Authors: Robin Jeffrey
7.
N. Sreekantan Nair, Thiruvananthapuram, interview with R. Jeffrey, 20 November 2010. Mr Sreekantan Nair was a senior officer in telecommunications for the Government of India from 1966 to 2004. Daniel E. Sullivan, John L. Sznopek and Lorie A. Wagner,
20th Century U.S. Mineral Prices Decline on Constant Dollars
(n.p.p.: U.S. Geological Survey, Open File Report 00–389, n.d.), p. 5,
http://www.fxstreet.com/fundamental/economic-timeseries/data/fedstl/exinus.aspx
(accessed on 19 March 2012). Copper was worth about US $8 a kilo in New York in 2012. Bloomberg, 16 March 2012,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012–03–16/copper-pares-weeklygain-on-rising-china-stockpiles-correct-.html
(accessed 18 June 2012).
8.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 42.
9.
M. B. Athreya, ‘India’s Telecommunications Policy: a Paradigm Shift’,
Telecommunications Policy
, vol. 20, no. 1 (1996), pp. 16–17.
10.
This eventually happened with the creation of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) in 2000.
11.
Athreya, ‘India’s’, p. 17.
12.
Ibid., p. 18.
13.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 47.
14.
Deepali Sharma and Abhoy K. Ojha, ‘Evolution of the Indian Mobile Telecommunications Industry: Looking through the C-Evolutionary Lens’, paper given at the ‘Celling South Asia’ workshop, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore, 17 and 18 February 2011. Mukesh Kumar and Ram Kumar Kakani,
The Telecommunications Revolution: Mobile Value Added Services in India
(New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2012), pp. 12–19.
15.
Sharma and Ojha, ‘Evolution’, workshop paper. Arun K. Thiruvengadam and Piyush
Joshi, ‘Judiciaries as Crucial Actors in Southern Regulatory Systems: A Case Study of Indian Telecom Regulation’,
Regulation and Governance
, 2012, pp. 8–9.
16.
TRAI,
National Telecom Policy 1994
.
17.
These roughly corresponded with the states of India’s federation, but small states—in the northeast, for example—were grouped into single circles.
18.
Athreya, ‘India’s’, p. 13.
19.
William H. Melody, ‘Spectrum Management for Information Societies’, in John Ure (ed.),
Telecommunications Development in Asia
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), p. 72.
20.
Peter D. O’Neill, ‘The “Poor Man’s Mobile Telephone”: Access versus Possession to Control the Information Gap in India’,
Contemporary South Asia
, vol. 12, no. 1 (2003), p. 89.
21.
Prabhir Purkayastha, ‘Induction of Private Sector in Basic Telecom Services’,
EPW
, 17 February 1996, p. 417.
22.
Purkayastha, ‘Induction’, p. 419.
23.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 47.
24.
Ibid., p. 48.
25.
Ibid., p. 49.
26.
Praveen R. Kumar, Nokia Siemens Network, Thiruvananthapuram, interview with R. Jeffrey, 21 November 2010.
27.
Anupama Dokeniya, ‘Re-forming the State: Telecom Liberalization in India’,
Telecommunications Policy
, vol. 23 (1999), p. 115.
28.
Dokeniya, ‘Re-forming’, p. 122.
29.
Economic Times
, 7 April 2001,
www.valuenotes.com/et01/apr07.asp?ArtCd=24724&Cat=C&Id=69
(accessed 29 March 2009). It sold its stake to the Hindujas.
30.
Indian Express
, 21 February 2009,
www.indianexpress.com/news/assetscase-takes-13-years-for-sukh-rams-conviction
(accessed 29 March 2009).
31.
He was sent to hospital in June with ‘multiple ailments’. Indo-Asian News Service, 4 June 2012,
http://gujaratinews.webdunia.com/english-news/shownews/0/Sukh-Ram-shifted-to-hospital/12867314.html
(accessed 20 June 2012).
32.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 55.
33.
Indian Express
, 15 December 2007,
www.expressindia.com/story_print.php?storyId=250527
(accessed 19 February 2010).
34.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 55. Rahul Mukherji, ‘Interests, Wireless Technology and Institutional Change: From Government Monopoly to Regulated Competition in Indian Telecommunications’,
Journal of Asian Studies
, vol. 66, no. 2 (May 2009), p. 498.
35.
Mukherji, ‘Interests’, pp. 501–02. Thiruvengadam and
Joshi, ‘Judiciaries’, p. 9.
36.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 52.
37.
S. S. Sodhi in
Financial Express
, 23 August 1998,
www.financialexpress.com/old/fe/daily/
19990823/fec23033p.html
(accessed 3 March 2011).
38.
The Communications Ministers were Sukh Ram, Beni Prasad Verma, Buta Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Jagmohan and Ram Vilas Paswan. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over the portfolio for a few months in 1999.
39.
Statistics of India
and
India: a Reference Annual
for relevant years.
40.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, pp. 114–15.
41.
Ibid., p. 84.
42.
Rediff on the Net
, 9 June 1999, quoting Jagmohan, the former minister. Mahesh Uppal with S. K. N. Nair and C. S. Rao,
India’s Telecom Reform: a Chronological Account
(New Delhi: National Council for Applied Economic Research, 2006), p. 5.
43.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, pp. 79–80.
44.
New Telecom Policy 1999 (NTP 1999)
,
http://www.trai.gov.in/TelecomPolicy_ntp99.asp
(accessed 4 March 2011). The 1994 policy was officially called ‘national’; the 1999 policy was officially dubbed ‘new’.
45.
Rafiq Dossani (ed.),
Telecommunications Reform in India
(London: Quorum Books, 2002), p. 5. Kumar and Kakani,
The Communications Revolution
, pp. 15–18.
46.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 141. Mukherji, ‘Interests’, p. 505.
47.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 88. Sridhar,
Telecom Revolution
, p. 82.
48.
Saxena,
Connecting India
, pp. 3–47.
49.
Uppal
et al
.,
India’s Telecom Reform
, p. 6.
50.
Mukherji, ‘Interests’, p. 507.
51.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 30. Sridhar,
Telecom Revolution
, p. 19.
52.
The numbers are no doubt inflated by up to 30 per cent. This is because a person who lets an old number lapse and buys a new number is counted twice. Nevertheless, the increase of cell-phone penetration, even allowing for such inflation, was immense.
53.
Hamish McDonald,
Mahabharata in Polyester
(Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010), p. 303.
54.
This was called CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and involved different technology from that adopted by much of the rest of the world and by the mobile-service providers licensed in India in 1995—GSM (Global System for Mobile communications).
55.
Arun Shourie,
Governance and the Sclerosis That Has Set In
(New Delhi: Rupa, 2007; first published 2004), pp. 77–8. McDonald,
Mahabharata
, pp. 304–05. Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 100.
56.
McDonald,
Mahabharata
, pp. 303–09 and Uppal
et al., India’s Telecom Reform
, pp. 8–10 detail this complicated story. Thiruvengadam
and Piyush Joshi, ‘Judiciaries’, pp. 11–12.
57.
Agar,
Constant
, pp. 39–40.
58.
Ibid., p. 62.
59.
Melody, ‘Spectrum’, pp. 78–9.
60.
TRAI Annual Report, 2009–10
, p. 28.
61.
Pankaj Misra,
Butter Chicken in Ludhiana
(London: Picador, 2006; first published 1995). Anand Giridharadas,
India Calling
(Melbourne: Black Ink., 2011), pp. 211–44.
62.
Outlook
, 16 October 2006,
www.outlookindia.com/printarticle/aspx?232842Z
(accessed 18 September 2009).
63.
Sunil Bharti Mittal,
India’s New Entrepreneurial Classes: the High Growth and Why It Is Sustainable
, Occasional Paper No. 25 (Philadelphia: Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 2006), p. 15.
64.
F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and V. G. Narayanan, ‘Strategic Outsourcing at Bharti Airtel Limited’,
Harvard Business School 9–107–003
, 2006 (revised 4 December 2007), p. 2.
65.
Straits Times
(Singapore), 22 March 2010, p. B21.
International Herald Tribune
, 13 January 2010, p. 14.
66.
Desai,
India’s Telecommunications Industry
, p. 25. Mukherji, ‘Interests’, p. 509.
67.
Quoted in Keskar, ‘Reliance Infocomm’, p. 199.
68.
Ibid., p. 206.
69.
TRAI Annual Report, 2009–10
, pp. 28–9.
70.
www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/OVAG.html
(accessed 8 March 2011).
71.
TRAI Annual Report, 2009–10
, p. 28.
72.
In 2002 Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), created as a government corporation to take over telecommunications in 1986, was privatised. Tata became the main shareholder. C. N. N. Nair,
The Story of Videsh Sanchar: Development of India’s External Telecommunications
(Mumbai: Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, 2002), p. 131.
73.
TRAI Annual Report, 2009–10
, p. 28. BSNL was estimated at about 12 per cent and Idea and Tata at about 11 per cent each.
74.
www.adityabirla.com/our_companies/
indian_companies/idea.htm
(accessed 10 March 2011).
75.
Suneeta Reddy in
Financial Express
, 11 March 2006,
www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/42185
(accessed 10 March 2011). The Aircel deal was the subject of allegations by the gadfly politician Subramanian Swamy of corrupt pressure brought to bear on the company’s previous owners.
Organiser
, 20 May 2012, p. 2. See also Subramanian Swamy,
2G Spectrum Scam
(New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 2012).
76.
Interview, T. V. Ramachandran, with R. Jeffrey, New Delhi, 24 February 2012.
77.
Kamal Sharma
et al
., ‘BSNL: Ringing Change in Rural India’, in Arindam Mukherji (ed.),
The Icfai University Press on Mobile Service Providers
(Hyderabad: Icfai University Press, 2009), p. 223.
78.
www.bsnl.co.in/about.htm
(accessed 10 March 2011).
79.
Doron’s friends in
Banaras were fond of the joke about BSNL. For similar remarks in the Lok Sabha on 27 July 2009,
http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/
India/20090727/1305071.html
(accessed on 19 March 2012).