Saturday, June 12, 2010

Mukesh on Broadband via Wireless

3G and BWA auctions are over. After all the important, not so important commented on the lack of Indian Govt. to license and allow to launch 3G at par on time with the developed nations. Here comes the time, when 3G (Third Generation Wireless Services) or BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) is/will be reality in India in few month’s time. 3G or BWA has the speed that you can make babies on net. You can watch your favourite TV show, movie even on mobile.

PM (Pranab Mukherjee, though it hints more at Manmohan Singh) is laughing his way to the bank. Govt.’s (all over the World) make money by giving us the license to live (Income Tax), grow (Wealth Tax) and do business (too many to list). But derisking the whole nation by licensing to source/monetize waves is the masterstroke. Rupees One Lakh Six Thousand Crore Only, it was difficult to count the zeros. Telecom Ministry has become the Jewel in the Crown, especially after Mr. Raja became a big embarrassment for the UPA Govt. in their previous term due to telecom licenses. His name could make the new Govt. fall. He definitely needs to be given a bonus for the monies that the Govt. has earned. The money could easily help the Govt. to reduce the Fiscal Deficit by 100 basis points, after reaching the alarming levels in 2009-10. I fear it may not amount to mere electronic entries for the Govt. of India, wherein, telcos. approach the PSU banks to help them in financing their license fee, as happened in previous PSU market issues (listing on stock market). SBI and LIC filled up the issue numbers of NMDC and NTPC as market (investors) expected little from the Govt.

Let us take a peekaboo at the build up and the outcome of the auctions.

Before the build up, let’s look at the outcome. Mukesh Ambani is back in telecom space. That’s the bigger news in the industry than the money to be parked with Govt. coffers. Mukesh Ambani is famous/known for disrupting the markets with his ambitious and audacious plans. Market players are forced to change their strategies, thinking to stay in business.

People are guffawing for the fact that why BWA has managed to collect double the revenues for the Govt. than 3G. In 3G, only Reliance, Bharti, Vodafone, Tata and Aircel participated. There are whole bunch of players in Internet business. RCOM, Tata and Idea have already backed out of the bids, referring it as too steep prices for broadband business.

Mukesh Ambani has done the trick, bid and bagged all the 22 circles in BWA auction. Mukesh Ambani builds assets at the price at which it is difficult to think even. 22 circles at Rs. 128.48 billion when most others have coughed upto Rs. 6,000 Crore for 5,6 or 8 odd circles. Mukesh Ambani’s in his trademark style has taken the assets at the heavy discount as compared to other players in the industry.

Further to be anticipated, how he moves front and back in the telecom and digital telephony space with BWA license. Listen and just try to interpret, “A single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE (Long Term Evolution) has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared to existing communication infrastructure in the country”. Another strange thing, when perhaps it was said, that some of the bigger groups were ready to offer their license to RIL at throwaway prices. Infotel Broadband Services (P) Ltd., I doubt if they anything relating to broadband besides the word in the Company Name. Mr. Nahata is still to pay Rs. 500 odd crores to the bank. Still recording losses at breakneck speed, I really adore their commitment to the Company.

Biggest uproar is the fact, Mukesh Ambani is back into his dream industry days after scraping the non-compete agreement with his litloo (younger brother). Reliance Infocomm set up by Mukesh Ambani now known as Reliance Communications is now in the hands of Anil Ambani in family division. Did that Non-Compete Agreement possess any importance?, when they had fought tooth and nail for the dead gas floating in sea bed of Krishna Godavari basin.

As for the customers, they are going to rake the moolah with the pricing strategy and product development of Mukesh Ambani.
Last time it was Roti, kapda aur mobile.
This time it will be less than that even but still sufficient.

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