Authors: Robin Jeffrey
The state of Kerala constituted just over 1 per cent of India’s land area, but to give its hilly terrain almost complete phone coverage required 12,000 towers in 2011. The leading tower builder was India Telecom Infra Ltd (ITIL), set up in 2007 as a joint venture between the TVS Group, a south India conglomerate that began as a bus company before the First World War, and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited. Bobby Sebastian, a veteran of the telecom industry, headed ITIL’s Kerala operations in 2010 and explained what a phone tower company had to do to be profitable.
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Service providers used Global Positioning Technology to work out the location in which they needed to place towers to provide coverage for a specific area or ‘cell’. Radio Frequency in the bands used by mobile phones needs a clear path from one tower to another, hence in hilly country more towers are needed to prevent dropouts and ensure good service. Once telecom companies identified areas where they needed towers, they passed the locales to tower-building companies who sent acquisition agents to identify sites where equipment could be installed or towers could be erected. Sebastian’s company would offer service providers three possible sites. The provider selected the one that best suited them, and the tower company approached the owner of the land to complete a rental agreement. The tower company then applied to the local government for a permit to build the tower, called in contractors to build it and got a completion certificate after inspection of the tower.
When the structure was
complete, service-providers installed their electronic equipment. The more providers Sebastian’s company (ITIL) could persuade to rent space on the same tower, the better for ITIL’s business. It cost little more to service a tower supporting seven providers than a tower with only one. ITIL paid the electricity and diesel bills and was reimbursed by the service providers. ITIL also dealt with local governments and with thousands of individual owners on whose property the towers sat. The tower company remained responsible for the diesel motor that ran the back-up generator for the air conditioning, as well as for the electrical connection to the power grid, the maintenance of the tower and the security of the tiny area around the tower and its air-conditioned shed. The shed presented temptations, not so much for its air conditioner or its electronics but for its valuable and readily cashable diesel fuel.
Diesel posed problems. Diesel-powered back-up generators were essential for every tower because of the irregular supply of electricity and the dependence of cell-phone technology on constant electricity. The electronic equipment in each tower required air-conditioned comfort—not too hot, not too cold. Diesel was polluting, and diesel was costly. BSNL in Chennai alone spent Rs 3.5 crores (US $700,000) on diesel before it paid its electricity bills.
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As demand for mobile phones and better services grew, so did the number of towers and the need for diesel.
Towers came up in breathtaking places: deep in rubber estates, in church and temple compounds, on top of houses, in gardens and open fields and on ruined hilltop forts. The latter were especially useful since they had been built hundreds of years earlier for the same reason that made them valuable in the twenty-first century: a good view across a wide area. For property owners who signed a 15-year lease, hosting a tower brought a monthly rent of about Rs 6,500 (US $150) in rural Kerala in 2010 and up to Rs 20,000 (US $470) in a city like Kochi. These were handsome sums when a new worker in the Nokia factory outside Chennai drew Rs 5,000 for eight-hour shifts six days a week. In cities like Lucknow in north India, advertisements in Hindi daily newspapers offered up to Rs 30,000 (US $600) a month for tower sites in areas crucial for coverage. (See
Illus. 14
).
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The towers were to telecommunications
what gas stations had been to the automobile: a physical presence that drew together threads connecting large numbers of people and interests. If India had 400,000 towers in 2012, agreements had been executed with hundreds of thousands of landowners. All those agreements, covering towers of varying heights, foundations and wind resistances, should have been scrutinised by the clerks and inspectors of local governments. Once constructed, towers needed constant checking and maintenance—one person permanently employed for every four or five towers, by Sebastian’s calculation. At that rate, close to 100,000 people in India earned a living through tower maintenance alone.
MISTRIIS
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The manufacture of phones, and the construction and maintenance of towers, were carried out by capitalist enterprises that imposed the formalities of modern business and bureaucracy. But the revolutionary character of mobile phones lay in their sheer numbers—the fact that they were cheap enough for hundreds of millions of people to own, and phones failed every day. When they failed, people fretted and quickly sought repairs. Fixing phones, like skinning cats, could be done in different ways. One way was to go to a local hole-in-the-wall shop where a local man—invariably a man—had set up a cottage industry as a mobile phone repairer. The need for repairs required a distressed phone owner to make choices.
Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, bustles, and Hazratganj, its centre, pounds like a heart. Huge billboards, snail-paced traffic, modern shopping complexes and multiplex cinemas sit beside historic buildings and time-tested restaurants serving Mughlai food. In June 2010, it was over 40 degrees when Doron met Saif Siddiqui and his brother-in-law, Salim. Their tiny 1 x 3-metre shop was one of three in a row, all occupied by men repairing mobiles. Doron visited them a number of times, leaning on the counter that separated them from passersby in the street. Saif and Salim were Muslims in their mid-twenties. Saif opened the shop in 2005 after a friend suggested that it would be a more profitable business than the jeans-and-sunglasses venture they operated at the time. Soon after, he explained, a few more repair shops opened next to his. Saif left school at about fifteen after completing tenth standard. He gained his mobile repair skills from a friend, rather than in a training institute. According to Saif, it took him three years to become competent in fixing almost all types of mobile phones, including the latest ‘smart phone’ models. In 2010, his road-side shop was full of handsets in different states of dysfunction; he bought them cheaply from a wholesaler. (See
Illus. 15
).
Saif and his brother-in-law
were
mistriis
or artisans. Throughout the day they engaged in ‘grooming’, fixing and adjusting all types of handsets for people off the street. Transactions were fairly straightforward. Saif and his partner sat behind the counter and interacted with their customers who stood on the pavement, sometimes inspecting the devices on display in the very-mini showroom. The customers explained the fault and asked for a quick evaluation. The most common faults, Saif said, included water damage, connectivity problems and screen or recharging faults, often caused by moisture. The moisture problem was usually solved by prying open the phone and dipping the motherboard in a bucket of bad-smelling chemicals that Saif kept next to his bare feet. A toothbrush was used to clean and dry the board before reassembly. Charging about Rs 100 to fix the most common faults, Saif earned on average Rs 800–1,000 per day. When there were no customers hovering over the counter in anticipation of their device being fixed, Saif turned to the more challenging cases that required careful diagnosis and repair. Saif used a computer in a corner of the shop for software reformatting and downloading songs, wallpapers, video-clips and films. He charged about Rs 50 for one gigabyte of memory download.
Sometimes, when he was unable to repair a device, Saif consulted a more experienced friend who worked in a nearby mobile phone shop that sold various branded and Indian mobiles. If Saif could not fix the problem, clients were not asked to pay. Indeed, Saif might offer to purchase the handset if its parts were useful. Otherwise, clients might opt to try to repair it elsewhere.
Most of Saif’s clientele came to him for handset repairs. Many customers belonged to Saif’s Sunni community, confirming an observation of Nimmi Rangaswamy and Sumitra Nair that small businesses draws on community and kin networks.
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According to Saif, his clients were mostly men because, even if the mobile was used by a woman, it was the men in the house who had the responsibility for maintaining and fixing household electronics. And the stalls of the streets were male-dominated public places.
Towns and cities in Uttar
Pradesh were saturated with similar small businesses retailing mobile phones and associated products. ‘Grey markets’ harboured more specialised outlets, where one could find a string of shops and make-shift stalls that only repaired mobile phones, both their hardware and software.
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In Banaras as in Lucknow, the
mistriis
in the grey markets were credited with being experts, and if the neighbourhood
mistrii
was not up to the task of fixing a handset, he would refer it to the ‘higher authorities’ located in the grey markets. In Banaras that meant the Daal Mandi market located in the older part of town.
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The mobile phone section of Daal Mandi grew out of what was once a thriving electronics bazaar, dominated by pirated DVDs and CDs, televisions and other electronic goods. Muslims, who were the dominant group in the area, traded mostly in second-hand and non-branded phones, known as ‘China Mobiles’.
While most handsets, including branded ones, were made in China, the term ‘China Mobile’ referred to non-branded, flashy handsets. In mid-2009, these mobile phones were considerably cheaper than the branded devices but often claimed to have many of the same multimedia functions. Some even promised much more—such as a 30-day battery back-up, 8-megapixel cameras and TV reception. The stalls and shops in Daal Mandi offered a huge pool of components for replacing and cross-fertilizing mobile phones. For example, ‘G five’ handsets had batteries, screens and other components that fitted easily into Nokia or Samsung models, thus making factory-original components less necessary. (See
Illus. 16
).
China Mobiles were the first to feature two and three-SIM card handsets. This was a very attractive feature, especially for poorer consumers who often alternated between SIM cards to save money by taking advantage of varying rates offered by different service providers. At different times of the day or week one provider or another would often offer cheap rates to attract customers; for customers, it was attractive to be able to switch operators by tapping quickly from one SIM card to another. Nokia officials admitted ruefully that Nokia had been slow to react to India’s love affair with dual-SIM phones and to start manufacturing its own models.
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China Mobiles, unlike their legitimate relatives, were sold with no guarantee, warranty or bill of purchase. Their price was much lower, not only because they were non-branded and of lower quality, but also because they were not connected to any service centres and the retailer did not pay Value Added Tax (VAT).
The service and repair
provided in the grey-market economy was vital for a number of reasons. Because China Mobiles came without warranties, repair-walas and their stalls provided the only way of fixing a faulty cheap phone. But many branded mobiles that did not have warranties also ended up with the
mistriis
. Although branded mobiles such as Nokia, Samsung and LG were popular with poorer people if they could afford them, the services associated with these branded products often seemed inaccessible—too unfamiliar, corporate and forbidding. Moreover, once a mobile was tampered with, not only was the warranty void, but it was instantly rendered an ‘untouchable item’ by brand-name service providers who refused to have anything to do with it.
In Daal Mandi in Banaras, the cost and types of a handset varied slightly across the thirty-odd stalls. Business thrived in the alleys, not only among the retailers but also in the repair businesses located in the narrow lanes. The small entrepreneurs procured their supplies of mobile phones from larger markets in Delhi or Mumbai. For example, Arif and his brother who operated a shop in Daal Mandi explained that they got their mobile phones from Ghaffar Market in Delhi. Their shop had around forty Chinese-made mobile phones in all ranges and prices. Arif sold about ten sets a day at an average cost of Rs 1,500 (US $30). There was a constant flow of customers inspecting, comparing and negotiating. For these shoppers, this was an attractive and familiar way to shop and a place where the consumer wielded significant power.
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TRAINERS AND TRAINEES
How did
mistriis
of the mobile learn their skills? The automobile industry offered parallels. ‘A [Model T] Ford’, E. B. White wrote, ‘was born naked as a baby, and a flourishing industry grew up out of correcting its rare deficiencies and combating its fascinating diseases’.
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The difference, however, lay in the fact that many more people in India aspired to talk than ever aspired to drive. The demand was far greater for the mobile-phone equivalents of what White called ‘the heaven sent mechanics who could really make the car talk’.
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When their phones died, people looked desperately for those who could bring them back from the dead.
In Mumbai slums, Rangaswamy and Nair met store-owners who had trained in phone repair in formal courses at institutes charging US $300 for a four-month course. For people living in the Mumbai slums of Behram Baug, such sums were substantial, and for most of the trainees an additional period was required in which they engaged in ‘self-training on the job’ or supplemented ‘their training through peer-learning’.
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