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‘Histories which are not updated or supplemented are worthless; they are fit to
wrap fishes’
I had retired as a telecom engineer in 2002 after serving India telecom and
humanity - perhaps well for some six years. I remained in the sector but was no
longer doing anything to do with engineering.
Next two years, I was doing something generic but most profound aspect of any
business: supporting customers: retail and corporate entities that subscribed to
some telecom services to fulfill their needs. Mind you, I am not saying business
requirements or value-addition but simply needs.
Hence, I invited a younger colleague of mine – Mr. Sumit Roy to make the book
current. I felt that the views of a retired fellow and that of an operating one of the
same sector would give a sense of totality to the narration. Sumit has got some
eight years experience in the sector and he has worked in almost all the areas of
the sector – landline, IP, mobile. He has worked in different geographies in India
and with many companies. If my segment could be called as an ‘airbrush picture’,
his segment is the ‘drawing part’ where details become visible and clear.
As for need of this book, need of an organization and need of an individual are
always different. Want an argument? The nuclear option: an organization is never
a telecom engineer; a telecom engineer is always a person.
Pre-processing Module for the readers:
Since I had experienced many follies simply because no one had written such a
book while I was a telecom engineer, I consider it my duty to write this PPM for
my readers. This PPM is compatible with those
c. Foreigners who are based in India and working in some Indian Telecom
company including vendors as in (b)
C. There are three types of engineers in Indian Telecom: a. those who check
loop and routes b.those who check signal strength c. Who dont do these
two either.
E. Due to this rivalry and confusion of expertise between engineers, the top
management and senior level managers may not be challenged if their
knowledge of telecom is only ‘hello hollow, sorrry, hello’
H. Indian Engineering schools – from the Government powered IITs and other
TIER-1 institutes to the bania-powered private ones, all focus exclusively on
Hence, the fresh
the very depth of engineering and techniques.
You are here, in the control room or in the field or in the Network
Operations Centre not for any intrinsic value of yours system has found
in you but due to the uninterrupted running of a tired, dumb and
standardized process called HR policies and recruitment.
1
For further explanation of this, read the Retired Telecomwallahs business autobiograpy here at The Wordsmith
Book of Business
Sutra 2: Hi-Tech is a word. It can kill you as a person. Instead, realize
the first law of your existence here – The law of supply and demand
You are not a student here and for people who matter, they finished
their schools some three decades back. For them, your achievements in
schools and colleges are 1, 45,67th choice in Google Search. They have
children, EMI to pay, send their children to best schools, survive in the
high politics and something which you have in excess and they are at
the downhill: libido. Please empathaize.
Your frustration could be used very nicely to add value in your career
and life. Your frustration is the doorway to something you will
earn for your whole lifetime: to understand people’s behaviour.
Cast the skin of ‘telecom engineer’ you had so nicely woven around you
in last few years among many such ‘skiny’ creatures.
Be the snake, the Indian cobra you are – always vigilant, ready, patient,
watchful and deadly while opportunity comes. The next sutra is called
The Serpent Power.
Sutra 4: The Serpent Power: How a cobra defeats an elephant
You are a cobra and your transnational; state of art, billion etc
organization is the elephant. The question is: how would you command
the respect of this behemoth?
It is no wonder all ancient and modern tradition has a deep respect, nay
awe for the serpent.
In the next sutra, I will explain how you can nurture these attributes to
command value from the behemoth.
Sutra 5: The Serpent Power: Learn through your all organs, even skin.
If you are busy at organizational work from day one, it is pretty clear
that your organization is not big and most likley, you will enjoy working
there.
As you enter a big organization, you will have pretty free time for quite
sometime. Use this very effectively.
a. Dont mix much wih your peers, or the same frustrated pool of
telecom engineers. A cobra is never found like a herd of sheep.
This will create some disturbance but that is beneficial for you.
m. Build character.
n. Resist temptation.
As an Indian Cobra that you are, you are born with the venom to
succeed. You need not ‘work’ for aeons at least for that. Many people
prepare for life, giving all control to the most most-infidel mistress:
Time or Future.
Instead, follow the axiom: The world will treat the way you treat
yourself.
I used to tell, little diplomatically at the very start of my career that our
CEO is not taking proper policy in such and such issues. I used to be a
critique of management among my peers and bosses. I used to get a
load of sarcastic comments. What does this fellow think of himself,
barely some year old in this organization where we have our all hairs
made grey?
After ten years, I am CEO of my own company and almost all the
wiseguys are either a prisoner of same cubicle nation or at best trying
to get transferred into another cubicle.
Our Mind is like a dumb network in a way – like Internet. It accepts all.
The seed you sow gets processed by a system which works based on a
model not fully known to mathematics and system engineering.
The seed bears fruit – it does not matter whether it’s an apple or an
orange, if you continue to sow the same seed and go on taking care –
irrespective of anything. Persist.
An Indian cobra can wait six months in its hideout, barely alive
and as the summer arrives, it comes out and still remembers,
intact, to the last detail what it is designed for. It does not
forget. It persists.
Sutra 6: The Serpent Power: Protect your Reputation and Adapt.
Now comes the more formidable part of the game. So far you
were radar dark and could play easily. Now you are in the higher and
more sensitive radars. You have enemies now or they are growing. You
are at the threshold of high politics of organization.3
3
The low politics in office is promotion, raise, job etc. High politics is the politics of the future and always about
intangibles and has impact beyond the organizational framework of incentives and punishment. High politics is
always about some people a cut above.
Sutra 7: Protecting your reputation: Indicative advice
There are many such instances. Rather history of all great men is the
history of remaining true to one’s reputation, come what may. Imagine,
there were times in each of these men’s lives, when they could have
switched to something else, given up or just remained passive. The
result would have been suicidal or worse than suicide: melting of the
reputation they built for ages.
Lord Krishna admonished Arjuna while he did not want to fight and told
that such an action is worse than death because his reputation as a
warrior would be dented and that is worse than death for a hero like
him. His infamy will be sung through ages.
You know what a galaxy is and you know how a star is a very small part
of that galaxy – may be a billionth for larger galaxy. You are lesser than
that in today’s galactic organization.
But there is one instance, a singular event when a star, a lone star
outshines a galaxy in emission. The event of supernovae explosion. In
that event, the star breaks the status quo at some part of its life-cycle
and starts sucking galactic mass inside him and produce focussed
energy of such magnitude that the star becomes the centre of the
galaxy. The lone star defeats the galactic status quo.
Break the status quo. You will be listented to, heard and valued once
you change the rule of the game.
You have to make that leap. You have to undergo that transformation.
I have not heard any post yet which runs like this:
Great and cool is my electric company! See how wonderfully they are
powering all the nice gizmos I run and watch youtube!
This example should demonstrate without any ambiguity that just being
an honest worker is not going to earn you anything other than some
monthly reward which is again under the law of diminishing utility.
I am going to explain this law in next sutra which I am sure you have
never tried to understand – being too much self-hypnotized by the aura
of technical prowess. But this law will come again and again in your
career and if you are not aware, you will add your name to the very
long list of the candidates who confirmed it.
Sutra 10: Law of diminishing marginal utility – Translation for you: You
will be useless sooner than you think
You are actually a utility item to your organization. Just like a car is for
you. A new car has infinite utility value packed inside it while it’s new.
As you use it, its marginal utility diminishes and hence value. So after
few years, you have almost used up all the utility stored in it.
This process is irreversible except for two factors: a very niche value of
the car (like you could keep the car in running condition for some
hundred years and then you sell this as a vintage car) or suddenly it is
found that your car can fly like an airplane. There is no third way to
avoid the downward slide in value-incline.
Now, you are a car for the organization. Your utility has started to go
down as soon as some years are gone. Now, follow the analogy above.
You can either become vintage, i.e. can retire in the same organization
(forty years to remain in the organization like your grandfather or even
father did) and become promoted successively in year-based
promotion. Or you become something other than utility.
Since you are in Indian telecom sector, you have very little chance of
cyclic re-selling with premium (job-hopping) because there are barely 5-
6 large organizations and everyone knows each other. Moreover,
Google and other social networking sites make all information quite
easy to find for anyone, unless....
Unless – yes unless you have done something or been doing something
which ‘utilities’ dont do or are not expected of.
One line, no non-sense conclusion: You are already useless. Only
the behemoth and sloth – your large organization does
not know it yet.
Sutra 11: Theory to practice: Some unsettling and shocking gutter
level advice
Have you noted the most significant and most damaging (for you as a
plain telecom engineer) development in the history of telecom for last
30 years. Here it is: The incremental cost of carrying an additional bit
anywhere is approaching zero.
What does this mean? It means that all the processes of solely
transferring bits from one place to another can be priced lesser and
lesser. Effect: Price of International Call = Price of Local Call Free.
You can still recline in your chair and take calls from Credit Card
agencies not because your marginal utility is high but because of the
fact that there are many new markets for your commodity. What are
these markets? Low telecom penetration areas and markets needing
upgradation – incremental. Like increasing the speed of connectivity or
bandwidth capacity.
b. And act. Your thinking will keep you afloat but action will save
you.
c. Dont fall into the ‘too big to fail’ trap. Remember: Dynasuars are
extinct. They were very big and had a monoploy of the planetary
market for millions of years.
d. The interest of your teachers, the interest of your company, the
interest of the future customers and your own – all are different.
Harmonize.
Sutra 12: Are you bored in your office/work?
If the answer is yes: You are an honest person and you have great
promise.
You have to convince yourself that there is a crtical level of size and
scope of an organization beyond which it starts producing boredom. No
management skills can prevent that. Just like pregnancy produces many
uncomfortable symptoms, organizations beyond a certain point
produce discomfort, boredom and joylessness.
Only Knowledge and a ready mind will save you from boredom.
Why is this so, please read the next sutra where I will explain the
response of top-management to fight the most important boredom
for the organization: boredom of customers with the company?
What about you? The employee of the compnay?
4
Please see my own boredom while working in Indian Telecom here at The Wordsmith Book of Business
It does not matter! It’s pathetic, nay tragic: You as
an employee do not matter!
In order for you to matter, you need to know the inner working of any
large organization and I am sure your teachers in engineering schools
never told you so. Rather, they had no chance to know.
Sutra 13: How companies react when customers get bored with the
company?
Focus your attention. The moment customers get bored with the
company, following events happens in succession or parellely and same
for your large company also:
2. This does not work, naturally for long term as competitors do the
same.
3. Then the company tries some very dirty tricks: It tries to take
unfair but not illegal means, like making customers a debtor
making switching cost higher. Consider 12 month contract for
some providers.
5. At this stage, people who had appointed CEO and top team start
notice and ask to do something.
8. Customers are bored now, very much. They tell their friends
their disgust. Revenue (i.e what comes from customers in the
form of hard cash) goes low and there seems to be not much in
future
As usual for a Large Company, their strategy was to put in more and
more people at the lowest end – they came cheap and hence needed
very little expertise.
5
Just 10 years back, people in India used to go to a bank and return back only to find that desk clerk was on leave
and money could not be withdrawn. People now consider an ATM to be there even if they are in Moon.
Let me sharpen and contextualize my definition of spam: A ubiquitous,
available, irriating but not completely useless piece of facility that loses
its value for anyone considering his time valuable.
Have you called a Mobile Operator Call Centre Recently? Press1, Press
2...Press9.... You hold to hear till deaths that you are valuable.... then –
you need Wordsmith Communiucation6 to know what is being asked
from you.....
6
This is a Language Translation and Cross Cultural Consulting Agency
The Cross-Over and Cross Talk Sutra
This sutra belongs a bridge between what is being told so far and what
will be told next.
At best what they can do is to put more high capacity digital pipes for
each user in the planet. Just like our governments of emerging
economies were talking about bijli for each village. But that is not a
glamourous job and investors would not be very liberal with their
purse. This is 2009, not 2001.
Then I say: All these are not written by you nor you have done anything
except working as a carrier. You have absolutely no investment here –
in my work.
No. I dont want to understand all this. I had worked for last 200 years to
lay all these cable, network and I want it now. I want that chocolate, I
want it... [goes on nagging ]
History neither listens to nagging nor to retrospective accounting
systems.
You will not find this answer anywhere, at least not in your
Banks. Very powerful group of people called
textbooks:
Large Banks.
Sutra 15: The Banking Crisis of 2008 and learn the lesson
The shortest sutra but the centre of all sutras. Comprehend this very
carefully.
But people lost job and killed their children by shot-guns. People
committed suicide.
For many, the crisis was no less than losing the very lust of Life.
Why?
Sutra 16: Largest Corporations are the most indebted entities of the
world.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Founder of Art of Living Foundation had captured
this irony in a poignant sentence. What he essentially says that a
company prides himself on being some $ 2 billion corporation with $ 3
billion of debt. Now, who is richer? Someone with $ 100 worth with no
debt or the corporation above.
From where does the debt come: One comes from share market and
another comes from large banks or Consortium of Banks?
Central Banks.
Sutra 17: The short-circuit of organizational process: Financialization
a. Creative Accounting.
Most of the
What is very tragic and mark of our age is this:
employees of these organizations were completely in the
dark. They had no idea that such processes are
underway.
Why? Because: They loved the status-quo and were in great comfort.
Sutra 18: What all these have to do with me?
It keeps you prepared and provokes you. It just opens another window
in your mind which had not seen anything other than equipments and
technical books, LEDs and racks, Towers and excels sheets, PFAs and
cubicles. These all are at the very low end of the organizational
structure. They are imporant but not decisive.
c. Since you are young, you have the greatest advantage with you:
Time. You have more metabolistic propellant. Use that judicously.
This will help you to choose proper department/position where you can think
about putting yourself in the ring.
The telecom network in India is the fifth largest network in the world. Presently,
the Indian telecom industry is currently slated to an estimated contribution of
nearly 1% to India’s GDP.
What is it?
Telecom is a transmission over a distance for the purpose of communication. As
on today 2009, the modes of communication and business verticals are:
Outsourcing/Consulting business
Voice business in India has already surprised the world due to its sheer number of
consumers and it has already attracted competition across the world. Now, let us
examine what exactly is voice business and what type of companies are drawn
into it.
Wireline
Wireline: in its good old days: In simple term, it is our very popular landline
phone, available in every home. This service was provided by BSNL/MTNL across
India. And look at India 15 years back, it was the only mode of voice
communication in India.
The Service Provider connects their nearest exchange to your phone through
cable (there are many connection and distribution point from exchange to your
home). And then different exchanges are connected to each other in parent child
mode (Child exchange connects to parent and parent to their parent). And based
on the numbering plan allotted to each line the traffic from one number to
another number is routed from exchange to exchange.
Magnified Picture:
From the viewpoint of home user, all cable connects to the nearest exchange.
Gradually all exchanges connect to its parent exchange. Its something like water
from different pipe is put into a bigger pipe and sent to destination and then
again redistributed to different small pipes. In technical terms it is called mux-ing
and demux-ing. The equipments used in this take all calls and route the same
through one pipe( having similar characteristics and in the same way from taking
all call out of the same pipe and route to different destination. And voice switches
(used for routing the call) and Policy configured in switches (identification of
destination path based on the number dialled). In a broad sense these are the
boxes/equipments used for wireline communication. Hardware of these boxes
service provide don’t develop by themselves neither they have the expertise to
maintain (this maintenance is not the day to day activity of regular configuration
in the boxes; this is maintenance of hardware fault).
Boxes are ordered from Vendors who manufacture the hardware, few names:
Once Service providers have bought these boxes, one has to configure and
maintain the same.
As a thumb rule, one time configuration is done by vendor and the add-on will be
done by the service provider or by the vendor itself for which they charge the SP
(Service provider).
Teams involved
Let’s appreciate the different types of team that are by and large built, to run the
Voice Business in service provider standpoint.
The NOC team: monitors connectivity and triggers field team for any
link failure and check equipment health and update vendor about
outages
Billing team: generates bill for customer based on your plan (they call
it), after the data is received from the billing system and sent to
customer for payment. Though it is not of much interest but still
thought about sharing, the node used for charging is called “HLR”.
HLR means Home Location Register is a reference node for all Billing,
Tracking and ownership issues.
All of these teams work in sync and this model get change based on company to
company and time to time.
This practice always creates insecurity and dread among employees (:)-) and top
management happily calls it restructuring.
Previosuly, the same line was used for voice as well as data communication.
When the cable is connected to the handset the communication mode is Voice,
and when to Modem the mode shifted to data.
After dialling and handshaking process, once the customer is authenticated, you
are connected and ready to use your supported applications like browsing/mailing
from your supported node (your Personal Computer). So the gist is that the
service provider needs to have another setup which supports data
communication. In this case the setup is your personal computer. And how to
identify which call is made through the end box is for voice purpose and which
one is for data purpose? Same is already shared and it is the number service
provider allocates to data users. These numbers are connected to the box which
is capable of understanding data packet.
There are a lot of devices used for successful end-to-end data communication, to
name a few: RAS (where the dial-in numbers are terminated at service provider
end), radius (Authentication or access to data network), DNS (used for browsing),
Server (use to keep customer information in terms of billing and login details),
switch (node used for connecting different devices), router (used for traffic
distribution).
Here also the same concept of vendor and service provider applies which we have
already discussed. Now let’s glimpse on the teams that are mixed up in service
provider for Data communication
The product team: who select vendor based on pricing and other
parameters based on the requirements received from planning team
and coordinate with them.
Billing: team who generates bill for customer based on your plan
(they call it), after the data is received from the billing system and
send it to customer for payment.
Sale/Presale team
These teams can further be drilled down to smaller team and have their individual
vertical which works with each other in tune(Is it? refer to the first half of our
discussion).
Vendors:
You have already understood that vendor’s job is to supply equipments for new
requirement and replaces/rectifies in case hardware failure of already deployed
boxes in live network. That’s it, no, they do lot more than that, let us explore:
Then the team for tracking the replacement for faulty material
and ensuring despatch of new or rectified node.
Have you thought that each and every node requires software
to operate (operation prudence)? Vendors do have their
software team to code. As the hardware model keep on
upgrading hence the software model also need to keep up.
These companies have their software centre built in India (India
is good in it) and outside India as well.
This is the vendor setup as on 2002-3 in India. Now let’s survey current scenario in
wireline Business.
WIRELINE BUSINESS
Not many changes have been incorporated in wireline business model due to its
downward demand among customer. Customer needs more now; the base
requirement of transferring 4 KHz across wire had become very common. It is
available for granted. Face value is now the feature set given with the product,
attractive plans, browsing bandwidth, SMS, caller tune are the main focus. Hence
the data services have become strong. New nodes are introduced for making the
above features available to consumer. The only problem in wireline is absence of
one of the very important features which leads to evolution of another business -
Wireless Business Model.
That’s it all for Wireline business.
Wireless Business
This is very popular model as on date in Indian economy - players (Service
providers) are healthy in terms of profit margin even at the time of writing this,
when market is traumatized with the hit of so called recession, this market is
untouched and profit is there for everybody. And analysts still believe this will
persist for at least 20 years. This market is yet to mature.
Service providers (e.g. Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, Reliance, Idea, Tata Indicom etc),
who have the license from India government to provide, mobile services to
consumers. And the setup is that customers use mobile with the SIM card. This
card is unique for each and every service provider. The phone connects to nearest
base Station for that service provider, this is called BTS, these BTS are again
concentrated to BSC and then many BSC are uplinked to MSC and MGW. These
MGW and MSC’s are interconnected for carrying call form one location to
another. In this model most of the service providers have outsourced the entire
business processes to Vendor ( e.g. Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia-Siemens
Network…). The hardware of all nodes supplied by vendor, the connectivity is
maintained by vendor, safeguarding is done by vendor, backend support given by
this vendor.
Team involved in these services in Vendor side: Sales and presales team to get the
order from operator. Same like wireline service.
Planning team who will plan in location for deployment and deployment
team who will go to the site and install/integrate node. The next step is to
make it live.
Then maintenance team, vendor needs to have the technical team who will
coordinate with operator on fault update received from NOC team.
Then the team for tracking the replacement for faulty material and
ensuring smooth despatch of new or rectified node.
Have you thought that each and every node needs software to operate
(operation prudence). Vendor does have their software team to code these.
As the hardware model keeps on upgrading hence the software model also
needs to keep up. These companies have their software centre built in India
(India is good in it) and outside India as well.
The team that identifies the modification required hardware/software
based on the demand from customer (here operator’s are the customer for
vendor) and develop/test the same in the LAB are called R&D team. The
R&D centre is normally outside India.
The only division which is still with operator is customer service, where
all different types of customer complaint land. And the call is forwarded
to different department in Vendor, based on the nature of complaint.
And thus they can track the service standard provided by vendor,
whether same is as per the Service Level Agreement (SLA). Penalty is
imposed on Vendor if the SLA breach occurs.
The coordination/connectivity between different operators is based on policy
circulated by telecom ministry.
Data Communication
The next type of telecom business admired across country is Data. It is electronic
transmission of information that has been encoded digitally (as for storage and
processing by computers). It is mainly the high speed data exchange. Even your
very popular internet browsing is one type of data communication.
Example: Your yahoo mail box is stored in form of data in yahoo server
(computers with high storage and processing power) and internet is the
communication mode through which same is made available to you in your
personal computer. And once it reaches your PC we use different application to
make it fit to be seen using IE/Mozilla Firefox.
Technology
Now most of the companies want to transact data among their different offices
which are very critical to their business and some are sensitive information, and
they need safe transaction. They don’t want to merge their data with common
internet. They need dedicated line.
But to have something dedicated will surely cost the consumer (In this case the
companies) and they don’t want to do that as well. They use something called
Virtual Private network (VPN). Dedicated but running on shared media.
VPN are again of different type. There are so many types of it, overlay, point to
point, dedicated, shared etc. The service providers in India for data
communication are Tata Communication, Reliance, Bharti, Sify, BSNL/MTNL
(Government Operator) etc. The market shares are by and large distributed
among them. Here also again the same model vendor provides all the Hardware
and AMC but mostly the monitoring team stays with Service provider in Data
Communication. And obviously customer service.
These service providers have divided their business focus for two types of
customers. Corporate (Who take big pipe of Bandwidth from service provider
across country for their different offices for internal communication (VPN) and
Internet) and Retail (Home users). For home users the setup is same as voice
business, the “Triple A” model (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting).
The Data teams, in Service Provider end are,
The product team who selects vendor based on pricing and other
parameters based on the received requirements from planning team.
Billing team who generates bill for customer based on your plan(they
call it), after the data is received from the billing system and send it
to customer for payment
Here we have not gone into the details of hardware and technology, and we don’t
require this as of now.
The Vendor model is already discussed; it’s the same out here in data Business as
well. When we call it data, it’s the 0 and 1 which can be transmitted over wire. It
can be anything, even it’s your video, applications convert it to 0 and 1,
transmitted over wire and again the conversion takes place to make it to visible
and audible application. Only thing you have to ensure is quality of service,
minimize the effect of delay and jitter, which is predestined while using the
shared media. That’s all right, today’s hardware are well capable of it.
Some of the big corporate, have their own data team, mainly the centralized
team. These teams coordinate with service providers to ensure speedy resolution
of outages and maintain quality of service to their end users. The same team is
also responsible for internal network maintenance and setup.
Outsourcing/Consulting business
In today’s world communication is a must need criterion for each and every
company irrespective of the business model they are in. But they have expertise
in their own field and not in communication technologies. And rightfully why
should they bother about, what sort of equipment is required in communication,
what is the hardware, communication mode (VPN or plain vanilla Internet) and
their maintenance. But someone needs to answer this. Answer comes from those
companies who are into these business models. They are called consulting
company. They provide expertise, they plan, they install, configure, monitor the
network, maintain hardware. Only thing Mother Company has to bother is for
payment. Companies like HCL, Wipro, Accenture, MBT, Infosys, and TCS etc are
best examples of those who pursue this kind of business models.
This is all about telecom business, so many types of business models so many
companies, so many teams among them. It’s tough to recall lets summarize in
form of flow, for easy visualization.
After all these discussion you have got fair enough idea of these model, company,
and department/section. You know the sutras to handle office conflict and stay
smart and you know the model which exactly fit to your choice.
While we thought of writing the book, we thought of asking the feedback of some
of the telecom professionals with regards to the content, architecture and
relevance of the book. Many professionals obliged. Below is an excerpt from one
of them, which is representative as well as comprehensive:
While I completely subscribe to the central theme put forth in the E-book about lack of relevant
business dynamics and knowledge a telecom engineer possess when he enters a professional
organization, I think this problem is not unique to the Telecom sector but is a problem in all
other professional domains in India.
Systemic:
Disconnect between academics and the professional world. Some surveys indicate that only
40% of the engineering graduates in India are employable. This is proven with the fact that
most IT players in India have training programs designed for 6-8 months for fresh graduates;
same is true with the BPO/ KPO and Airline industry.
However no such thing exists in the telecom sector except for the 2-3 days of induction training
which happens in most organizations.
My sense is there is an urgent need for an institution like a finishing school in the Telecom
sector which bridges the gap between the academic and professional worlds. [May be this is a
good business opportunity!!!!!] and helps fresh graduates understand their personal
preferences and aptitude in the telecom vertical and get them the right placements. [I know i
sound very idealistic, as for most graduates the key factors while accepting an offer letter is the
monetary benefit and care a damn to check if they have an aptitude for the offered job]. Again I
am trying to drive home the point that people tend to look at the short-term gains vis-a-vis
looking at the long-term picture.
Socio-cultural:
I mean no offence to particular communities in India, but certain sections of the society do not
inculcate the idea of entrepreneurship as a socially acceptable practice and hence curb the risk
taking ability of an individual. The individual mind is not tuned to look at the big picture. This in
my opinion hugely restricts one's ability to grasp the business aspects of a particular job profile
in the organization.
To a large extent, I, believe that we are now addressing the above phenomena by having
entrepreneurship cells in institutes like IIM's and IIT's as well role models of first generation
entrepreneurs like Mr. Narayan Murthy.
I personally do not think the Sutras mentioned by the author would have drastically changed
my approach in my career, had it been published before however I think they may act as good
guidelines for a fresh school graduate.
Personaly I am a strong believer in the theory of mean reversion and I have tried my best to put
that in practice. Let me elaborate: [I may sound like a stock analyst], but this is true with for an
individual as well.
The theory of mean reversion suggests that in a free market, prices tend to eventually move
back towards their historical means or averages. [You will always have periods of
underperformance and exuberance: to give an analogy there will always be periods in which
asset bubbles are created whether its real estate, stocks, commodities etc due to supply-
demand constraints, but over a long term the prices tend to move towards the historical mean].
I, believe that for an individual to succeed professionally one needs to have a skill [the skill can
be soft as well] which is short in supply and hence you are able to outperform the historical
mean of the broader peer group/ competition in monetary as well as knowledge terms.
The question is how does one crystallize or narrow down on one's ability or USP which will help
the individual to differentiate him from the competition. My sense is that an individual hungry
for success and knowledge will always find a way out to realise his or her potential.
Review by a non-industry observer and writer. Reviewer Sucharita is an alumnus
of Presidency College Calcutta and a teacher, mother, writer and reviewed the
pre-published text for Pentasect . Sucharita can be contacted at
sarkarsucharita@gmail.com
The title of the book immediately intrigues with its incongruity. Telecom, being a modern industry, and
the ancient wisdom of the ‘sutras’ do not seem to belong together. In fact, these forcibly juxtaposed
words seem as mismatched as the author seemed to be in the telecom sector. This incongruity is further
reinforced when we are first taken through a PPM (Pre processing Module), a distinctly modern
management terminology, before plunging into the ancient traditional world of the ‘sutras’.
The fact that the author declares the e-book to be ‘in proviso’ seems to be a tongue-in-cheek metaphor
for the always-in-progress-but-never-completed nature of the Indian telecom industry.
Major portions of the book seem to be written with tongue firmly in cheek. The writer himself confesses
that he has been “sarcastic”, and his dry wit is directed towards dissecting the employer-employee
relationship.
This relationship is based on attrition, and not affection. The writer cautions the employee from feeling
any sort of reassuring smugness in his chosen career, because, as his analyses and experiences show,
the employer is always ready to exploit the employee, much as the galaxy overshadows individual stars.
To avoid annihilation and exploitation by this monolithic behemoth, the writer offers his prescription to
the employee.
He offers an age-old solution, how the cobra outwits the elephant. If the giant telecom company is like
the elephant, the telecom engineer/employee must be like the snake – and have ‘the serpent power’ of
patience, adaptability and ability to ‘protect his reputation’.
Told through a series of meandering, serpent-shaped sutras, the ‘gutter-level advice’ (as the author
terms it in Sutra 11) highlights innovativeness and a willingness to learn, adapt and take one’s chances.
The relevance of this advice is not limited to the telecom sector alone, it is applicable as a survival guide
in any corporate jungle.
And the author offers himself as the best proof of the validity of his sutras. As he says in Sutra 5, ten
years after his telecom stint, he is the CEO of his own company. He has stopped being an assembly-line
‘utility item’ and has carved his own niche. When such experience speaks, we feel bound to listen.
In this e-book, the author also shares his experience about customers in the Telecom sector. As he says
in Sutra 3, it is very important to ‘understand people’s behaviour’ and this may be done by observing
the Company-customer dynamics. This is examined with wit and incisive humour, as when the author,
in the PPM, reveals the ‘alphabet-soup’ gibberish which managers use to impress and befuddle the
complaining customer.
The customer-Company dynamics is exposed in greater detail in Sutra 13 and 14, where the author
exposes the panic-measures taken by the company to deal with customer boredom, and how the
expectations of the customers are frustrated in the call-centre experience. Again, the validity of the
exposure is not limited to the telecom industry alone, but to the entire corporate sector as a whole.
As the author focuses on innovativeness throughout the book, it is only appropriate that the structure
of the Sutras would also have some innovation. This comes in the form of a bridge – a “crossover or
cross-talk sutra” between Sutras 13 and 14.
Thereafter, the author analyses the modern recessionary crises (“The Banking Crisis of 2008” – Sutra
16) which was caused in part by the huge un-repayable loans taken by companies from banks. From this,
he draws a conclusion that even small individual entrepreneurs should not get into debts. This is indeed
valuable advice.
In Sutra 12, the author pertinently asks, “Are you bored in your office/work?” This is the type of person
who will find this book full of interesting suggestions and benefit most from them. To use boredom as a
launch-pad for self-improvement and self-enterprise – that is what The Telecom Sutras is essentially all
about.
Appendix II: Acknowldgement and Thanksgiving
Special Thanks to Reshmin and Sucharita for their time and effort to give a
feedback which we think is more of a part of the book rather than anything else.
Hence we have included in toto the same.
To Koel, previous colleague of both of us, who had been involved with the project
since its begining and she had been instrumental in making the feedback process
happen. We stand grateful.
Wordsmith Communication and Pentasect Team for their support in making all
these texts coming in some structured format.
To Chandrani, my wife who had provided me with the environment conducive for
a task, like writing a book.