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India adds 7.32 mln mobile users to its GSM kitty in Sep.(India)

  • October 13th, 2008
  • 7:51 am

India has added 7.32 million mobile users in September in its GSM-based telecom networks, its highest ever, according to an industry body. Considering the data from Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), the total subscriber base at the end of September stood at 233.3 million, as against 225.98 million in August. The latest data denotes a 3.24 percent rise on month. The above figures does not include Reliance subcribers as it predominantly uses CDMA technology but has some GSM customers, had 54.3 million subscribers at end-August. According to Director General of COAI, T. V. Ramachandran, (referring to Reliance addidtions) “It is estimated that the month’s GSM additions would be about 7.7 million when all figures come in “.

Operators Net Additions (Million) Total Subscribers (Million)
Airtel 2.70 77.5
Vodafone 1.87 54.6
BSNL 0.7 39.2

Apart from the GSM-based telecom users, it also has a Substantial user-base in the CDMA-based network.

CDMA operators will also bid for 3G spectrum (India)

  • August 29th, 2008
  • 6:30 am

Earlier it was confirm that CDMA operators Reliance Communication and Tata Teleservices will be getting 3G spectrum without bidding. But now Government has decided to auction CDMA licences for 3G sevices. According to the Telecom minister, Andimuthu Raja, at the start of August, the government announced plans for a global auction of 3G licences. At the time only two CDMA licences were thought to be available, so the plan was that Reliance and Tata would pay a pro-rata price based on the outcome of the GSM auction. Now one more operator has been permitted. So again we consulted the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and took a decision that it can also be auctioned.” CDMA and GSM mobile services are provided on different bandwidths, Andimuthu Raja said. Chairman Anil Ambani has said Reliance would consider providing 3G both on GSM and CDMA. Tata Teleservices has obtained licences for second-generation GSM mobile, but it is yet to begin its services.

India’s subscriber base to grow to 533 million in 2010 (India)

  • August 21st, 2008
  • 2:07 pm

Growth in India’s mobile sector, from a humble start in the mid-1990s, has really picked up pace in recent years, aided by higher subscriber volumes, lower tariffs and falling handset prices. Home to a clutch of global operators working with local companies, India had almost 250 million mobile subscribers (including GSM and CDMA services) in early 2008. And the market was growing at an annual rate of around 60%. While the ARPU has been steadily declining as competing operators offer cheaper tariffs the usage levels have been high thus slowing the decline in ARPU. By 2008 there was a major push to take mobile services into the poorer and rural areas of the country.
India added 6.42 million GSM mobile subscribers in July, total reaches 218.9 million. the number of mobile susbscribers in India has reached nearly 250 million,teledensity above 25%.
India adds about 8-9 million new subscribers per month. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says that there were 286.86 million wireless users in India at the end of June, up 55 % from a year earlier.
Bharti Airtel  led the signings in June with 2.55 million new customers. The company had 69.4 million mobile users at end-June. Reliance Communications added 1.74 million wireless users to have 50.79 million subscribers begs no. 2 position. Follwing it Vodafone Essar, added 1.73 million mobile customers in June, taking its total to 49.2 million.

 

Notable highlights of the 3Q08 India Mobile Forecast include:

  • It is expected the subscriber base in India to increase from 332 million in 2008 to 533 million in 2010. This will make India the fastest growing wireless market in the world.
  • The four major operators in the country will continue to have similar market share breakdowns over the next several years. Bharti-Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone-Essar, and BSNL will continue to serve approximately 24.5%, 20.7%, 17% and 12.3% respectively of total subscribers in 2010.
  • Average margins in the industry are forecasted to be 38.5% in 2010. Bharti-Airtel and Reliance will have similar EBITDA margins at around 41%.  The downward EBITDA margin are forecasted because of the expected 3G spectrum auction and the DOT’s proposal to hike annual spectrum charges by -100bps for all spectrum slabs up to 8.2Mhz, and by -200bps hike for 10Mhz and above. The proposed hike in annual spectrum fees will likely lower earnings growth at Bharti and Reliance.

   

Reliance plans to capture US market with Jump Games (India, USA)

  • August 21st, 2008
  • 7:38 am

Reliance is making efforts to expand in United States. Reliance ADA Group’s media and entertainment division is aiming US mobiles with Jump games. Reliance Big Entertainment said that Jump Games is “aggressively looking” to buy mobile content licenses and brands for distribution to mobile phones worldwide. The company, which has licenses to create and sell games worldwide using popular brands such as Manchester United Football Club, did not give details of acquisition targets.

According to Reliance, Jump Games, which has set up its US headquarters in Chicago, expects partnerships and alliances with America’s biggest firms will be critical to expand here with both organic as well as inorganic growth. It said Jump Games had appointed Amit Khanduja, a former Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co executive, as executive vice president for the Americas. In May Reliance, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, signed deals with eight Hollywood production houses run by A-list actors, including George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions, Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions and Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. Reliance is also finalizing a deal with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to set up a new studio that would split Spielberg and Geffen from Paramount Pictures, sources discloses.

BlackBerry services by Tata soon (India)

  • August 11th, 2008
  • 1:27 pm

Telecom service provider Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) will soon launch BlackBerry services. “BlackBerry soft launch is already done. For official launch, the company is waiting for logistics arrangement, which should be done before year end,” TTSL managing director Anil Sardana said. Earlier TTSL proclaimed its intention to offer the push-email services in collaboration with Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry phones. “We have been told that the BlackBerry services do not have scope for lawful interception, may be because it does not have a server in India and it may be difficult to monitor the content,” Sardana had said then.

Currently, Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and BPL Mobile are offering BlackBerry services. BlackBerry servers, used for transmission of data for email, are located in Canada therefore making it impossible for the security agencies to monitor possible security threats is the major issue of concered for Home Ministry. RIM had assured the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that it would sort out the BlackBerry kink by initiating discussions between security agencies of Canada and India. BSNL and regional player Aircel have also showed interest in the services and intend to launch them. TTSL will launch BlackBerry services on the 8830 handset which is being tested in its lab, Sardana further said.

Indian version of Chinese handsets with warranty (India)

  • July 28th, 2008
  • 2:19 pm

Consumer goods giants Videocon, B K Modi owned Spice Mobiles, Usha Lexus, Delhi based Intex and Reliance Communications, are joining the bandwagon by leveraging their brands and offering warranties which are not available on the Chinese products.  Almost 6 million GSM phones are sold every month in India. With the entry of new players and telcos moving to rural areas , it is expected that the market will grow further.

Indian companies are confident of taking on the big multinationals. The domestic companies are importing phones from countries such as China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, affixing their brand names, and offering warranties and after-sales services not provided by the non-branded Chinese products.
Videocon plans to launch GSM mobile phones around Diwali. “In a couple of years, we will be able to compete with the multi-national companies. Most importantly, we have brand acceptability. Moreover, we not only have the infrastructure, but also service capabilities to go to every customer,” said HS Bhatia, Vice President and Business Head-GSM mobiles, Videocon.

Reliance, MTN extend take-over talks (India)

  • July 8th, 2008
  • 2:36 pm

South Africa’s MTN and India’s Reliance Communications may continue their tie-up talks beyond today’s deadline, the Wall Street Journal.

MTN and Reliance agreed in May to 45 days of exclusive negotiations to create a global ten telecoms company, which end on today.

The companies may extend the talks by a few more weeks, the WSJ said in its website edition, quoted by Reuters.

An extension would give Reliance Communications’ chairman Anil Ambani some time to try to resolve a claim of right of first refusal on the telecom’s shares by his estranged brother Mukesh, who runs Reliance Industries, India’s largest company.

MTN, sub-Saharan Africa’s top mobile operator, is nervous about entering a deal with a legal cloud over it and has looked at ways to restructure a transaction, the newspaper said.

The discussions had initially focused on a takeover of Reliance by MTN, but now the companies are weighing the reverse, a takeover of MTN by Reliance, the newspaper said.

MTN and Reliance could not be immediately reached for comment, according to the Reuters report.

   

Reliance adds 1.63m subscribers in May (India)

  • June 19th, 2008
  • 2:34 pm

Reliance Communications, India’s second-largest mobile operator, added 1.63 million mobile users in May, a Reuters report said.

Reliance, which is in talks with South African mobile operator MTN for a possible combination that would create a top-10 global telecoms firm, had 47.4 million subscribers as of end-April, according to data from the telecom regulator.

India is world’s second-largest wireless market, trailing only China.

   
 

India’s top telco plans to cut call charges by up to half (India)

  • June 10th, 2008
  • 2:18 pm

India’s leading telecom BSNL will cut mobile and fixed-line domestic call rates by up to half, a Reuters report said.

All calls made by landline and wireless customers in local loop services will be slashed by 50%, while those made using cellular networks will be 40-50 % cheaper, BSNL, quoted by the Reuters report, said following cuts by leading competitors.

BSNL had a combined subscriber base of 72.5 million at the end of April, out of 308.5 million telephone connections nationwide.

But it lags behind Bharti Airtel , Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar in wireless subscribers due to capacity constraints.

In April, BSNL said it plans to add 33.5 million GSM wireless lines within a year to compete with more nimble private players.

“You should have capacity. Had I cut it earlier it would not have been beneficial,” BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal told reporters when asked about the timing of the call rate cuts.

He said the firm has already ordered 25 million lines as part of its expansion project, and would start growing in all the circles it operates in from July.

   

Another Indian carrier in ‘exclusive talks’ with MTN

  • May 27th, 2008
  • 1:01 pm

India’s Reliance Communications is in tie-up talks with MTN after rival mobile operator Bharti Airtel hung up on discussions with the South African phone giant in a dispute over control, an AFP report said

MTN Group, Africa’s biggest cellular operator, and Reliance Communications, India’s second largest mobile firm by subscribers, were discussing a “potential combination of their businesses” to “achieve a unique and global platform for exponential growth,” the Indian company said in a statement.

Reliance Communications, headed by billionaire Anil Ambani, said the two firms agreed to hold “exclusive talks” for 45 days.

A partnership could create an emerging market powerhouse with a 116 million subscriber base, eclipsing most Western mobile phone businesses, the AFP report further said.

Any deal would have to satisfy political sensitivities in South Africa about the future of MTN, one of the country’s most prestigious corporate flagships, as well as stay on the right side of Indian foreign investment rules that require domestic telecoms firms to be 74% locally-owned.

The announcement came two days after MTN’s talks with Bharti, India’s biggest mobile operator, which is 30.5% owned by SingTelNet, collapsed over an ownership structure proposed by the South African firm.

The proposal would have involved “Bharti Airtel becoming a subsidiary of MTN” that would have “severely compromised” its dream of being a “true Indian multinational telecom giant, symbolising the pride of India,” Bharti said.

A Reliance Communications spokesman said the company, which reported net profit of $1.35 billion last year, had nothing to add to its statement, the AFP report further said.

But an industry source close to the discussions said the “line of talks is completely different from those with Bharti. These are not merger or acquisition talks.”