E-Mail Vendors in India
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IntroductionFor a country that is supposedly a "developing" one, or a "third world country", India has a surprising number of vendors marketing high tech solutions. And the market is excellent, with a pretty stupendous growth rate.
As far as the Indian computer world is concerned, this has been largely confined to "you-can-touch-this" goods - i.e. computer hardware. Over the years, software has also begun making its mark - today, the phrase "legal software" is no longer treated as corporate blasphemy.
But now, a completely new market has opened up, catering not to computer buyers but to computer users - a market that just two years ago would have seemed like a figment of someone's imagination - the Electronic Mail market.
1994 can justifiably be called "The Year of The Modem" in India - for the first time, modems approached the top of everyone's wishlist of "most wanted" peripherals. This is actually a trend that started way back in 1993, but really became noticable in 1994, when the number of modem vendors rose dramatically between late 1994 and early 1995. Thousands of modems were sold in 1994-95, but unfortunately, not all of them were bought for the intended purpose - most people bought them for the sole purpose of faxing.
But as time went by, more and more modem users began looking for serious alternatives to the fax. This was especially true for people who were under pressure from their contacts abroad to modernise their communication facilities.
Overnight, Electronic Mail became the item at the very top of everyone's wishlist - and luckily, they had a number of options open to them.
About the ReviewWe review here six of the Indian E-Mail vendors. Two others - IC Net and GEMS.400 are not included because they did not respond when we repeatedly asked them for information about their services.
Our review parameters were fairly simple. While most vendors would have liked us to review them on the basis of their services and features, we chose not to do that. Reviewing an E-Mail service on the basis of whether they have E-Mail or not does sound a bit strange - a customer would assume that such a service is provided.
Instead, we chose to look at them from the single-user perspective - the non-corporate end-user who has a computer, a modem and a phone line, and wishes to avail of the vendor's services.
With this in mind, we placed a lot of weightage on the ease of use - both at installation time and at time of use. We also looked at documentation provided by the vendor, as well as functional parameters such as roving passwords and additional facilities (non-email facilities such as information services, databases, etc.).
Inter-Vendor ConnectivityThe bug-bear of Inter-vendor connectivity has been around for some time. While at one time it was assumed that the DoT did not allow mail-exchange between vendors, we now know that this is not the case. The fact that E-Mail vendors are not exchanging mail is a pure "dog-in-the-manger" decision taken by the vendors themselves.
This is a rather perplexing problem. Currently, if users of service A wish to send messages to users on service B, they have to do so via an international message costing nearly 10 times what an ordinary local message would have cost.
This naturally makes ANY Indian E-Mail service unviable if the a customer's primary prupose is to exchange mail with someone on another vendor's system. In fact, it is cheaper to contract with a foreign E-Mail service (such as CompuServe, which charges just $9.95/month for upto 90 messages, and on its own has a reach of more than 3 Million customers, not counting the addressees in other mail systems, such as the InterNet).
We would have been glad to report that at least negotiations are underway between vendors to resolve this - unhappily, this does not seem to be the case.
Finally, as always, we urge our readers to follow the "try-before-buy" method before selecting an E-Mail service. Merely reading a review and taking a buy-decision is not good enough. You have to check out whether the vendor will actually perform for you. Many times, vendors take different attitudes depending on whether they are talking to a single user or a large company wanting many accounts.
Here is a checklist you should follow while selecting an E-Mail vendor:
With this said, let us have a look at what is waiting for you out there in the market.
BIIT's aXcess was one of the earliest players of the E-Mail game in India, and through aggressive marketing have managed to capture a sizable portion of the market.
At the primary service level, aXcess offers the usual gamut of national and international messaging services, including electronic mail (via the Internet for international messages) and national fax and telex services.
Unlike most other services, which currently restrict themselves basically to E-Mail, aXcess attempts to offer a much wider range of services in addition to E-Mail. These include share market databases, online newspapers, BBS-like newsgroups (currently under testing), airline time tables, etc.
aXcess does not have an extensive leased line network spanning the country. This is not really a disadvantage, since they seem to have an efficient polling network in place (see sidebar "Establishing links"). A number of metro-based centres offer local dialup access, while users in other cities use INET as an access method (see sidebar "INET - the silent backbone"). Interestingly, users in non-metros do not have to have an INET account of their own for E-Mail access - aXcess provides that, too.
Users of this service have two options of using aXcess. The official way is to use the provided DOS-based software. An unofficial (and only recently semi-documented) way is to use a normal terminal program such as Telix or Procomm to connect to aXcess, though the functionality of this method is severely hampered by insufficient documentation or information from aXcess.
The aXcess software is a glitzy, DOS-based collection of pull-down menus, dialog boxes and text screens. Installation was smooth and very easy, thanks to an easy-to-use installation program that is usable even by a complete neophyte. Running the program gives you a nice VGA title screen, after which the main text-based menu driven program comes up.
And it is at this point that the brass shines through the gold-plating. The software is badly designed to say the least. Even an unreleased Beta of the "new and improved" version shows the same kludgy design.
Though there are buttons, menus and dialogs everywhere, the software cooly ignores the existance of the mouse found on almost everyone's table these days. Instead, users have to painfully tab through options, when a single mouse click would have done the job. Help screens were conspicious by their absence.
If this feels bad, wait till you actually begin to use the service through this software! There is no provision for preparing messages before logging in - you have to do it online. Nor is there a way to rapidly collect all messages and log off, then read the messages offline. You have to do everything online - an extremely slow and frustrating process. Though aXcess has been around for some time now, and has been receiving these complaints from its users, this problem has not been addressed.
To add insult to injury, recent notices to users state that mail would be automatically deleted if kept online for a period longer than a couple of weeks - yet aXcess does not provide a way of easily getting the messages down to the user's hard disk!
aXcess are not shipping a Windows version of their software, though they have been talking about one since IT Asia '94. The reviewer was shown a Beta version which had severe problems (including the fact that it was most un-Windows like in appearance and usage), and at the time of writing this review, the release date has not been intimated. No extra functionality was seen in the Windows Beta version - in fact, it was almost a direct translation from their DOS version.
Since most people will be using the service through the aXcess-provided software, the vendor would do well if they would scrap the entire current work (DOS and Windows based) and do a re-think and design.
Once you get used to the strange way of working of the software, things sort of fall into place. The interface keeps getting in the way, but if you manage to get to grips with it, you'll find aXcess functionally very useful.
Very few e-mail vendors let you send international mail as easily as aXcess - when you want to specify the address the mail should be sent to, it doesn't require you to fill in arcane and confusing X.400 "envelopes" - you simply enter the Internet address in the user@domain style, and that's it. Compared to the X.400 way of doing things, that was quite a relief.
Test messages sent from aXcess to international destinations (in this case the reviewer's Compuserve account) arrived without fuss. Delays were few and far between, and no message was ever lost. The reverse was also true (incoming mail from international destination reached safely). Nationally, things worked equally well.
aXcess does not easily support the transfer of non-text files. Users have to resort to UUencoding files (see sidebar "Sending 8 bit data over 7 bit services"), and even then things do not proceed smoothly, as the service seems to have problems with files exceeding 20-30KB in size.
A severe minus point is the fact that aXcess facilities are localised - you cannot operate your account from other cities. This is a major inconvenience if you travel a lot. A Bombay based person cannot, for example, log into the Delhi centre to pick up mail while passing through Delhi. In order to get this sort of functionality, aXcess needs to be told in advance so that the account can be enabled from Delhi. (see the sidebar "Roving Passwords")
aXcess is by far the cheapest of the commercial service vendors today - a startup account costs you Rs.2700 (including the Rs.1200 annual fee). National and international message costs were on par with DoT recommendations (which are followed by most vendors). Recently, a few modem vendors have begun bundling aXcess accounts with their modems without any apparant increase in price - a smart move by both the modem vendors and aXcess.
The package includes a few small manuals which in themselves were quite sufficient to get a user up and going, but the real gem was a little booklet that takes great pains in explaining the concept of E-Mail to the user - invaluable in the case of a new user who has not been exposed to E-Mail before. Kudos to aXcess on this one.
DaRT's India OnlineIndia Online is also one of the early players in the E-Mail service game, but with a twist. As openly admitted by the man behind India Online, Sanjay Patode, DaRT (a Dalal Street Journal undertaking) never targetted the E-Mail sector in its primary manifesto. Instead, it intended to cater to the growing demand for Stock Market information - an area its parent company is very active in. E-Mail was more or less "thrown in as a bait" to get more people online to the service.
India Online aroused considerable interest when it announced a flat fee of Rs.10,000 per annum for their services with no other charges, irrespective of the number of messages sent nationally or internationally. This included national faxes. Naturally, a lot of people sat up and took notice - international mail (charged at around Rs.18 per page by other vendors) can increase your usage bill considerably, but has no effect on your bill with India Online.
The service also offers a lot of other features, such as bulletin boards, real-time chat, shareware downloads, etc. apart from its data and email services.
Installing the front-end software was a problem, since it is assumed that an India Online engineer would do the installation - it is unlikely that users will be able to do this on their own.
To access the service, you have to use the Windows-only front-end software provided by India Online (there is no DOS version of this software). This is a icon-based, graphical interface that aims at making the service easy and quick to use.
However, the whole concept flops miserably because the software and functionality is pathetically slow and unreliable.
To begin with, connecting to India Online is a slow process - the dialup modems are only 2400 bps in speed. From the time of connect to successful login, be prepared to spend a couple of minutes - the system sometimes takes that long to validate you.
If you lose connection during the process, you are effectively locked out of the system - on your next connect you are told you are already connected elsewhere and hence cannot log in. Unless one of the system operators at India Online kills the previous login (a process that once took a fellow reviewer over a month before he was able to login again), you are locked out.
Once logged in, you begin experience tremendous delays. At one stage, it took this reviewer 8 minutes to retrieve one of the four messages waiting for him! Other services are also touch and go - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
There is also something seriously wrong with the international e-mail services. Messages take tremendous time to be delivered (sometimes getting lost altogether), and messages received by this reviewer on his Compuserve account had a weird addressing style that made it almost impossible to reply to the message. No messages sent by this reviewer to members of India Online were ever received by the addressees.
Another problem was the frequency by which India Online kept changing its delivery backbone. We have seen messages which indicated that the service was using UUnet (a competing email vendor) and ERnet (the non-commercial education and research network of the DoE) as a backbone. Each time it changed, everyone's email address also changed, making it very difficult to keep track of addressees.
India Online operates off a dedicated leased line network spanning the country. Operations are centralised at Bombay. Logins are also validated at Bombay, enabling users to operate their accounts from anywhere in the country.
In an informal survey of India Online users, many complaints came up. These included the incredibly slow operations, lost mail, lack of privacy (India Online happily lets people see the entire user list, resulting your being swamped with junk mail, as happened in the case of this reviewer), inconsistant e-mail and fax operations, illegible fax transmissions, etc.
When users questioned India Online about this, they were told that "the system is being upgraded" but were not told how long it would take for the problems to be resolved.
The documentation that accompanies the software is more of a shiny product brochure. Though it does attempt to be of help, it is hardly likely that a new user is going to find much useful information in it.
India Online offers binary file transfers, but how useful this is is questionable, since only 2400 bps support is available, and this service is functional only to direct members of India Online - it is not possible to send binary files internationally.
CMC's CMCmailCMCmail is CMC's attempt at getting back into the e-mail service market, after messing up a tremendous opportunity with their IndoNet.
The service is based on the X.400 standard, and offers standard e-mail features, including delivery receipts. No official support is available for file transfers, though users could resort to UUencoding files.
Unlike aXcess and India Online, which are single-user oriented systems, CMCmail has the provision for handling multiple accounts from a site. To accomodate this, you have the concept of a system administrator and actual users - the system administrator creates and maintains the accounts, and also ensures the batch sending and receiving of mail. Users do not actually initiate the linkup to the email service.
CMCmail uses a DOS-based frontend - no Windows frontend is available. The DOS based frontend is actually a batchfile that calls the various components of the package.
The software is pretty minimalistic in nature - the main prohgram is a single menu bar on an otherwise blank screen. The prompts and help screens are not especially helpful.
The documentation consisted of a couple of photocopied sheets bound together. It is highly technical in nature, and was completely useless to a new user who needs help. For example, information given was insufficient to help a user unravel the mysteries of sending messages to international destinations that were not X.400 systems.
Sending message is a slightly convoluted process, involving the user having to enter a lot of information in an X.400 template (called an "envelope" in X.400 parlance). There were a lot of problems creating messages - the software kept complaining of insufficient memory, even when almost 620KB were free on the test system! In the end, we had to resort to creating the text outside the software, then sending the text file. Even a copy of the software that was delivered minutes before we closed the review did not function. We were told that the software required at least 600 KB free (in itself an improbable setup for the average PC), but even then, the software refused to work.
The communication part was also pretty unstable. The software assumed that the user's modem was hardwired to a particular configuration (one that is hardly used by anyone) - without this setup, the software refused to transfer messages. The CMC engineers who tried to rectify the problems were unable to do so despite repeated visits to our office. Messages that were transmitted experienced some delays - one message that was sent to the reviewer's Compuserve account arrived only after 24 hours! A reply message sent from Compuserve to the test account did not arrive.
A rather disconcerting factor is that CMC uses the DoE's ERnet as a backbone. Since ERnet is not supposed to cater to commercial setups of this sort, one wonders how long this can continue, and if it does, why. No other E-Mail vendor is allowed to make use of ERnet's facilities.
Sprint/RPG's SprintMailSprintMail has been touted as the "Rolls Royce" of the Indian E-Mail services.
Since SprintMail is basically an extension of a well-established Americal vendor, one would hardly expect to find the usual goofups one experiences with other Indian vendors - surprisingly, this is not quite true.
In terms of user-friendliness, SprintMail makes its mark. Shipping with software for both DOS and Windows, SprintMail is also the only one that pays any serious attention to documentation. The software comes with excellent manuals that are very clear, explain all concepts and procedures, includes quick-reference cards, and even the printing quality is excellent - these are by no means cheap photocopies.
Installing the programs (both DOS and Windows) was very easy - no probles were encountered at all. The well-written manual and smart installation software easily guided us through all the steps.
The DOS and Windows based software function more or less similarly. We used the Windows based package for our tests.
The software is well designed. Lots of speed-buttons on the tool-bar give you instant access to all functions. The editors and address lists were easy to use, and left no room for problems.
An interesting and appreciated feature is the one-button addressing - there are seperate buttns for InterNet, X.400 and other mail services, each one bringing up an appropriate template that rapidly guides the user through the addressing procedure. Custom termplates can also be designed.
Going online was also pretty easy - the package transmitted and received messages without user intervention. One problem we did face was occasional non-logins: though the modems connected, the required prompts did not appear and the package disconnected.
An extremely nice feature of the service is the fact that you need not use their software to connect - an ordinary communication program like Telix or Procomm can be used to send and receive mail. This is a boon for people who call from non-DOS machines or from varying locations.
SprintMail works through central operations - a login from any city results in your being connected to a central Tandem computer, so that all national messages are instantly available to the addressees.
International messaging faced a few problems initially - SprintMail explained that they had a few problems with their international gateway. This problem has since been resolved, and we received quite a few messages from SprintMail users in India on our Compuserve account. The headers clearly showed that the message transfer was fast, involving at the most a couple of hours delay.
SprintMail allows multiple users per site, grouping them by organisation, and the software allows for this. This makes SprintMail a pretty good choice for corporate setups.
UUnet IndiaUnpretentious. That is probably the one word that sums up UUnet India's operations.
UUnet's operations are simple - they offer e-mail. You have to access their services through a software that is not written by UUnet, but is in fact the public domain UUPC - a DOS based UUCP program. No documentation on setting up or operations are available apart from a photocopied manual that is completely incomprehensible to the average user. No fancy menus, no help screens - virtually nothing that would help a neophyte along.
The UUnet representative did tell me that they are working on a Windows based program, but we haven't seen it, so cannot comment. At this stage, one would be happy to receive a menu-driven DOS program.
Actually, ity isn't that bad. There are plenty of good DOS and Windows based UUCP programs in the public domain - why UUnet insists on delivering this kludge is beyond comprehension. As delivered, a user (even on DOS) without Unix knowledge is really left drifting.
The plus point UUnet has is that it offers UUCP - considered vital to the email industry because of its wide usage. UUCP is actually Unix based, but has been adapted to many other platforms, including DOS, Windows, OS/2, etc.
All E-Mail vendors in India have been promising UUCP connectivity, but so far only UUNet has delivered. This makes UUnet a great favourite with the technically away (or corporates who have technical, in-house capabilities). It is really surprising that to date, no other E-Mail vendor has addressed this issue.
In terms of functionality, UUnet is hard to beat. Messages are delivered virtually instantaneously anywhere in the world (or as fast as the Internet permits). This itself is a major plus point over many of the other vendors.
UUnet uses a combination of leased lines and dialups to keep its network moving in India. This means that you experience different levels of performance, depending on where you are located.
UUnet has widespread operations internationally - in fact UUnet India is only a small part of it. The activities are primarily Internet based (UUnet are Internet providers abroad), and have been in place for a long time. Despite this, UUnet does not currently offer any fancy features like faxing or Telex, unless you use some of the fax/telex gateways that exist on the Internet.
A massive minus point for UUnet is its costing. It charges Rs.8 per 1024 characters outgoing and Rs.4 per KB incoming. This is by far the highest in the market - with many vendors not charging for incoming mail at all. Recently, UUnet decided to further shoot itself in the foot by charging not only for volume but also for the number of accounts on customer's site - earlier, costs involved only volume, which made UUnet a very feasible solution inspite of the high volume costs. With this policy decision, UUnet's feasibility becomes questionable.
The high colume cost for incoming data also renders UUnet infeasible for subscribing to mailing lists from the Usenet. Technically, it is very easy (all you need to do is to send a message to the list server on the Internet, with the word "subscribe" in the body text), but costwise, this is prohibitive.
While UUnet carries a good reputation for its functionality, it is considered bad from the support point of view. We heard a few horror stories here in Bangalore which, while not being termed as representative of the general operation of UUnet, do point towards potential problems.
DataPro's XEEmailXEEmail was launched with a lot of fanfare as a service offered by Pune's DataPro. Initially, they offered only national mail, but recently announced international mail, too. However, this feature does not seem to be functional at this time - messages that Xee's staff was supposed to have sent to this review never arrived.
Though Xee's documentation implies availability of a DOS frontend, none was delivered, and queries about it indicate that there doesn't seem to be any. What we received was Windows based frontend.
"Windows-based" is a bit of a misuse in terms here, though. The Windows package seems to be a port of a text-based DOS package, and in fact, the communication part of XeeMail (the part of the program that actually calls the local XeeMail hub) is DOS based, using the ubiquous SLIP8250.COM to connect to the Xee server.
XeeMail is another X.400 based service, which means that e-mail addresses tend to fill up the visiting card they are printed on. The same applies to the addressing portion of the system - you have to fill out long forms with all sorts of information before the message is accepted.
Initially, we had a lot of problems gettings things to work. Paths are hard-wired in the package, so that you cannot have the package installed in a sub-directory of your choice. A later-arrival in the form of an installation program failed to function, and we finally had to ask for help from Xee's engineers to get things going. This too took some time - which implies that you can expect problems since the knowledge of the engineer is a key factor here.
Once we had things up and running, we were able to enter messages fairly quickly. No help was available from the manual (which in fact arrived only very late in the review process, and turned out to be more or less useless), but eventually, we were able to send and receive messages, though only at the national level.
XeeMail's approach is a bit puzzling. Their promotional literature gives one the impression of an "Electronic Courier Service". Their lackadaisical treatment of the all-important international mail feature is also puzzling - many of the other services treated this (correctly) as a prime requirement by their customers, and ensured that it was up and running (sometimes even before their national services were!).
In the recent past, XeeMail has been conducting "promo-blitzes" across the country, and have been picking up accounts, but unless they address the international mail problems, as well as their software's installation problems, they are bound to have a hard time.
Editor's ChoiceThe Editor's choice for E-Mail services goes jointly to Business India's aXcess and SprintMail.
aXcess gets the nod rather grudgingly. There is no question that the service works - in fact, works well. But aXcess should really scrap their entire front-end software development and start from scratch - this ime with end-user requirements in mind, rather than spending a lot of time on a glitzy interface that many times comes in the way. They should now build on the goodwill they have generated with their low-cost, high-functionaility service, by first of all delivering a usable front-end, and secondly by delivering the UUCP services they have been promising for so long.
SprintMail comes in a VERY close second. In fact, it would have been the sole winner if it wasn't for the steep entry price and initial problems with international connectivity. Their manuals are excellent, the support is good and the software is bugfree and highly usable - factors that make it a hot favourite with in the corporate e-mail race. Like aXcess, availability of UUCP accounts will make SprintMail a force to reckon with. Also, SprintMail is not currently offering additional services like aXcess does, though it has promised similar functionality in the near future.
The Bottom LineInspite of the rapid evolvement of the market in India, the E-Mail vendors have a lot to learn.
The "buzzword factor" that many of the vednors relied on initially to sell their services is slowly wearing off. Customers have become much smarter - they now know that try-before-buy is the approved way of contracting a service. If the service fails to deliver, the customer moves on.
Apart from aXcess and SprintMail, none of the others give too much attention to the "works-out-of-the-box" factor - the ability of the customers to install the software themselves without vendor assistance, and to get up and going. Both aXcess and SprintMail assumed nothng (including the directories they were installed to) and worked without a hitch first time we tried using them - none of the other managed to impress us with this.
The "dog-in-the-manger" attitude all of them are showing about inter-vendor connectivity is probably the biggest reason for people hesitating before taking the plunge. Resolve this, and watch India go online - fast.
All E-Mail services in India work around one of two ways of connecting across the country - the polling way or the leased line way.
The Polling Way:
In this form of operation, each node city has its own individual setup. All accounts are local to the city, and even national mail can be delayed for as long as three hours before it is delivered.
It works around the node cities calling each other (or a central arbitrating host) and exchanging mail packets. They do this on a periodic basis, depending on the amount of traffic.
The two biggest problems with this form are delays in mail delivery, and non-availability of roving passwords (see sidebar "Roving Passwords").
The Leased Line Way:
In this mode of operation, all nodes are connected to a central host (usually in Bombay or Delhi) via leased lines, and are online to the system 24 hours a day. A message posted by a user at one node immediately becomes available to the addressee at some other node. This also allows users to use their accounts from anywhere in India, making it very useful to people tavelling around the country along with their notebooks and modems.
The disadvantage is that the setup costs are extremely high, and if a leased line goes down, the node effectivey gets disconnected, blocking all mail to and from that node.
INET - the silent backboneMany of the E-Mail vendors have X.25 connectivity as well. They achieve this via India's very own X.25 network - INET.
INET allows users in cities that do not have a local node of the E-Mail vendor, to connect to the E-Mail service far cheaper than using long distance calls. This immediately widens the reach of the E-Mail vendor, giving them a much larger audience.
In India, aXcess, Sprint and India Online offer this facility. aXcess has the added advantage of the user not havng to have an INET account, since aXcess provides one as part of their service.
Roving PasswordsIf you are a frequent traveller and wish to continue using your E-Mail service whereever you go, make sure that your vendor offers you a roving password facility.
This means that you will be able to pick up your e-mail from anywhere in the country. Lack of it means that you will be able to pick up your mail only in the city where you have your account.
Sending 8 bit data over 7 bit servicesWhile all the services in India offer message capabilities, few of them allow you to send binary files. Yet you CAN send binary files via E-Mail, though the process is a bit kludgy.
To send a binary file via E-Mail, you have to use a process called UUencoding. This means that you use a programc alled UUencode to turn your binary file into text that is compatible with the e-mail service's message transfer mechanism, then sending this text file via the ervice. The receiver then uses a corresponding program (UUDECODE) to turn the text message back into the original binary file.
The programs UUencode and UUdecode are easily available on any BBS, and some e-mail vendors even suply it along with their software.
Copyright © 1995 PC Quest. All Rights Reserved.
Material may not be reproduced or distributed IN ANY FORM without express written permission. Contact the author at email address atul@vigyan.iisc.ernet.in for further information or comments.
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