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To: bananawind who wrote (13066)	7/28/1998 2:28:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

To all - "transactional immunity" is VERY wide-based (wide band?) immunity. (I just got the word (via our Qualcomm phone) from my wife). Jon.

To: bananawind who wrote (13066)	7/28/1998 3:31:00 PM
From: JMD	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

jim, your post on India is completely in line with a guy I used to follow on Motley. An Indian national with family still there, he had to post very carefully (and very anonymously). Obviously a very educated dude with "high up" links to current Indian muckety-mucks both economic and, especially, political. His message never varied: corruption out of control, stop, end of report. Ain't no way to get nothin done even if you have greased everybody in sight. Very sad. He saw no end to it. Evidently LOR backed off a project there citing the need for "more normative conditions" or some such delicately phrased PR lingo for "these guys are bandits and we're out of here". Since we're talking about a fairly significant hunk of the world's population, this is no laughing matter. Mike Doyle

To: bananawind who wrote (13066)	7/28/1998 3:59:00 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

>> Also, I was not aware that there might be a middle class as large as 250 million as stated in the article. Can anyone confirm this estimate?>> Psychologically, there is 250 million strong Indian middle class. Yes. 250 million with the kind of aspirations that a middle class person has anywhere. But in terms of disposable income to spend on material goods of the kind seen in Western countries, only probably 25-50 million will qualify. And then things work differently in India. Take the example of phones. Although tens of millions of Indians would like a phone line at home, it is still very difficult to get. Six to 10 months wait is not uncommon. However, this is still an order of magnitude better than the situation was 10 years ago. One of the greatest successes of the semi-Govt. owned Public Telephone Companies has been the public phone booth system. Phone booths in India are manned. But they have a smart card system to track billing for all calls, local, long distance (STD), and International (I.S.D). Walk into any bazaar and you will see large sign boards for STD,ISD service. The biggest advance in last 10 years - one can call anywhere in the world from any small town in India. Previously, emergencies such as illness or death in the family meant using telegram (I mean the morse code kind). And everybody dreaded the moment when the mailman knocked and said that he had a "taar" (wire). I just got back from Bangalore, India. The latest addition is the cybercafe or "cyberdhaba" in the neighbourhood. Access is not cheap for Indian standards. About a dollar per hour. A few young enterpreneurs had extended their single home phone line to the "cybercafe" and served four sessions/computers with one phone line and a proxy server. Expansion plan were on hold because they were still waiting for a phone line approval that had been applied for 6 months ago. But, it was always occupied, with new internet afficiandos checking their "yahoo" and "hotmail" accounts. My theory is that about 20 percent of the free e-mail accounts belong to Indians. Potential growth to 250 million middle class. Getting back to the point, WLL would definitely alleviate the phone problem. By the way (a plug), our indian office just finished the web-site (very reasonable price) for Bharti Telecom, the company mentioned in the article on cellular growth in India. Here it is bhartibt.com