Asia Times: Cross talk over 'poor person's' mobile



	October 06, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Cross talk over 'poor person's' mobile
By Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI - Harish Jain queued six hours outside the offices of government-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) to collect an affordable mobile telephone connection using analog wireless-in-local-loop (WILL) technology.

''The wait was worth it - this is a dream come true,'' said Jain who waited several years and paid heavy bribes to get an ordinary landline telephone installed at his home last year.

The government's mobile service, launched on Saturday in the cities of Bombay and New Delhi, will allow Jain to make a three-minute call for about three cents - about a sixth of what private cellular companies, using digital GSM technology, presently charge their clients.

People who were not as lucky as Jain queued again on Monday until overwhelmed MTNL officials suspended further registration. Said MTNL general manager K H Khan, ''We did not anticipate such a rush - we are working round the clock to set up sufficient infrastructure to handle the demand.''

So far, GSM cellular telephones, sold by some of the biggest names in the business like Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and Nokia through local service providers have been a status symbol in this country, beyond the reach of ordinary Indians. The ''poor person's mobile'' launched last Saturday to coincide with the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, a champion of the underprivileged, has the potential to extend India's phenomenal mobile telephony revolution to the less wealthy.

It also arches over what telecom engineers call the ''last mile problem'' caused by impossible jumbles of wires which can only be sorted out by telephone linemen who need to be regularly greased to keep connections alive.

The new service has predictably brought on a chorus of ''unfair'' from private operators who use the more expensive GSM digital technology and fear that the government's entry into the market will knock the bottom out of businesses they built up.

Sunil Mittal, an entrepreneur who built up the highly successful Airtel, one of two major cellular service providers in New Delhi, said he was concerned that MTNL might undermine ''legitimate business interests''. He said he welcomed healthy competition but was afraid MTNL might use revenues from its mammoth infrastructure to cross-subsidize the new mobile service and ''unfairly'' compete with private operators.

Executives at Essar Cellphone, the other major service provider in the capital, said they were confident that the better quality offered by private operators would ensure they stayed ahead of government competition.

The government's mobile service has other limitations: its phones will not work inside large buildings or where the line-of-sight is obstructed by large features. Yet the high tariffs for GSM cellular telephones and continuing difficulties in getting an ordinary telephone installed have ensured the queues of people outside MTNL offices willing to put up with the shortcomings. Indeed, MTNL's entry into the lucrative but highly competitive mobile telephony sector is expected to kick off a price war which is sure to benefit subscribers.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) forecasts that countries like India, China, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia are expected to account for a significant share of the worldwide WILL market. India, according to the ITU, will account for 13 percent of global WILL technology subscribers by the turn of the century or about four million connections - most of them in rural areas.

(Inter Press Service)

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