The strike called by employees of the state-owned telecom giant, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), on Wednesday evoked a good response in the city with around 5,000 staff and executives staying away from work.
The joint committee representing various unions had on Tuesday decided to go on an indefinite strike in place of the earlier planned one-day strike. Talks between union representatives and telecom ministry officials have remained inconclusive despite parleying since Tuesday.
The nation-wide strike began at 6 am on Wednesday. Union officials will be meeting on Thursday to decide whether to continue with the strike. There have been no reports of disruption of BSNL services so far from around the city.
The strike is an outcome of the telecom ministry’s recent decision to go for re-floating of tenders for its capacity expansion plans. Under the previous tender passed in May this year, private foreign firms Nokia and Ericsson had secured the contract for helping BSNL to improve its machinery and technology under a project to add 4.5 crore additional mobile GSM (global system for mobile) connections.
In Pune, striking employees gathered at the BSNL’s Satara road administrative office and slogans were raised against the ministry’s decision.
Vandana Kamthe, member of the co-ordination committee of the employees, said that any further decision will be taken after the talks in New Delhi.
BSNL employees allege that the company is losing Rs 55 crore every month due to non-fulfilment of the tender agreement with Nokia and Ericsson, and they blame the ministry for allowing private telecom operators to gain ascendancy.
The employees have also condemned Union telecom minister A. Raja for his recent statement wherein he had suggested continuing with the existing 2G (second generation) technology by BSNL.
The unions, such an action will allow the private telecom companies to get a headstart in the latest state-of-the-art 3G (third generation) cellular service operation.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
One of the leading telecom service providers, Bharti Airtel in collaboration with Sweden-based Wayfinder Systems AB today launched GPS based navigation application on mobile handsets.
The application turns the compatible mobile phone into a complete GPS-based navigation system with detailed maps and points-of-interest of a number of cities in the country.
The system will provide all users with continuously updated, real-time content and geographical data via the wireless network using EDGE/GPRS, the company said in a statement.
To start with, the application shall be available on BlackBerry 8800. The Airtel users can avail map information and area coverage details of the cities - Delhi and NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chandigarh.
‘’We are now introducing in India, a state-of-the-art GPS based navigation system that will largely benefit all frequent travelers using compatible mobile handsets like BlackBerry 8800,'’ Bharti Airtel Chief Marketing Officer (Mobile Services) Sanjay Gupta said in the statement.
Bharti Airtel is offering a six months free trial for all its Airtel BlackBerry 8800 users. As per the offer, the customer will not have to pay any subscription charges on the application during this period. However, data download charges will apply as per the subscriber’s BlackBerry plan.
To download the application, Airtel BlackBerry 8800 users need to send ‘NAV’ as an SMS to shortcode ‘3636′.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
India’s Essar Group is planning to launch a network of 4,000-5,000 retail telecom outlets called The MobileStore all over India with an investment of $250 million over the next 2 to 3 years.
The firm said these stores will offer products and accessories from all the leading brands, billing services, value-added services, and handset repair services.
Essar has already launched 40 stores in Mumbai, Delhi and some other large cities. In the initial phase, Essar will launch 150 stores in the top 11 cities.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
What’s holding back WiMax in India: As per this story in the Mint, the spectrum policy imposes a recurring charge on ISPs for base stations, thus making it viable to target only volume users. Expecting a change in policy to a revenue-share model, operators are setting up wireless infrastructure:
– Reliance Communications plans to have 3000 base stations in 25 cities by end 2007, and plans to launch services in Pune and Bangalore in July. Expected expenditure is around $50 million.
– VSNL is setting up 1300 broadband towers in five cities. According to CIOL, VSNL has launched today, WiMax services for enterprises in Bangalore.
– Sify has plans to put up wireless transmitters on top of its retail outlets.
Now all of this, when no single standard for WiMax has been decided? Also, it’s the telco’s who do not have the last mile access, unlike BSNL and MTNL, who are adopting these new technologies - would they invest in wireless infrastructure if they did have last mile access? I’m not sure of how much to read into some of these announcements. If you remember, CP in Delhi was supposed to be WiFi’ed, with free Internet access, by this January. Nothing so far.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Like other mobile operators, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited too has announced a steep reduction in the subscription charges for lifetime pre-paid and post-paid mobile connections, besides offering attractive tariffs under the new scheme.
Announcing this here on Monday, MTNL (Delhi) Executive Director A. K. Arora said the Trump Jeevansathi lifetime pre-paid connection would now be available at just Rs.475 (including taxes) instead of Rs.900 (excluding taxes) earlier.
Besides getting free incoming for lifetime (till the current license is valid) and full talk-time on subsequent charges, a subscriber will also get Rs.50 talk-time at the time of taking the connection.
While all local outgoing calls to MTNL mobiles will be charged at 90 paise per minute, Rs.1.50 per minute will be charged for local calls made to other phones. Similarly MTNL will be charging a flat rate of Rs.1.75 on STD calls.
“These tariffs are much cheaper compared with other operators. Moreover, in our case the minimum recharge required is just Rs.100 every six months, while for other operators it is Rs.200 every half-yearly,” said Mr. Arora, adding that existing pre-paid subscribers can also avail of this scheme by buying a lifetime recharge coupon worth Rs.450 (excluding taxes),
Mr. Arora said Dolphin Jeevansathi lifetime post-paid connection had also been made attractive by reducing its one-time upfront payment from Rs.800 (excluding taxes) to Rs.450 (excluding taxes). Here the call charges will be 80 paise per minute on calls made to MTNL mobiles, Rs.1.20 per minute for calls to other phones and Rs.1.75 for STD calls.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
After almost a year of regular hype-building announcements, Doordarshan (DD) has finally launched its Mobile TV pilot with Nokia. Indiatimes reports that at present 8 channels are being beamed within 10-12 km of Akashwani Bhawan in Delhi, and can be viewed by anyone with DVB-H compatible handsets, between 5:30am and midnight. The channels being broadcast include DD National, DD News, DD Sports, DD Bharati, DD Urdu, DD Punjabi, DD Bangla and DD Podhigai. The number of channels is expected to be increased to 16. This pilot is in collaboration with Nokia, and at Convergence India earlier this year, Lloyd Mathias, Director-Marketing for Motorola had confirmed that they are also in talks with broadcasters for mobile TV trials.
However, readers should bear in mind that DVB-H is a terrestrial broadcasting technology, and only public broadcaster Doordarshan has license for terrestrial broadcasting, hence a monopoly. Another alternative is DVB-SH for reception of satellite channels, but both DVB-H and DVB-SH require handsets with built in receivers. I’ve seen demonstrations of both DVB-H, DVB-SH and Qualcomm’s MediaFLO at expo’s in Delhi, but one really can’t detect issues with clarity of reception under such test conditions.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Telegeography writes….Bharti Airtel has announced that it is going to work with US equipment vendor UTStarcom to launch an IPTV service. The pair plan to launch the service in the capital New Delhi by the end of this year. Airtel is already testing IPTV services in limited regions in Delhi; the company plans to provide around 150 television channels at commercial launch.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
BSNL employees abstain from work
