Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the Indian state-owned telecom operator, is planning to bid for an integrated license in Oman as part of its overseas expansion plans, media reported. Government have yet to give approval on BSNL’s expansion into overseas market. Reports further said that the telecom license is expected to cover international fixed line services, radio bandwidth for broadband services and submarine transmission cable in Oman. “We are thinking of putting in a bid. We are taking the necessary approvals from the government for the bid,” said SD Saxena, Finance director of BSNL.
Wireless Federation » archive for 'India'
BSNL intends to bid for Oman Telecom Licence, seeks foreign expansion (India,Oman)
- October 10th, 2008
- 6:16 am
ARPU for GSM operators falls to 9.8%, CDMA to 12.6% (India)
- October 8th, 2008
- 11:24 am
TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), relases a data showing a downfall in the ARPU of the mobile operators in past two months. The gross revenue of the sector has declined by 1.3% during the period, due to the poor performance of state-owned operators.
According to TRAI, India which has maximum additions every month, has posted low ARPU rates. ARPU for GSM operators came down to 9.8% and for CDMA it was 12.6%, driven by cut throat competition.
For the post-paid segment ARPU came down to 5.9% and pre-paid tumbled down to 8.9%.
The flipside of the story comes with appreciable quality of service, which has been improving lately. The number of defaults have fallen drastically. Only two operators of the 93 GSM and 44 CDMA operators have received more than the permissible 0.1% of complaints, compared with six last year.
The quality of customer care has perked up, as subscribers of nearly 65% of operators recieved assistance within a minute and a half of making a call.
Total gross revenue of the Indian telecommunication sector fell to $725.5 resulting from public sector’s low performance. The adjusted gross revenue (AGR) for the quarter decreased by 3.17 per cent. With a fall of over 18.7 per cent in their AGR, the share of public enterprises like BSNL, and MTNL in the total AGR declined to 31.37 per cent from 37.41 per cent in the previous quarter. Contrary to this, the private sector scored well and contributed nearly 69% to the total revenue.
BT-BSNL in association to provide managed services in India (UK, India)
- October 8th, 2008
- 7:15 am
British telecommunications (BT) has reportedly partnered with state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to offer managed telecom services in India including basic telecom, leased line, internet, mobile and broadband services. Under the agreement, BT will be providing access to BSNL’s pan-India broadband network and services, while in return BSNL will gain access to BT’s global multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network and the UK-based group’s managed service knowledge. Chairman aand Managing Director of BSNL said, As BSNL transforms into a premier integrated communications service provider, a robust managed service offering is key to our future operations. This partnership has strong synergies and we are looking to draw on BT’s exceptional networked IT expertise and professional services and bring such value-added service offerings that our customers want.
HTC plans to vend 1mln touch-screen mobile handsets by 2010 (Taiwan)
- October 6th, 2008
- 12:14 pm
HTC (High Tech Computer) is eyeing Indian booming mobile market. As it plans to vend one million touch-screen mobile devices to Indian consumers by 2010. According to Country Head, Ajay Sharma, the local mobile market had “only seen the tip of the iceberg” of what the company had to offer. HTC was expected to launch a number of new 3G devices to meet the growing needs of subscribers, Sharma stated.
Considering the current scenario, HTC sells 13 handset models in the Indian market, including 11 global systems for mobile communications (GSM) phones and two code division multiple access (CDMA) phones - priced between Rs10, 000 and Rs.30, 000.
Recently, HTC unveils the Touch HDTM, an entertainment-focused mobile handset. HTC also manufactures the Touch Viva, a 2.8-inch touch-screen mobile device that offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity, a two megapixel camera and a MicroSD slot for expandable storage.
Yellow Pages now on Mobile!
- October 6th, 2008
- 7:58 am
‘Mobile Yellow Pages’ instigated by SG Technologies to provide phone users access to large databases such as telephone directories and yellow pages. Managing Director, Mr P. Sasidhar Reddy, SG Technologies, said, “Apart from access to databases, our service (called `My Pages’) will also point to the location of a desired address in the form of map on users mobile phone'’.
‘Mobile Backup System’ for BSNL subscribers of two states (India)
- October 6th, 2008
- 7:25 am
BSNL launches “mobile backup system” in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Company official discloses. This new system will help BSNL subscribers to retrieve their contact numbers in case of losing the cell phone. BSNL General Manager of Bhopal circle Mahesh Shukla said, More than the cost of the handset, what hurts a person the most on losing a mobile phone is the loss of his or her contacts. But they don’t have to bother any longer if they subscribe to our newly launched service, provided at a nominal cost of Re.1 a day. Mobile service providers eyeing various value-added service to attract maximum number of customers and this is one of the them, Shukla added. The back up system will help them to regain their contacts only and not the other things like music, photos and videos. BSNL is aiming to target 80,000 new GSM mobile connections, 10,900 landline connections and 9,500 broadband connections by March 31, 2009.
Spice looses 1mln subscribers after Idea ‘clean up’ (India)
- October 3rd, 2008
- 9:44 am
With the announcement of acquisition of the two-circle operator by Idea cellular, Spice Communications has lost its nearly a million subscribers in the past two months. Spice had 4.54 million subscribers in June when the acquisition was announced. 0.35 million subscribers were knocked off the books in July,another 0.63 million gave up the connection in August in result to this it stands at 3.56 million subscribers base. Idea will not have the good number of subscribers as it was expecting at the time of acquisition. These subscribers were cleaned up to conform to the reporting standards adopted by Idea Cellular. According to an analyst this subscriber clean-up is in accordance with the reporting standards adopted by Idea cellular in terms of active and inactive subscribers. Most of the clean-up is over and Spice is expected to see subscriber net additions beginning September. Idea which has now launched its operation in Mumbai and Bihar (including Jharkhand), is adding over 1 million subscribers every month.
It is anticipated that Idea will take not more than three-four quarters to turn around Spice and make it profitable in the two circles. Experts from the field said that by acquiring Spice, Idea gets a kickstart in these two circles with a subscriber base of 3.6 million, equivalent to around 13% market share in both service areas.
Samsung plans to tap 15% mobile handset market (South Korea, India)
- October 3rd, 2008
- 6:46 am
Samsung Mobile country head Sunil Dutt said, the mobile phone unit of Samsung Electronics intends to double its share of the Indian GSM mobile phone market to 15% in the next 8-10 months. With the launch of an 8 mega pixel camera phone, Samsung Innov8, Samsung Mobile has extended its multimedia phone portfolio. Mr. Dutt further said that, “India has the second largest market for mobile subscribers after China and from the next billion mobile phone consumers globally, India is expected to contribute 250 mln. The market size for GSM and CDMA mobile phones in India is 100-110 mln in 2008 and will grow to 150 mln by 2010, with 50% coming from the replacement market. The company is planning to enhance its mobile channel coverage from 55% to 85% of the market by 2008. It aims to tap rural markets through tie-ups with fertiliser cooperative IFFCO. It is also working on the expansion of its after-sales service channel by over 60%.
Idea launches its GSM services in Bihar and Jharkhand (India)
- October 1st, 2008
- 6:10 am
Idea Cellular, an Aditya Birla group company have formally insitgated its GSM services in Bihar and Jharkhand. Ambarish P Jain, Director for Idea’s north-east region operations, said that our service will be available from October 1 in Bihar and Jharkhand. We are making a very serious attempt to broaden our customer base through wide and rapid expansion of our network in both states. Idea bags fifth position in mobile telephony in Bihar and Jharkhand after Reliance (which has both CDMA and GSM mobile service), BSNL, AirTel, and Aircel. Idea is going to set up a network of customer touch points apart from customer care units in both the states. According to Company’s Bihar circle head, M D Prasad, with this and several other key features, Idea shall redefine standards of mobile telephony in the states.
Through 880 towers, Idea is anticipating to cover 1.5 crore people in 2,500 towns and villages in the two states in its first phase. Jain further said that by the end of this fiscal, Idea hopes to increase its network to 6 crore people in 16,500 towns and villages through increased 3,000 mobile tower network. The mobile telephony giant, which has a subscriber base of 3.3 crore across the country, hopes to add one million customers to its fold every month nationally, he added.
Shyam Telelink expands its network with Sistema’s investment worth $1.5bln (Russia, India)
- October 1st, 2008
- 5:31 am
Sistema and CIS proclaimed that it would invest over $1.5 billion in India next year to build a pan-India telecom network on the CDMA platform. As they holds majority stakes in Shyam Telelink they proclaimed to expand its services with the launch of CDMA services under the brand name Rainbow in Rajasthan. According to Sistema’s chairman Vladimir Evtushenkov, We have already invested $1 bn in Shyam and will further invest over $1.5 bn in the company next year.This marks the beginning of the expansion of Shyam Telelink’s pan-Indian mobile network. The company intends to provide its services to more than 35 million subscribers by 2012, which represents approximately 7% of the Indian market. As Sistema is focussing on the launch of pan-India services on the CDMA platform, it is keeping its options open with regard to offering mobile services on GSM, he added.
Vladimir further said that we have applied for GSM spectrum. We will take a call on GSM soon. In Russia, we offer mobile services under the MTS brand, and we will decide over the next one month whether to bring this brand to India. With the entry of Shyam -Sistema pricing war between India’s telecom operator is anticipated. As the company has already proclaimed that they are going to ffer all local calls and SMS for just 50 paise a minute in addition to offering a bundled handset for Rs 999 with lifetime validity.
