I don't think I would be overly concerned with what one guy in a casino said. There are dozens of articles that you can pull from the internet chronicling the enormous problems facing India's telecom infrastructure. It is so bad that the regulatory entity in India has had to resort to fining the cell phone companies for dropped calls. That is not to say that it hasn't been extremely frustrating watching the stock price fall with so little news from the company. I still think the positives outweigh the negatives at this point. I think 5BARz is trying to solve a lack of operating cash problem without having to give up too much of the company with the solution to that problem. Negotiations seem to be going very slowly. Remember that Danny Bland is the largest shareholder and has the most to lose with over 40 million shares.
Among the many positives is this quote from the Kaynes Technology website:
Kaynes Technology India Private Ltd, Mysore, located around 150 kms from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, is a highly acclaimed and awarded domestic player in the Electronics System & Design Manufacturing Services segment with a global footprint. Kaynes will be manufacturing and supplying the ‘ROVR’ for 5BARz India markets. Kaynes, as a result, will emerge as the exclusive supplier of ROVR products to 5BARz India and become one of the largest manufacturers of WiFi hubs in India over the period of the agreement.
It was announced that Kaynes is also supplying manufacturer's financing.
Here is an article that is a good representative of the many articles that can be found with a simple search.
Rama Lakshmi for the Washington Post
Tuesday 29 September 2015 06.14 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 21 February 2017 12.48 EST
In the past decade, nearly one billion people have been connected to wireless phone services as part of India’s mobile communications revolution, making it the second-largest mobile phone market in the world. But a recent combination of rapidly rising growth and bad infrastructure has turned India’s dreams of wireless phone expansion into a nightmare.
Anguish over dropped calls has cut across income levels and social strata and led to unkind jokes about the country as the “call-drop nation”. The government-run national consumer complaints help line reported that dropped calls ranked near the top of the list of all grievances in July and August. The issue was the cover story of a national news magazine in July. And a TV station has launched a social media campaign called #NoCallDrops. Crowd chants 'Modi, Modi' as Indian PM winds up whirlwind Silicon Valley tour Read more
The problem of poor mobile quality came to a head in recent weeks in the nation’s capital after dozens of transmission towers were invalidated by the municipal corporation. The nation’s top three phone makers were called before a parliamentary committee looking into the problem, and the prime minister, Narendra Modi, asked his officials to fix it.
Radhika Misra, 41, a businesswoman who works from her home in the upscale suburb of Gurgaon, said dropped calls and patchy signals are affecting her discussions with clients.
“This is hugely frustrating,” Misra said. “I have to sit in one corner of my home and tilt my neck to 45 degrees in one direction to catch the signal.”
The trouble, technology analysts said, is threatening Modi’s pet project called Digital India: an $18bn plan to connect India’s cities and villages to the internet with a combination of broadband connectivity and Wi-Fi. Today, most of India’s 350 million internet users access the web on their mobile devices.
“India’s mobile network is under tremendous stress,” Prasanto K Roy, a technology consultant, said. “And if we fail to address mobile connectivity problems, it will directly hit the government’s Digital India initiative.” Mobile connectivity is key because the number of landlines and broadband users has remained stagnant, with Wi-Fi hot spots few and far between, he said.
For decades, getting a land line in India meant endless waiting and struggle. Even today, 26m landline phone connections exist in the country.
But the pace of mobile phone connections has grown at lightning speed, jumping from 48m a decade ago to 980m today.
The boom was celebrated as a bridging technology that helped India “leapfrog” over traditional and more expensive means of communication. In India, more people have mobile phones than access to electricity, roads, computers or television.
The mobile phone was touted as the magic bullet for myriad problems. It acted as a bank in far-flung villages. It became a powerful tool to submit online complaints about trash, open manholes and corrupt officials soliciting bribes. It informed farmers about crop prices and coming storms, and offered apps to boost women’s safety.
But in recent months, the country’s mobile phone system has begun to show strain.
The problem has become so widespread that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, a government watchdog group, said telephone companies would have to compensate consumers for the dropped calls – an unusual step in a nation where companies are rarely fined.
Government officials blame the telecoms industry for the problem.
“The problem of call drops is a symptom of a complete and brazen disregard of consumer rights by the telephone companies,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of parliament. “The call-drop situation is a warning bell for policymakers who want to transform the country digitally.”
An audit report last year by the regulatory board found that most of the telephone companies reported the incidence of dropped calls “way above” the 3% cap, board chairman Ram Sewak Sharma said.
“The companies are going on adding millions of customers without investing in infrastructure and upgrading technology,” Sharma said.
But telephone company officials said they must work with the world’s lowest-spectrum bandwidth, or the radio frequency bands used to transmit data. “In India, the government agencies like police, military, railways and airlines are squatting on more than 60% of spectrum,” said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India. “We carry an inordinate amount of traffic on just one-third of the spectrum that most global companies have.”
A public health scare among middle-class Indians has also compounded the situation. Communities across India say they do not want mobile phone transmission towers in their densely populated neighbourhoods because they fear that radiation may harm their health. Mumbai city has banned towers near schools and hospitals. And in the past year alone, about 1,700 sites have been shut down across India, said Mathews.
What good is a cellphone if my family can’t reach me in a crisis?
Amid the finger pointing between government and industry, ordinary consumers are feeling the brunt of the problem.
In a Delhi neighborhood, residents said they must roam the streets to find a spot where their mobile phones can connect. Shop owners complain their business is down.
“Patients cannot reach me when they urgently want medicines delivered to their homes,” said Atul Gupta, who runs a pharmacy.
Across the road, a police station is without any mobile phone connectivity, and officers have taken to standing under a tree outside to catch a signal.
“My beat constables cannot get through to me easily,” said Govind Chauhan, the station house officer. “I miss crucial information from informers because the call drops.”
In Gurgaon, Misra got a call from her eight-year-old son’s football coach. He was trying to tell her that her son had hurt his knee, but the calls kept dropping.
“My son was in a lot of pain,” she said. “What good is a mobile phone if my family can’t reach me in a crisis?”
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