Green Mobile Network for Rural India

Airtel and IFFCO have formed a JV called IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) to provider mobile services in villages specially designed for farmers and as per press release by Airtel:

"On offer will be affordable mobile handsets bundled with Airtel mobile connection. The farmer will also get access to a unique VAS platform that will broadcast 5 free voice messages on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, dairy farming, animal husbandry, rural health initiatives and fertiliser availability etc. on a daily basis. In addition, the farmer will be able to call a dedicated helpline, manned by experts from various fields, to get answers to their specific queries.

Bharti Airtel will offer competitive calling rates @ 50 paise/minute for calls between IFFCO members."

The Economic Times further reports that: "The JV will bring several hand-cranked products of common use. These include transistors, community radios and torches." It also goes on to say that farmers will be able to charge their mobile phones without power by using some wind-up charger, which I think is really interesting.

I personally welcome this initiative as its a good example of technology working at the grass-root level, however talking about farmers in India also reminds me of very serious issue of farmers' suicide and I just hope that something could be done to improve this grim situation.

Vodafone bringing iPhone to India

28th June - Book iPhone

Update on 12th May: Airtel going to launch the iPhone as well.

Its official now. Vodafone India announced that its going to launch the much awaited iPhone in India later this year. Media speculates that it will be launched sometime in September this year. I am already on Vodafone so that's good I will not need to unlock iPhone to use on other carriers if I buy one.

This news is everywhere but I am taking CIOL's word on it being an official announcement by Vodafone. Unfortunately Vodafone has no press release on its website. Infact their latest press releases are dated February 2008. Considering that I have never received a response after leaving feedback on their website and that their website was hacked last year, it seems Vodafone does not take its website seriously.

Anyway coming back to iPhone, media is of the view that its going to be priced around Rs. 27,000 to Rs. 30,000 range so its not going to be easy on your pockets however die-hard fans will buy it anyway for any price I guess. 8GB version will be launched initially followed by 16 GB version in a few months.

Related post: iPhone is here...

Do you need a START button on Windows Mobile?

Windows Mobile 6.1 is just released and it has some nice interface tweaks and supposed to be more stable and faster than windows mobile 6. Its a great mobile OS due to its familiarity and compatibility with Windows for desktop. However Microsoft has never given much thought to user experience I guess.

I understand that windows mobile resembles windows in many ways and that probably makes adaptation easier but it probably goes too far with windows resemblance that it ends up being a non-userfriendly mobile OS.

I fully agree with Kevin Hoffman that Windows Mobile is a shrunken and crippled version of windows. I don't see any value of a Start button on a Mobile OS. I have a few suggestions for Windows Mobile User-Experience team:

1. Please remove the Start Button, its not needed.
2. Show big, finger-friendly icons for various applications right on Home screen.
   
3. Reduce number of screens and taps required to do various things.
4. Please do away with tiny text labels and other little user interface elements wherever possible.

I think MS can borrow ideas from Palm, Symbian and other mobile OS. All of them seem to adhere to more or less same user-interface concepts.

Centro - Affordable Palm Smartphone for India

Palm India recently launched Centro its newest, cheapest and probably also the best smartphone offering in India. I am calling it cheapest because its retail price as listed on the website is Rs. 13,990. When Treo 680 was first launched in India, its listed price was more than Rs. 25000, however I just checked and its now being sold for Rs. 14,400. However I would quickly like to point out that in US Centro is available for just $99 with service contract and rebates which makes it almost free.

I also call it best palm smartphone because its undoubtedly the smallest and sleekest smartphone from Palm and does everything a Treo 680 does. It also has a camera better than Treo 680.

However I have 2 complaints from Palm.

1. They don't advertise much and their distribution/dealership network does not exist on non-metro Indian cities. I am so tired of people looking at my Treo 680 and asking me what kind of phone it is? Is it a Chinese phone? Is it good and such things. People recognize an O2, Imate or even HTC quite well here and everybody recognises Nokia.

2. Second problem I have is that there are simply no color choices available for Centro in India, but I guess that's because they only have a single color available for GSM Centro. They have option of 3 very attractive colors for CDMA versions in US though.

Virgin rings in India, pays you to recieve call

Virgin Mobile was launched a few days back in India in traditional Virgin (read Path-breaking) style. Timing couldn't have been better for me as I just finished reading his autobiograpy.

Richard Branson came flying down a Hotel to launch the Virgin Mobile logo. Virgin Mobile is a youth targetted mobile service and is available on CDMA networks of Tata Teleservices which operates its Mobile services called Tata Indiacom.
Mr. Branson talked about briging 10 firsts to Indian telecom market, the most interesting in my opinion is their offer to give 10 paise per minute to their users for every incoming call.

The launch was followed by daringly different TV commercials. I am personally very excited by Virgin's entry in Indian telecom space even if they don't own a network here. I hope they will bring in lot of excitement and set benchmarks in customer services as they have done everywhere they have gone. However I am not sure if they can achieve this with Tata Indicom running support operations for Virgin. Tata Indicom's customer service has generally been very poor like most other telecom operators in India.

Tata and Virgin are not in complete sync was also evident from statements from both the sides during the launch. Richard Branson said "At Virgin Mobile we believe that the existing operators are all pursuing the same strategy: to get as many subscribers as quickly as possible. We want to deliver a more tailored, more relevant offering for a single, distinct segment,"

and in the save event Anil Sardana, managing director, Tata Teleservices, said, "This association would support our efforts to be the fastest growing mobile network in India."

I guess that means while Branson wants to not pursue strategy of just getting a lot of subscribers quickly, Tata's are just concentrating on a lot of subscribers as their primary mission.

Well good luck to Virgin and I hope some of Virgin culture and craziness will rub off to Tata Indicom as well in due course. I am too sad that I won't be able to have a first hand experience of Virgin service myself as I don't want to change my number and I am on GSM as of now. May be Richard Branson should put his wait behind in ushering in the Number Portability regime in India so that users from other networks can choose Virgin if they want to.

A personal note to Richard if he ever reads it: I always admired you and after reading your Autobiography I am in awe of you and will probably even risk a balloon flight to meet you :-)