The newly announced one rupee call rates of BSNL raises a lot on concerns. I feel this is the first move india using communication technologies to draw the nation state by washing out the regional boundaries. Yesterdays hindu editorial addressed a lot of issues related to it
All-India for a rupee http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/13/stories/2006021304431000.htm It has always been a successful ploy to lower the price of a product to one rupee, because that is when the price tag is perceived to resonate with value in the eyes of the consumer. Even elections have been won on such a platform. In 1967, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam led by Annadurai, unseated the Congress from power in the then Madras State for the first time in history by promising, among other things, three measures of rice (roughly 4.6 kg) for just a rupee. It is a moot point whether the DMK's representative in the current Union Cabinet, Minister for Communications Dayanidhi Maran had any of that experience in mind when he pushed zealously for telecom rates to be brought down to a rupee. Never mind the units of measurement are different: the rate for local calls in the new OneIndia tariff plan of the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam and MTNL will now be reduced by about 17 per cent to a rupee for three minutes, and for long distance calls by about 50 per cent to a rupee a minute. What is important is that the price tag is lower — and about the lowest in the world. The reduction is even more remarkable when one recalls the fact that even a decade ago, the cost of talking across the country, say from Chennai to New Delhi, was as high as Rs.36 a minute. There is premium to be paid by those who wish to avail themselves of this low rate: rental is higher at Rs.299 a month and there will be none of the free calls offered in their current plans. Those who do not use the phone much or call friends across the country can opt to stay with their old plan. There need be no losers. Conceptually, the OneIndia plan is also one step towards making this country a single unified market, where State borders are no barriers. It does not matter anymore in which State you are and in which other State your friend is, the price of the call is the same. Advances in technology and refinements in the business model have collaborated to bring about "the death of distance" in telephony. For some time now it has been cheaper to call up a friend in the United States than one across the border in Bangladesh. Ironically a call across several hundred kilometres inside Uttar Pradesh has been at the price of the local call, yet elsewhere a call to a town across a State border attracted a high long distance charge. It is commendable that finally State borders do not matter in the telecom map of this country. But what cannot be ignored is that the infrastructure is uneven across States, and in many of them even where it is available, it is poorly patronised for lack of purchasing power. For instance, the rapidly growing mobile telephone service is largely a facility for towns — the population covered in 1994 was just 20 per cent — and rural India is still to make it to the club. The challenge for the Government will be how swiftly it can take the telephone service, now that it has become cheaper and more affordable than ever before, across to the underdeveloped parts of India. -- The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone -- if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? - Eben Moglen
