India's telecom revolution -- a missed opportunity

A lot is said about India's telecom revolution and it is a positive story but now making this claim almost sounds like repeating yourself again and again. I have not heard of a positive outcome of this revolution in last 4 years. Why is it so? I believe if we look at this closely, we will realise that it is a story of lost opportunities.
Anybody with even a little knowledge of telecom would appreciate that telecom is nothing but a communication medium. It was revolutionary initially because it provided a voice communication medium to masses that government run operator coud not provide in 50 years but once we reached a significant population with this medium, nothing was done to leverage it further.
None of the e-governance initiatives exist on mobile phones as applications or mobile web. Even the applications for which data readily exists in digital form have not been translated to run n mobile phones. Look at http://agmarknet.nic.in, it has mandi rates from most of the mandis from all over India on a daily basis. If a farmer can look at the rates in mandis around his place, he can make decisions on when and where he wants to sell his produce. Similarly weather information can be made available in more granular and location targeted fashion to farmer. For urban poor, making whole e-governance infrastructure in a mobile friendly fashion would result in real revolution.

Get an Idea Sirji

Indian mobile operator Idea advertises its service with the fact that they are the operator with the least call drops and best call quality.  In the light of that, it is interesting to find out that they actually have highest call drop rates. The minister of telecommunication informed Lok Sabha that among the worst of telecom operators.

As regards the parameter, BSNL, Etisalat and Idea are not meeting the prescribed benchmark," Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

Interesting offer by Loop Telecom

With all the fiasco surrounding 2G license auctions, the latest offer by Loop Telecom sounds very interesting. What the company has said that the government can go ahead and auction its license and keep any additional money that it raises. The government should also give a right to match the auction price to the company if it wants to do so.

The proposal, presented to the Supreme Court by Loop's lawyer, Ariama Sundaram, is that the government should auction the airwaves received by Loop. If the auction fetched more than 1,454 crore - which is the amount it paid in 2008 - the government could retain the difference, it suggested. The affidavit goes on to say that the Loop should also have the option of matching the highest bid to preserve its investments.

I think this is a really good solution and would also bring out the fact of what is the real price of a 2G license. Let's hope that supreme court orders this to be done.