Snippets

1. Lower tariffs in India? - Will the proposed reduction in port charges at POI's proposed by TRAI and opposed by BSNL, lead to a further reduction in tariffs given the consequent lowering of access charges?
2. Dish versus Tata Sky : A quick update on the happenings on the STBs, Cable & Sat TVs.
3. IBM : The acquisitions of this big daddy do put some other wannabe-biggies to shame! Clearly IBM is carving out territory one acquisition at a time, and at a dizzying pace!
4. Telco PSUs - "Paradigms Lost" : Now that's what you'd call a project in reduction of Access Charges. MTNL finds BSNL carriage cost of 65p expensive and goes out and floats a tender, and selects Reliance. Privatisation, did someone say? Ha! And check out Railtel's venture for setting up Cybercafes in Railway Stations, the Pune station with its 1Gbps connectivity is a shining example of PSU effectiveness!
5. New destinations in Outsourcing : As costs in India rise, Vietnam's entry into the WTO and Nam's expected IT & Telecom growth make it a candidate for outsourcing to; just as the crumbling infrastructure in India & specialized skills push BFSI's to Uruguay.
6. A short and nice case study from the courier industry (Elbee): A neat pointer to the market potential of complete communications solutions aimed at a vertical. Maybe it will be as simple as a Telco tying up with a vendor like Nortel who has the cross-platform, cross-industry domain expertise on such stuff
7. Another interesting article illustrating new emerging segments to target as communication technology advances open up new revenue opportunities and models : The vertical of Business Centers can now offer a wider range of solutions to their clientele interested in cutting their infra costs, by providing them with telecommuting solutions launched in tandem with Telcos - Now that should make the blokes at McKinsey proud as it "leverages core competencies" :D
8. New bundled products for the SME market - interesting lessons to learn from Singtel.
9. Another probable radical bundled product for call centers - Emotion detection software to enable predictive churn!
10. Cisco's efforts on providing bundled offerings to the SMB segment with nice-sounding-options like Buybacks and Leasing, to enable easy transition to investments.
11. There's a whole range of probable new applications on broadband that the government would be looking at investing in - clearly a hot sector and segment to focus on.
12. A nice article on P2P that attempts to explain why YouTube succeeded where Napster failed. Probably a question of timing, positioning & street-smartness!