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