The customer is on top, and he is not about to let the service providers forget it.

The customer is on top, and he’s not about to let the service providers forget it.

Today’s Indian consumer is in a very powerful place when it comes to choosing his service providers. Just a few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for cablewallahs to declare monopoly over a certain area and threaten to slash any wires and destroy any equipment installed by competitors if residents were to take connections from them. Even if the cablewallah’s service was clearly inferior, those residents would have no choice. A few people who protested Gandhi-style by deciding to live without cable TV didn’t make the slightest difference. Today, the cablewallah can’t touch you if you put up a Direct-To-Home satellite dish on your roof. He can’t slash the radio waves coming in, and he dare not challenge the might of the organized corporate sector. What you’ve done is bypass the tyrant altogether.

Thankfully, the story is the same with other types of services too. Slow, bureaucratic government-run phone operators can’t afford to make you stand for hours in queues and wait months for a connection, because you can just walk to a mobile phone provider’s outlet and buy a new line over the counter. You don’t have to rely on them to lay a wire to your house anymore. MTNL and BSNL only really bothered to streamline bill payments and customer service after the mobile operators came in. And with seven or eight mobile operators in each city, you aren’t tied down there either. Once number portability is introduced, there won’t be anything stopping you from ditching an operator for poor service.

The story is improving when it comes to Internet services providers too. After over a decade of suffering with horrific speeds and expensive plans, that last-mile copper problem isn’t one anymore. ISPs are proactively laying optical fiber all over the country, and using WiMAX or equivalent equipment to deliver megabit-class connections to end consumers’ homes.

In each of these cases, the consumer has been empowered by wireless technologies which free them from the corporations or individuals who used to have de facto control over service delivery. None of them can afford to be complacent because in most towns and cities, their monopolies have been or will very soon be shattered. On the other hand, the consumer can afford to be incredibly fickle, dumping his provider and choosing another if he isn’t satisfied. No wonder DTH, phone and Internet companies are constantly splashing out on advertisements and offering heavy discounts for long-term schemes!

We’re well into an era that’s amazingly different to what we had just five or ten years ago. The customer is on top, and he’s not about to let the service providers forget it.