Telecom & IT World- Applying Technologies To Business

Last month, many subscribers in India saw other face of Telecom and it definitely put a big question mark on efficiency and confidence level of services in the country. Imagine that a subscriber, having balance of around Rs 50 in his/her account cannot make any call and while contacting to customer care, executive says “Due to some technical problem, it is happening”, more surprisingly on question of restoration time the answer is “it may take 1 or 2 months”.(Though it got corrected in 2-3 days) . There was no policy to inform the subscriber with automated email, machine generated sms or a call (These can be done without much pain and significant money can be saved). Now something on incoming.

Another big operator faced some technical problem and incoming of a chunk of prepaid subscribers was barred. Subscribers were not beforehand aware of such happening, therefore they were not able to take any preventive measure, a sales guy might have been expecting some call from client, a father might have been expecting call from his son to know the exam result, a patient might have been expecting a call from doctor but the operator preferred to be silent. There was no bold and bulleted mention on the home page of website, there was no mail or sms or any other bold indication and probably few were not aware of it till last minute. Restoration time was around 2 days.

Its not end, another big operator faced problem in some eastern part when the network failed. Though the restoration took few hours but some of subscribers have been intimated of such failure. We don’t know whether all knew the incidence but few mails were spread across in few minutes and it was definitely appreciable.

Unfortunately regulators are also not proactive in such situation. Shouldn’t we need something like SEBI, which can raise questions against such happenings? In SEBI, a small investor can also knock the door, media reports are tracked properly, each and every movement of company is observed then why not in Telecom? Shouldn’t we strengthen TRAI so that it can raise objection to protect small subscribers who are often ignored?

Problems are part of game, technical breakdowns cannot be avoided but customer confidence can be preserved. Suppose a company has 2L customers, out of which 1L are affected due to certain technical problem. To inform these or to put a message on website, operator needs only few rupees and in turn it increases the level of confidence whereas by not doing so, it invites direct contact of subscribers through call center or customer care and we all know that every contact is an expensive contact, so it costs more to an operator. Suppose 75% of affected subscribers call or contact call center, so 75K contacts within few hours, isn’t it dangerous?

We request operators to think over it, try to have a practical approach to a simple problem of information gap. The third operator already gave a kind of live demo. We request our readers to keep on sharing their views on Tecmac and Celset Message boards.

Think Tank	Congratulations on Sensex crossing 7000 point. Indian Media Indian-Companies, Western Media-Western Companies. Some anger is visible on the surface. Few are questioning the hyper-reaction shown by media against flaws in some BPO operations. We too feel that our media is hyper sensitive in exposing our companies while it remains comparatively cool on mistakes of outsiders. Few incidences of Data theft have been reported in last few days in western media and it got a small coverage in India as well but we feel it was too low when compared to the flaws reported against few BPO companies in last few months. We think that IT-India is mature enough to take care of its own problems and also facing tough competition in post low-cost advantage era. Media is not expected to hamper our own industry. Data security has become a big problem and if sensitive data like Credit Card details are mishandled then it becomes critical. Now it’s a time to look on this aspect seriously. So-called sophisticated companies and proud countries are facing it difficult to protect the information and their damage may damage honest efforts of countries like India. Idea is again looking for parents but it is the organization which has grown like this and we expect this time too it may win the challenges. We feel it’ll be better if it remains with Indians like Tata or goes to some Pacific operator like TM. Its definitely a debatable question and let us be together to *“Dream Undreamt”.* Tecmac Editorial Team
1- BT Bluephone opportunities for unconventional VAS??? 2- United Airlines to launch Wi-Fi in Planes. FBI speaks on security. What’s the solution? 3- Spyke your friend or Foe? 4- Essar Spacetel, whats the future?
Headache Of The Year
Einstein invested his whole life in experiments, Edison lost himself in few components and Rishies spent their maximum time in search of GOD. We all enjoy the benefits extended by these but most of us do not want to live like that. We’ve our own definition of life and few of us even criticize their way of loosing the so called pleasure of the materialistic world. Magic of this world is invent of those great minds as well as hearts still few of us laugh on them and their logic may be correct. This year we request you to think “What is that which makes few to spend whole life on something which takes them away from natural life?” What creates the difference between our ambitions, pleasures and imagination.
Mail all Suggestions, Comments and Articles at tecmac@tecmac.org