Buying the parachute

Marten Pieters, head of Vodafone India, is well known for his sense of humour. So when he was asked at a recent investor conference why Indian telecom companies paid so much for spectrum, he said buying spectrum in India is like buying parachutes in a plane on fire. "There was no way any of the incumbent telecom companies could have avoided buying spectrum because our existing licences were expiring in a few months. What the government did was to start selling parachutes when the plane was on fire. So no wonder everyone who could have afforded it bought the parachute so as to jump out of the plane."