2005 (just a rumour, nothing official) it was supposed to be last diwali initially! households with multiple TVs will need a STB for EACH set (which is the case with CAS also). about 1,000 english & 500 hindi movies PS: my guess is about 250/month for TV 250-500/mth for broadband depending on usage 40-50/movie for VOD so about 500-750/m total... plus additional if u go for a FLP

i agree - it was an inappropriate question that got an inappropriate response. while it was unfortunate, it was painfully apparent that it was an extremely emotional & trying time so a little more sensitivity could be exercised. in any case the question seemed more designed to provoke than to have any journalistic merit. after all why would Anil NOT attend the AGM when he has been doing so for his entire life? even now he is on of the largest shareholders so he actually has a responsibility if not obligation to attend. it was a one time human reaction and should be understood as such. PS: despite attending the AGM, I missed all the action outside! i did see shivnath talking on the phone - he's extremely short... one does not expect/realise it since they seem larger than life on (ND)TV.

i think they might have bribed someone for that award south delhi is literally 2-3 times better planned than navi mumbai! in my 6 months living in nerul, i have seen load shedding, water shortages, roads that dissolve within the first week of rain, traffic congestion (people don't understand how to navigate round-abouts/circles), speed breakers that scrape the bottom of your car, no drainage on the sides of roads, very few sidewalks for pedestrians, slums coming up in vashi, no multiplex, no place to go other than centre one mall which looks like a train station on weekends with people falling over each other as they try to get on the escalators... the list goes on and on. a proper slope/gradient needs to be provided on roads to drain off rain water to the sides and more gutters need to be built along them. there are no drains for palm beach marg let alone a proper slope. round abouts need to be replaced with traffic lights in vashi. slums need to be stopped immediately. trucks should be banned during daytime as in delhi to ease congestion (8am - 8pm, Mon - Fri). even better would be to double the toll for all heavy vehicles during daytime hours so the extra money made can be used for road repairs. all this does not include the havoc caused in the last week due to excess rain... the AVERAGE american city is much cleaner and better planned than ANY part of navi mumbai! its an embarrasment to the entire state but we have no choice if we want to avoid long commutes so we stay on and accept the mess and chaos i fully agree that other parts of mumbai may be worse off but we are not competing with the worst! its not even close to being the best planned city in india so the award committee must have given it on the basis of plans on paper as opposed to seeing the ground realities.

My FLP seemed to work fine and while my RIM could call Airtel, they could not call my # back (STD). Broadband was down for over 24 hours and so was Netway VOD. But at least the TV channels were coming. Netway CC could not take complaints since their 'systems were down' but why bother answering the phones then? I told them there should be manual backup processes for recording complaints in such situations instead of telling the customer to call back the next day. my apt was flooded with about 1cm of water and I'm on the 3rd floor! Mopped out 6 buckets on wed and have now installed marble strips next to all doors to reduce future floods...

try VT/CST near mcdonald's - lots of CDs & VCDs & mobile acessories in one row about rs 150 / CD 200 / movie (2 VCDs) 250 / DVD but u have to negotiate/haggle

NFS U2 on my laptop but it gets stuck about half way through the career mode (mouse & keyboard seem to go dead) so i had to reluctantly give up... that's the price u pay for getting the NO CD crack i suppose.

i bought mine this jan and it also had no CD in fact i have an unbranded data cable, and i have not yet got it to work EVER!

we all wish there were funding to support this! it would make arun's life a little easier... its more of a legal liability issue which no one will have the time or money to fight if taken to court for discussing/promoting forbidden activities

Its so weird for me having to defend the younger bro when I'm actually neutral! But since someone needs to play devil's advocate here goes: RIC's 10,000 Cr in bad debts accumulated due to monsoon hungama/postpaid fiasco which was amongst the biggest writeoffs in the telecom world is completely ignored by you?! That's surely great execution... Why are you being so biased/selective in your evaluation? Maybe a former/disgruntled employee/vendor of Anil? I won't even get into the horrific billing & customer service problems faced by RIC for over 1 year after launch simply due to poor planning. Is that the Reliance you are talking about? I'm not even bringing up (in further detail!) network/congestion problems, transparency, corp gov issues with the whole roaming vs. WLL controversy (TSS/MSS), unpaid ADC/incoming int'l call re-routing scandals, license terms violations, millions of US$ paid to the govt in fines, ... 'People in glass houses should not throw stones.'

I'm not really a supporter of Anil (believe it or not - and I've never met him either, nor am I a shareholder in REL or RCL) but this is so presumtuous and absurd that I strongly feel a response is required: No sane person would refer to a billionaire & Wharton MBA (Mukesh had to drop out of Stanford since Dhirubhai called him back to India) in his mid-forties as a 'kid' specially after he has spent over 2 decades at the same company. Not only has Anil been the public face of Reliance to the investors for over a decade, he has also directly handled most of the major financing deals including the largest ever 100 year bond deal by ANY Indian company EVER. Here is a quote from his site: http://www.anildambaniforindia.com/anil/en...d/about_ada.htm Its hard to argue that he's not adequately qualified or 'untested': Surely thats why he got Infocomm (lack of shrewdness). Dhirubhai was one of the biggest dreamers so that is actually not a bad thing! Mukesh has no shortage of 'ego problems' either so that's not unique. In fact virtually no billionaires (in US$ or even Euros) have a lack of 'ego' in the world! Yes, of that you will be assured!

mmm... - gotta love that CTC! it must be a nice job @ 5 L/month

yes, you are correct the voice ARPUs are falling FASTER. but even the cumulative ARPU is showing a decline from about 450-500/month @ launch to the present for RIC. in india, the growth in non-voice (mostly data) services is smaller than the decline in voice revenue so the net is a small but steady decline.

its a bit optimistic - 100 M subs and 75,000 cr is possible by 2010 at the earliest since that would yield an 'ARPU' (not really since it would include a host of corp services also - but as a rough guide) of Rs. 7,500/year or about Rs. 600-650/month. the global trend is towards declining ARPUs so how they will try to reverse it will be interesting to watch. currently its about 400-450/mth & FALLING!

told you guys in feb that mukesh would never give up IPCL! just did not make any sense. kind of like handing infocomm over without FLAG. its a DOA (dead on arrival) proposal. what will happen to RIC's bad debts of a couple billion $$? anil should (in theory) get: capital, energy, insurance, and infocomm, FLAG + cash/irrevocable gurantees (write off on all bad debts accumulated) to make it even else mukesh wins...

spectrum is a scarce/valuable public resource hence it should simply be auctioned off to the highest bidders and help in reducing the budget deficit.

except we can't have towers unless they are connected to a LEX (local exchange) nearby! i think the max distance is about 5-10 km... (someone can pls verify) the wireless part of mobile infrastructure is just the end points (devices to towers), the remaining (over 75%) is all wired.

I would like to play devil's advocate on this issue: while its true that BSP (bijli, sadak, pani) are the critical issues facing the country, we can't really cite lack of progress on the necessities front to avoid making progress on any other fronts. by 'wiring' the villages, jobs are also generated which raises incomes and reduces the need for subsidies on food/water or power. timely access to commodity info also results in better prices for farmers as an example of a data service. when kiosks are set up in slums, it was found (much to everyone's surprise) that it only took a few hours for 'uneducated' street kids to teach themselves how to browse around the net and start getting relevant info. these children had never seen a computer in their lives... so its actually a good thing that pvt operators can access the USO funds to drive greater penetration in Bharat. telecom could also provide a voice to the rural population and give them a broader platform to air grievances thus enabling more effective spending of the money allocated for their development. 'vox populi, vox dei' - the voice of the people is the voice of god. Note that its not the infrastructure for the people!