Apple digs its own grave: The iPhone3G in India

I have been watching eagerly for the Apple iPhone3G in India. I was one of the millions who pre-booked on both Vodaphone and Airtel websites. I was disgusted to receive a mail on 20 Aug 08 from both Airtel and Vodaphone exhorting me to deposit Rs 5000 and Rs 10000 respectively to get my hands on the "iPhone that Ive been waiting for". The email also innocently mentioned that the iPhones are priced at Rs 31000 ($715) and Rs 36000 ($830) for the 8GB and 16GB models!!!
Now what kind of fools do they think we are? The questions that first occured to me were:-

Would I buy a phone that:

a) costs Rs 31000 and upwards

b) does not let you use Bluetooth for anything but headset

c) does not have any memory expansion slot

d) does not let you change the Battery

e) does not let you sync if you are on a Linux desktop?

f) Has 3G capability but wont be useful for about 2 years since there are no 3G networks in India.

g) Is network-locked to Airtel or Vodaphone

My response was a overwhelming NO to all of the above.

Why couldnt the so-called business brains at Vodaphone and Airtel use their brains for once? Every Marketing/Strategy person worth his salt knows that India is a volume-based market. Did Airtel not want to convert even .01% of their 60mn plus users?

Even more hilarious was the statement by a Vodaphone chappie who says that prices are expected to fall in the coming months!! Well Mr Vodaphone, who would then buy now?

Apple could have done well with retailing the phone through Reliance because, whatever said and done (mama-he-pinched-me style of corporate governance notwithstanding) , these guys have mastered the art of commoditising everything in India.

So I would never think of giving up my HTC-Touch/Nokia E71/Blackberry/Your-favorite-Phone for the iPhone unless it sells at 10-12k.

Meghalaya goes for Wi-Fi hotspots

The beautiful state of Meghalaya in India's North-east has announced plans to set up Free Wi-Fi hotspots across Shillong, the capital city.
Mr Robert Garnett Lyngdoh, the IT minister of Meghalaya says that Meghalaya will be the first state in India to offer free Wi-Fi to tourists and locals for non-commercial use.
Shillong is a tourist paradise and is more westernised than most other Indian cities. This step is one of the many initiatives in India towards promoting the use of Wi-Fi to bridge the Digital Divide.

Largest WiFi Network in the World will be in West Bengal, India

Move over Philadelphia and San Francisco; the worlds largest Wi-Fi network is being built right here in India.
It has been reported in Biztech India (among other media) that "smartBridges-SREI To Set Up Wi-Fi Network In WB, India". The article goes on to state that:

smartBridges and SREI have announced an alliance to provide low-cost technology enabled Common Service Centres (CSCs) in West Bengal, India. smartBridges will provide the wireless infrastructure to set up 4937 CSCs in 14 districts of West Bengal while SREI will manage these centres and develop a self-sustaining business model.

This is bigger than muni-wireless; this is state-wide wireless! What is more interesting is that the article further goes on to explain how the network will be used:

These CSCs will serve as a revenue tool for village entrepreneurs as well as several self help groups. While providing additional employment, services like VoIP, eEducation, eMedicine and other technology based solutions will also be implemented to improve the quality of life of the rural population.

This is a classic example of how Wireless technologies can and are being used to bridge the so-called "Digital Divide". It has always been emphasized that Wi-Fi is not just about providing Internet connectivity which is a by itself a natural by-product. With Wi-Fi so much more can be achieved. It is common knowledge that the incumbent telcos including the state owned ones have miserably failed in their obligations to provide connectivity in the rural areas. Instead, they are comfortable giving a percentage of their revenues to a fund known as the USO (Universal Services Obligation) fund. This is become a joke because the fund has now grown to a few billion dollars which is what could have been used to provide the connectivity in the first place. Hence these initiatives are part of the Indian Governments attempts at spending the billions that have accumulated over a period. The West Bengal project will slowly be replicated across this vast country. Though we will not have a massive Wi-Fi cloud over any state or even a district (The connectivity model in these cases is mostly point-to-multipoint) which is fine, since we dont expect every rural Indian to be toting a laptop or other computing device. What is more important is that with back-haul reaching the CSC at every village, the village level entrepreneur can set up his own profit-earning hotspot with business models like the "Tomizone" model.

There are other parties which are experimenting with wireless technologies like 700 Mhz Wireless DOCSIS (equipment by Axcera/VCOM), WiMax and so on.
India is the right place to be if one is in the wireless business!

Wi-Fi in Gurgaon: A Tall Tale?

We read in the papers recently that "DLF to get Wi-Fi connectivity: Cyber City to get it first, later residents to enjoy benefit".
The article goes on to quote Mr AS Minocha , Chairman of DLF Commercial who says that they are in talks with two American companies for deploying wi-fi throughout DLF Cyber-city.
Well, better late than never!
I still recall meeting with the DLF top brass some 8 months back and proposing for a full city (DLF has developed a mini city within Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi) wi-fi network. The value proposition there was focused on providing IP Video Surveillance (because Gurgaon is notorious for lack of law & order). We said that Wi-Fi for Internet access would be a natural by-product. There would be so much surplus bandwidth that they could invite multiple service providers to ride their services on the network. We were literally brushed aside by them. The reason given: "DLF does not believe in investing in infrastructure; However, we will permit you to install your network and also charge a fixed revenue per month for this right of way".
What a load of baloney! We had to naturally drop the idea altogether and wanted to sit back and wait for some intelligence to creep into the organization.
It appears that after their mega IPO this month, they really have had some fresh ideas. This one about Wi-Fi is more than welcome! I am moving house to DLF Phase-1 next month. Lets see how the service (If it is in place by then) performs!
The article also quotes Mr Manocha as saying "at a later stage, routers would be installed at residential colonies and people living in proximity of that access point would get automatic connectivity. This means that within the next few months people living in the DLF city will no longer need wire connectivity to access Internet services. Any person with a wi-fi enabled device such as a PC, cell phone or PDA can connect to the Internet when in proximity of an access point".
Phew! only if it were so easy, people in places like Mountain View, Tempe wouldnt be complaining!

Mesh Networking in India: Do the Big Guns have a strategy?

When I read about the plans of the large mesh technology companies, I often wonder about their plans for markets such as India.
I have had the opportunity to be closely associated with Belair Networks, Strix Systems and RoamAD in India.
I have deployed Belair's first mesh network in Mumbai, India, been involved in a Strix Demo at the Presidential palace and very recently involved in the Proof of Concept that RoamAD has deployed in the a large city in the west of the country.

I will attempt to analyze what their strategies could be, based upon my personal reading of their activities in the country for the last 2 years.

Belair Networks. I have admired Belair for the simplicity of design, and the tremendous technology that goes into their products. Now I have often wondered why such a company would totally ignore the Indian market. Their sole attempt at coming close to the subcontinent has been limited to setting up a sales/support office manned by two people in Singapore. All their attempts at trying to appoint distributors in the country have come to nought. At times, I wonder whether they tried hard enough. I think the primary reason for this is the lack of a strategic vision for this market and Singapore is far more mature as a market than India. Someone who has sold in Singapore will never do that in India. What they dont realize is that the Indian market is a volumes-driven market. Even MNCs like Pepsi and Coke have had to re-write their marketing/sales strategies for this market.
In my opinion, Belair has not addressed the following issues: -

a) Creating brand awareness
b) Creating a special pricing strategy
c) Creating a supply chain
d) Creating a support infrastructure.

I have often been told by Belair executives that the Belair product line is not comparable with either Cisco or Motorola. What they dont realize is that these two companies have existed in India for the last 10-15 years and have a solid brand reacall. People would rather buy a single or dual radio Cisco/Motorola than go for a product from a Startup that is 20 times more expensive!
I have personally seen that even though Belair offers a 3 year warranty on their products, it is next to impossible using this warranty. I tried in vain to send back a BA200 back to their facility in Canada. The BA200 has still not left the country after 8 months beacuse the rules in India state that a Belair engineer in India has to certify that the product cannot be repaired within the country! Also the shipping constitutes as "re-export" which involves too much paperwork to even attempt. The end result was that the BA200 that we hold has gone to the C&F agent twice and come back with some observation or the other. It is now lying at our offices unusable when the only thing that might have gone wrong with it is the power supply module.
The biggest problem with the Belair products is that there are no field/India serviceable parts. One cannot even change a blown fuse (simply because there is no external interface to do this). One of the ways that they could bring the price down would be to source most of the parts in India or at least assemble the nodes here. I happen to know for a fact that the software that runs inside the Belair Nodes is made by a company out of Bangalore!
I happened to attend a webinar yesterday organised by Belair. One of the questions that I asked and which went unanswered was predictably "What is your strategy for India?"
Though they were quick to answer my next question "How does Belair compare with RoamAD" with "We dont consider RoamAD as a serious threat because they are a 2-radio platfom and we are a 4-radio and upwards platform". I then pointed out that the RoamAD nodes we were using in India were all in fact 4 Dual-band Radio nodes each !!!

Strix Systems

Strix has an interesting approach to the Mesh network. They dont bundle antennas at all! The advantage is that the integrator is free to decide what antennae will best suit the purpose but setting up a Strix Network is a pain. I also heard on the Grapevine that Strix is phasing out the Indoor Mesh product line. Strix's India strategy has been very aggresive. Though not directly present (not even through a representative office), they found a distributor/system integrator called AMI India who invested heavily in Strix equipment. Now AMI has had some amazing wins in Mesh thanks to some strong marketing. There is now a second company called Wireless Tech Pacific (out of Singapore initially) who are distributors for (hold your breath) Tropos, Strix and Motorola! Its anybody's guess which products get pushed more.

RoamAD This is one company that is certainly worth watching very closely. Though they started off as a mesh hardware company, they then changed course midway and are now a pure-play mesh software company. The USP is that the integrator is now free to assemble his own nodes using COTS (Commercially Off-the-shelf) or commodity hardware. This is a sure-win situation for a country like India. Now, one does not have to ship any nodes back and forth across the world for repairs.
I have deployed a RoamAD mesh in India and have to say Im impressed by the technology behind it. I have also been impressed by the fact that RoamAD's CEO and CTO have both made visits to India (at least twice each) to ensure that the pilot networks go off well. Now this is a very positive sign as far as strategy goes. RoamAD has also quickly snapped up Raychem RPG (a very well respected name in telecommunications) as their main distributor/integrator. Network tests on the RoamAD system are very encouraging as the software is built from the ground up keeping Voice and Video applications in mind.
The icing on the cake? RoamAD software along with hardware from ADI/Acure costs about 1/10th of competing vendors. You can't get a better combination than this for a price-sensitive market like India.

I havent remarked upon the other companies like Motorola, Tropos, Skypilot, and Cisco because they have entered the market through the traditional route of appointing channel partners who are more into the business of selling
indvidual boxes rather than providing solutions. It remains to be seen how they fare in the months ahead.