Do Not Disturb

One of the most recent emerging developments in the telecommunication sector that really caught my eye apart from the brand new tablets, 2g-3g scams, is the ‘Do Not Disturb’ registry. Though it was introduced way back, I think of late, it has been functioning quite well. I guess I did register with the DND service about 15 months back and realized that in India, it takes at least a minimum of 2 years for a set system to function properly. Till recently a minimum of 3-4 sales executives will push in their effort to sell their cards and vouchers by calling at all times in the day. Now what is happening is (in the past 2-3 weeks is) corporate houses have started sending text messages stating that your number has been registered in the DND category. We request you to reply to this test message to continue receiving our texts. Wow!

Now I think the Indian Government and the Telecommunication Consortium will join hands in setting up a ‘DNDv.1 – Do Not Disturb those in Do Not Disturb Directory’, something similar to the service pack 1 of Windows 7. I believe that the telecom companies here might lose a premium which they regularly attain from various commercial houses for putting together a list of numbers. Let us take a case here. Assuming Vodafone is having a total of 10 million customers in the last 5 years which makes it almost 548 new connections every day, and Vodafone charges 50paise for every text message sent, and if all these customers are in the DND directory, Vodafone loses around half a million INR from a single corporate house. So these telecom companies have also started adopting sustainability. Here they make sure, text messages to the users are sent reminding them about the DND Registry (Ethical Behavior) while also, putting in a novel strategy at place to make for the lost returns. Even, I somehow have a feeling that all the text messages and other forwards floating around in India, all the dumb jokes, puzzles, riddles, etc., are fed into the networks by the telecom companies themselves, just in an attempt to boost their revenues. I read some time back that companies providing antivirus software for desktops feed their own in built program capable of acting as a virus onto the PC’s through a network and then come up with a solution that their competitor cannot mitigate. You generate a problem, you bring in a solution and you grow rich. Keep all your money in the big brown bag inside the zoo. Isn’t that a sight?