Every time I log onto a new Internet account I'm forcibly reminded of the World War II fable about the correspondence chessplayer who was arrested for sending strange coded messages on the lines of "13 Ne5-f7". ISPs like VSNL and Satyam issue temp user-ids on the lines of 234xy678z6 etc and assigned passwords are also alpha-numeric monstrosities designed to challenge the memory of a Pentium.
New kid on the ISP block, the Bharti-British Telecom online service Mantra, also serves up alpha-numeric soup. Instruction three on the flimsy that contains the Mantra user ID and password tells the user to memorise these strings and then destroy the sheet. Instruction five however informs the user that he can instantly change Id and password to something more human.
Mantra is one of the bigger ISP operators in a market set to explode. According to estimates, Internet dial-up connections will triple this year from the current 2,00,000 plus and access will be provided even at rural levels. Cable operators like Siticable are already wiring up their TV networks for warp speed access. Bharti-BT has reportedly laid over 100 km of Optic fibre cable for better bandwidth in the national capital region.
When Mantra launched in Delhi with a high-profile campaign, consumers in the national capital region already had the luxury of a choice between three big dial-up ISPs in the shape of MTNL, VSNL and Satyam. Some areas such as Noida sectors 14 and 15A are already offering cable access.
With the proliferation of options, there are two ways ISPs can go in search of customers. They can fight price-wars though here the advantage is currently clearly in favour of MTNL which already offers a 90 per cent reduction in local call charges at Rs 2/hr and intends to chuck in free phone connections as well the moment Trai permission comes through. That price equation will eventually change in favour of the cable operator who is probably the only service provider geared to the standard global paradigm of flat monthly payment for 24-hour access. However, the initial cost of wiring up Rs 12,000 cable-modem devices will daunt the average consumer.
Other ISPs are not capable of offering of free/reduced local call charges since they must pay off the government network. So in order to attract the extremely price-sensitive Indian user they offer many add-on services. The cable operators again have a potential advantage in that they can offer the gamut of web-TV entertainment services because of their far higher bandwidth capacities.
But amongst the dial-up vanilla ISPs, Satyam has already converted itself into a portal with content that varies from chat-rooms and online shopping to a compendium of Tamil poetry. Mantra will also offer chat-rooms and other content from the well-established British Telecom portal. On the anvil are e-commerce, Virtual Private networking and managed data-network options.
But the bottomline with an ISP will always remain fast, reliable, reasonably priced access to the Net. There can be too much ado about portals as the Microsoft network portal Msn.com has learnt after accquiring hotmail with the expectation that e-mail users will do their maximum browsing at the host site. An experienced user will always wander as he pleases. Even America Online AOL.com which is the best established brandname amongst portals barely turns a profit.
