For his words of wisdom and understanding of contemporary affairs, Ramdin chacha was the darling of "Sustrampur", a sleepy village, not far from the National Highway, unperturbed by the rest of the world. Needless to say, the telecom developments have caught his fancy and he devoured every word on telecom he could find. The cellular towers that appeared near the Highway adorning the otherwise monotonous skyline aroused his keen interest. When he visited the tehsil market, he could not stop himself from being sold a cellphone connection by the zealous salesman of the "Csell Zee" cellular operating company. He was happy that not only he got the best cordless in the market but also the one for which he needn't go to the telephone babu to apply for, though he was still trying to figure out the "easy" payment plan he almost blindly signed. Whatsoever the price, chacha was now the hero of the "no more" sleepy village of Sustrampur. He fondly christened his new possession as buzzerbattoo.
"Lakhan tau, did you hear about the hotline Ramdin has set up with MLA saheb?" Lakhan tau, the sarpanch and aspirant for MLAship was already a worried man. The fire had caught on. No wonder, the second cellphone of the now "buzzing" village of Sustrampur arrived in a jiffy.
Ramdin chacha had a bhatija Indram in Abu Dhabi who could afford to visit Sustrampur once in two years. But not so after the arrival of buzzerbattoo. Previously, when Indram would be lucky enough to tele-reach the only PCO, a good two kilometres from Sustrampur, he could at best leave a message for chacha and pray! Now his chacha was there at his beck and call. It took now seconds to press few keys against two years to reach his favourite chacha. Life would never be the same again.
Since the arrival of the buzzerbattoo, Ramdin chacha acquired many new nephews and six months later most of them had made it to Abu Dhabi. More and more families acquired their own "buzzerbattoos" ... loading more and more traffic on the network. The new economic scenario of the now called "Chustrampur", with its own cell-site, was beyond the comprehension of Csell Zee's marketing pundits and their well crafted business plans.
Started as a help-service for all his nephews, Ramdin has today a fairly successful "Ramdin Travels", a unique travel agency in that area. To assist him, Ramdin has a secretary in the form of "secretarial service", a service from Csell Zee whose back-up operator greets chacha's callers with personalized greetings from Ramdin Travels, takes and stores messages in a computer and forwars calls into chacha's Voice Mail Box for retrieval later. Also, through same service, he receives reminder calls, directory information, flight & train information, exchange rate information, etc. He is accessible to all his clients all the time even when he is asleep.
What an indispensable secretary!
By Niraj K.Gupta, Voice and Data, September 1996.
Asia-Pacific Explosion In 1995, there were 21 million cellular subscribers in Asia-Pacific (40 countries, over three billion population)implying a penetration of 0.67 percent. By May 1996, it had already reached 30 million. By 2001, it is expected to cross 100 million mark. Out of 21 million cellular subscriber in 1995, about 16 percent were in China (39.7 percent in Japan, 12.9 percent in Australia, 8 percent in South Korea, 6.2 percent in Thailand, and 4.4 percent in Malaysia). With a population of 1.2 billion, in 1995, China had fixed telephone penetration of over 4.2 percent (about 1 percent in case of India), i.e. over 51 million fixed lines. Out of five million cellular subscribers achieved in six years, two million were added in the last one year alone. In Taiwan, after seven years, i.e. by the end of 1995, cellular penetration reached 3.6 percent. However, in the last two years, Hong Kong jumped from 3.4 percent to 11 percent. As most countries in Asia-Pacific witnessed, telecom has a major impact on every aspect of life: business as well as social and cultural. The telecom and economic developments drive each other. Cellular radio technology helps taking the benefits of telecom to the masses. From the above numbers, one can draw indicators for India. We have only seen tip of the iceberg! September 1996. |