Decade End Post

Yes. A Decade is coming to an end…. Lot of things have happened in my life in the last 10 years.

A Recap:
I moved from school to college and then graduated and then got the job.
I met with 2 accidents 1 thumb fracture and 1 leg muscle loss.
I have 1+ old nephew
I have got so many new friends at college and workplace.
I moved into garden city and started my bachelor life
I traveled to places in India like Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Goa, Pune, Mumbai for the first time.
I bought a mobile phone on my first salary
I have worked for Indian service based company, a start-up and for Earth’s most customer centric company.
I gained weight in the first half of the decade and reduced the weight in last year of the decade
I learned to speak in english

and i am expecting there are more to come in the next decade. Back in 2000, i never expected that i will lead a life like this… stepping into a new decade, a new year will be a fresh start for me i guess.

Wait and watch…

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011 for all

airtel, you suck now-a-days…!

Once i was a great fan of airtel and its customer care service. I even used to brag about it to my friends.

Not anymore…

Airtel sucks for the following reasons:
1. They cheated by taking 500 INR for name change but didn’t do for 2 yrs
2. They said that proof submitted by me for lifetime prepaid 5 yrs back is invalid now and blocked my calls. Even asking for local reference number, when i try to submit other state DL. Asking too much personal information like PAN No, reference number of someone i know locally, Local state ID card, date of birth
3. Charging 50p per call for calling their 121 customer care service when i have problems. calls disconnected by CC people
4. Not even notified me about their new customer care service 198 which is IVR. no human being behind it.
5. debiting money from my prepaid without my knowledge. once i noticed, i called and got my 15 INR by spending 1 INR on call their customer care service twice. they disconnected 1st call.
6. Reduced my bandwidth from 1mbps to 512kbps even though i have not violated FUP.
7. FUP is a F**king policy which they introduced in name of fair usage for all users. please upgrade your infrastructure.
8. charged me 1500 INR for WI-FI ADSL2+ Router without telling me. when asked customer care for upgrade, they said its zero cost. after upgrade, the charge was included in the next month bill
9. Converted the Hardcopy Bill to e-bill without my knowledge in the name of Save Treesinitiatives. It happened twice. I had to login to airtel.in to change everytime.
10. Forgot to send me hardcopy bill to my address. I raised two request to get my original bill. Ist request was closed without even confirming whether issue was resolved with me.
11. Charged me 500 INR to transfer the phone connection from one place to the next place on the same street.
12. Charging 75 INR as late payment fees which is too much. This is how you are making money and keeping your investors happy?

You may have 100 million customers. but not definitely 100 million *happy* customers

Hoping for the mobile number portability….

StartUp Idea #4: Touch based Landline Internet phone for home use

According to Communications in India wiki, India is marching towards billion telephone (landlines and mobile) subscribers. Even though the mobile phone connections are exploding like anything, there is always a need for landlines exclusively for Broadband connection. In India, wireless broadband has not yet taken off and the speed is very slow when compared to wired broadband connection.
The Internet Usage Statistics in India is 81,000,000 i.e 6.9 % and is expected to grow more. Also major telephone operators in the subcontinent are taking advantage of this growth.

Even though Mobile phones can act as a modem for connecting to internet, it cannot withstand due to following reasons
1. Lack of Towers and hence low coverages
2. Battery will drain out.
3. you need to charge every now and then.. etc

Need for the new device…
Communication became the important part of our daily life now-a-days. we communicate via Facebook/Internet, phone, voip etc. For each of these, we are using a separate device like laptop/desktop computer, mobile phones or internet phones specically. we also required modem to connect our laptop to internet.

why not have a single device which can do this all?
We cannot call that device as Phone. As per TheFreeDictionary.com

Telephone is an instrument that converts voice and other sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and that receives and reconverts waves into sound signals.

Phone can refer only things which can transmit sound signals. But today, we are transmitting data (voice, documents, videos) as bits and bytes. Hence we can call that a communication device.

What feature it should have?
A new Integrated communication device should posses the following characteristics
1. Easy to use with Intuitive interface.
2. Always be connected with Internet i.e ADSL+ enabled or what ever the latest.
3. Camera enabled – Speak with your friends / families using Video capabilities.
4. Text Enabled – Send and receive text
5. 1-Touch Call
6. Voice Recognition
7. a Wi-Fi / LAN enabled to get our laptop/computer connected
8. Digital phone book
9. Built-in Bill Payment facilities for Phone service, Electricity etc
10. Mic / Speaker enabled. Support for headset should be also available.
11. Wireless Handset so that you need not be at phone while talking.

Basically, it should be a blend of
1. Today’s Smart-Phone
2. Skype
3. Landline
4. DSL Modem
5. Camera

Every feature i specified here decribes the funtionality it can do. Hence i did not explain much about the feature.

The Demand…
Airtel, one of the biggest private telecom operator in India is getting revenue 50-50 between voice and data. The demand for this kind of device will increase as operators are trying to give Value added services to their customers.
Landline phone is the easiest technology product that people have learned today even before mobile phones. Every body knows to dial and make a call. The reach to the masses will surely be achieved with this kind of integrated device.

Business Model
This will be a hardware business. To start with, a prototype should be made and demo it to the largest operator in the country. At-least they will do trial run at few places and would see the response for such kind of device. the cost of integrated communication device should be very low compared to the combined cost of phone + wifi / LAN modem or any internet phones. If it is being accepted, they it will sell like anything. Telecom operator can bundle the device along with the package which is sold now. You can take the share of every device sold.

Who’s the target audience?
This device is *not* for the techie people who already use / learned to use the device. This is a new generation device which will go mainstream like the normal landline phone we have now. Most of the people in India will be connected via this device.

Prototype

Integrated communication device Prototype

what do you think about this concept? comment about it.

Note: The mashup is created using GIMP. I took phone picture and icons from Google Images.

Hey Google! dont force me to create public profile…!

Hey Google,

Why are you forcing me to create a public profile when i try to share the fotos from picasa website?

Stop forcing me to signup.

Today i noticed that google is forcing me to create a public profile in picasa. unless i do that, i cannot share the albums or photos.

any one experiencing this?

Ghajini: the pencil sketch

Ghajini