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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