On Sunday 09 July 2006 12:36 pm, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:
jtd wrote:
On Sunday 09 July 2006 02:12 am, Dinesh Joshi wrote:
On Sunday 09 July 2006 01:37, Harsh Busa wrote:
I still donot see monopoloy anywhere . i donot understand this . they donot have a billing system in place ... they donot have field staff trained and etc etc hen why would you even go with them even if they gave cheaper than 999 a month ! ... such services wud be called beta and sud be marked free :D
How many players are offering services in the same / similar segment? Only one. Thats airtel. Well then it is called monopoly...
That is a virtual monopoly. There is no restriction on anybody setting up an Internet service. It is not commercially viable outside limited pockets to provide "propah" internet services. PC densities are abysymal and usage patterns even worse. Moreover it is going to stay that way until voice and voip is unshackled by babudom. At that point small players will start creating the infrastructure neccessary for a decent service.
Ok, at this point, I cant resist putting an accountant's input.
snip Agree Kompletely.
- The small players can not set up decent infrastructure.
Nope not with the newer wireless routing technologies available on gnu/linux. Infact with proper wipop deployments the cost and performance will exceed ADSL.
Even in so called advance markets, there are only very large players in the internet access market.
That is what is published by the media. There are huge numbers of small providers charging $10 for 1 mbps pipe with unlimited access.
In any case, it has nothing to do with unbundling.
It has. One of the major revenue streams to the small player and a marginal pc user is voip - this market has all sorts of stupid restrictions on interconnectivity.
The cost of international bandwidth in India is at least 4 times that of western countries. And there is very little local content, so you have to go all the way to USA for your data. Till 2010 when VSNL / Tata monopoly over major fiber landing rights ends, the matter will change only a little. (FYI, Reliance is ready for that, they have bought the company that owns most of the fiber cables between India, Europe and USA. I can only hope their corporate profit goals are same as India's). The only reason why bandwidth prices have reduced to some extent is that Bhartai laid fresh under-sea fiber cables from India to Singapore to take advantage of fiber pipes from SEA to USA. But the ocst of bandwidth for small players will remain prohabitive. Only the big players can gain from economy of scale and volume pricing leverage.
That too is a completely artificial restriction. There is such a surefeit of internationl fibre capacity that many players wound up - which led to RI buying them up at basement bargains. Remove voice monopolies and the revenue pie breaks up substantially, which will force the flattening of the market. And proly RI dumping it's buys.
That is my input. Hope it educated some people, and appologies to those who are bored by it.
That was definetly interesting.