The Tenant Wants More

News is that Raman Roy is not sitting still. Quattro is his new venture for
which his plans are set to roll. The business model capitalizes on economies of
scale. The plan is to have several operating companies within the fold (and
assuming a majority share holding (>51%) in each of those

companies), and share the technology infrastructure across all these companies.
A core team would manage all the management of these group companies, including
the infrastructure. If all these companies were to have a dedicated bandwidths
and dedicated hardware, a lot of spare capacity would build up which would be
nothing but wastage, especially since the resources of these companies can be
centrally managed for optimal utilization.

While a lot of regulations have been eased and clarity has been attempted,
gray areas remain as they were. While OSPs are allowed to share their bandwidth
with other centers of the same company, there remains uncertainty about two
different companies. Technically, if the two companies are under a common
holding structure that has more than 51% share in them they can be considered
part of the same company. But in the Quattro scenario, it is essential for each
of these companies to maintain a unique identity, at least outwardly, as they
each have a unique positioning in the market.

The gray areas are, will such companies still qualify as part of the same
companies. The issue can of course be settled very easily. All that is required
is for one company to go ahead and do this kind of infrastructure sharing. If it
is okay then the industry has hit a jackpot, if it is not okay, you have your
answer to the question, 'It is not permitted.' One way of eliminating any
controversy would be if Quattro went ahead and acquired the newly liberalized
ILD license for Rs 2.5 crore. That would make it a licensed service provider and
it would be able to take bandwidth from any other service providers and
apportion it, as per their requirements. The option of going with a managed
services provider also exists, but that would curtail the speed with which the
apportioning of bandwidth could takes place.

Another option is if they can have a service provider then set up an exchange
within the Quattro campus.

Much Ado For What?

Sure there are workarounds for any situation. But why is it so important
that companies, whether of the same group or of disparate groups, cannot share
their telecom resources. If companies could share among them the bandwidth, who
stands to lose? The only hitch in this facility is the stipulation that an
organization can only buy bandwidth from a licensed telecom service provider.
Surely, the service providers would not mind if 10-15 companies get together to
share their bandwidth over a shared IP PBX. They should have enough wisdom to
know that efficiently run businesses offer more revenues in the long run. In any
case, any bandwidth sold is welcome business for the service provider. By
disallowing the service provider and the organizations to manage their bandwidth
freely, legitimate business opportunities get lost.

Of course, it can be logically argued that if this facility was granted, some
section of the industry would get up and demand the very existence of
regulations requiring logical partitioning of PSTN and CUG telecom resources.

Yes, it should. In a fully converged network, these distinctions will have to
vanish. The interesting part is that today the technology is having a hard time,
checking the individual users' innovativeness in using the available
resources. Many times, what is illegal here is perfectly legitimate in other
parts of the world.

The government needs to decide on certain restrictions on the use of
bandwidth and which restrictions are going to hamper the business interests and
intelligence of the country's entrepreneurs. Restrictions that are not
absolutely vital need to be done away with.

Alok Singh

aloksi@cybermedia.co.in