Computers Today, December 1-15, 1998, Viewport

December 1-15, 1998 VIEWPORT

please.keep.it@simple.com

Even with a few million telephone numbers, we have made the system so complex.

S. Sadagopal

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Anine-year-old kid once asked me to explain the numerals printed in my visiting card. I explained with lot of fanfare that my phone number (91-80-6632450) has a country code "91" for India, STD code "80" for Bangalore, and "6632450" for my actual number. I then explained my funny looking E-mail address (ss@iimb.ernet.in)--my user ID "ss", node "iimb" for IIM Bangalore, network "ernet" for Education & Research NETwork, and the country "in" for India. And the kid was curious about why the E-mail address is so intuitive and easy to reconstruct whereas the phone number though logical was not intuitive.

The child's observation may not be apparent to many of us who have grown up with such non-intuitive phone numbers. That set me thinking. Indeed, the phone numbers in India are complicated. The STD code can be anywhere between two digits to five digits; the individual phone numbers can be three to seven digits long. The STD codes run to several pages often printed in such small print that locating them can be anything but a severe strain on our eyes.

I was wondering how the citizens of a much larger country like USA with hundreds of millions of phones cope with this complexity. Interestingly, they manage with a far simpler system! All phone numbers have a simple structure (3-digit area code, 3-digit exchange code and four-digit phone number). Any phonebook in the US has a single page that portrays all area codes (equivalent of our STD codes) on the map of USA. Adopting just this simple idea can save millions of pages every year for India. We can extend this logic to simlify the number structure of essential services like Police, Railways, Airport, Operator assistance, Fire alarm and Ambulance.

Why Complicate It

While we can partly understand the complications of telephone numbers in India due to the combination of electromechanical & electronic exchanges, we seem to have a knack of extending the same knots to E-mail addresses as well. Look at many of the E-mail addresses, you will find complications like "giasbg01.vsnl.net.in" to indicate Gateway International Access Service operating in Bangalore by VSNL. In some other city, VSNL would use "giasmd1" and not "giasmd01". The private sector E-mail providers in India are much worse than VSNL. Just look at Sprint-RPG or Wipro-BT E-mail address--shining examples of extreme complexity!

Interestingly, Hotmail with over 16 million users sticks to a simple structure such as sadagopans@hotmail.com, whereas VSNL has to invent such complexity even with 85,000 users! What a breeze it will be if all VSNL ID's have a simple structure such as userID@vsnl.net.in. In fact a VSNL ID in Bangalore cannot be used in Delhi unless you make a long distance call to Bangalore. When banks talk of providing "anytime, anywhere" service, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can provide such services so naturally. After all, the major VSNL nodes in the country ought to be connected with high-speed backbone so that user authentication from a node across the cities does not cause much delay! If properly planned, VSNL can boast of roaming services as well!

Maybe, we will learn the tricks of the trade. The new ISPs might address these issues and make things easier for the average Indian. This is important because the country has low literacy levels, and has a multitude of languages and scripts. Jaan Baan, the founder of BaaN Company, often talks of the real competitor as "complexity". It is true of not only ERP software but also the world at large.

The author is professor, Quantitative Methods & Information Systems at IIM, Bangalore.

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