Skip to Content »

Wireless Federation » archive for 'Trai'

Government asks TRAI to review termination charges, may lead to lowered tariffs (India)

  • November 25th, 2008
  • 11:15 am

The Indian mobile telecom tariffs experience a downfall as the government asks TRAI to review the five-year old termination charges which are set to Rs.0.30/min for both fixed and mobile telephony. The charges of Rs.0.30/min for mobile telephony seems high especially for the new entrants in the market. DoT has asked TRAI to review the termination charges has been forwarded to TRAI. A TRAI official said the regulator has not been able to see the reason for reducing termination charges.

   

Government asks TRAI to review termination charges (India)

  • November 24th, 2008
  • 12:28 pm

Government has asked regulator TRAI to review the five-year old termination charge of 30 paise a minute per call for fixed and mobile telephony. Termination charge is the money given by an operator on whose network a call originates to the operator on whose network the call terminates. These charges were fixed five years ago and considered to be high, especially by the new players.
“Termination charges reduction reference has gone to TRAI. They have to recommend us what to do (whether to bring it down or not. TRAI is a statutory body it can’t be dictated on what to be done. It is being discussed in TRAI to look into the possibility of bringing down the termination charges),” Telecom Minister A Raja said.  According to TRAI official, the regulator has not been able to see the reason for reducing the termination charges. TRAI prescribed these charges on the basis of cost data submitted by various service providers for the years preceeding it.

India adds 10.42Mn mobile subscribers in October, total reaches to 325.73Mn

  • November 24th, 2008
  • 11:22 am

The Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India has released a data which says that Indian mobile operators have added nearly 10.42 million mobile phone subscribers in October. The total mobile subscriber base of the country has reached to 325.73 million.
The number of net additions has been much greater than in the month of September which stood at 10.07 million. The overall tele-density stood at 31.50% at the end of October against 30.64% in September this year.

   

BSNL slashes international call tariff to SAARC countries (India)

  • November 3rd, 2008
  • 9:58 am

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has slashed its international call tariff to some of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives and Pakistan, from mobile and fixed-line phones. The new tariff will be in effect soon. BSNL subscribers can call to the SAARC countries at Rs 9 per minute instead of the existing Rs 10 for users of BSNL’s post-paid plan 725. Postpaid and Prepaid users wil lcost at Rs 9 per minute instead of Rs 12.

TRAI earlier said, the SAARC region could replicate the European Union (EU) model, whereby all member states cut international roaming rates. The international roaming rates are some of the highest in the world even more expensive than those in USA and UK so it has now become an issue of concern.

DoT snubs TRAI’s proposal (India)

  • October 22nd, 2008
  • 5:05 am

Department of Telecommunications has reportedly rejected Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI’s) recent proposal that telecom infrastructure companies should be the subject of licence fees. One of the possible reason for rejection is that an independent study has been conducted by the regulator which says despite telcos splitting off tower businesses into separate companies, there was little impact to the government’s revenues, but TRAI had argued that a licence fee was called for as it believed the government was losing out financially.

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.

   

Indian mobile users reached the mark of 296.08 million

  • September 8th, 2008
  • 7:53 am

India’s wireless subscriber base has shown a speculated growth of 54%  over the past one year as it adds more than 100 million new users. As per TRAI statistics, country’s mobile users touched 296.08 million in July-end this year against 192.98 million last year in the same month, a year-on-year growth of 53.44 per cent. For this blistering growth, a low-tariff mobile market, cheap calls are the driving factors that helps in accommodating all kinds of subscribers. However, call rates are as low as few paise per minute. Analysts said growth of India’s mobile market remains robust as competition among mobile operators continues to intensify. With the mobile penetration level having just exceeded 25 per cent, considerable growth potential still remains, particularly in the massive rural markets. All the mobile operators are now targeting the rural markets. Much awaited 3G services will give another boost to the competition level and help stimulate industry growth.

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.

TRAI tries to resolve interconnection issue (India)

  • August 26th, 2008
  • 1:13 pm

TRAI proclaimed that all operators have signed an agreement to resolve all other pending issues related to interconnection. According to a media report, the agreement sets forth that operators should mutually settle all pending interconnect requests by 15 October, also specifying that pending payments for existing interconnect agreements be made within the next seven days. Moreover all operators have agreed to renew all interconnect agreements that have expired. The agreement also specifies that in case of dispute similar to that of recent RCOM issue, operator will stick to all rulings made by the TRAI.

TRAI releases PoI report, states that Airtel & RCOM have most congested network (India)

  • August 26th, 2008
  • 8:31 am

Data from the TRAI reveals that the leading mobile firm Bharti Airtel tops the list of most congested network followed by Reliance Communications. TRAI released the PoI (Point of Interconnection) report which states that amongst the private service providers Bharti Airtel has the largest number of PoIs having congestion (56 PoIs as of June) followed by Reliance Communications (22 PoIs), Dishnet Wireless (21 PoIs as of March), Vodafone (19 PoIs of March) and Idea (19 PoIs).

TRAI has been monitoring the level of congestion at the Point of Interconnection between various service providers on monthly basis. This parameter signifies the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with a customer of another network. This parameter also reflects as to how effective is the interconnection between the two networks.
The standard notified by TRAI in the Quality of Service (QoS) Regulation of July 2005 for this parameter should be less than 0.5 per cent. This means that out of 200 calls between two operators only one call should face congestion problem. Analysis of the PoI Congestion Report shows that the performance of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers with respect to the congestion on PoIs has improved in June, 2008, as compared with the performance in March, 2008. The number of PoIs having congestion has decreased from 275 in March to 156 in June.
Out of these 156 POIs, the level of congestion in 86 POIs is more than 5 per cent as compared to 141 PoIs in March.

Bihar, Maharastra, Gujarat, Haryana, North Eastern states and Himachal Pradesh are the states which are more affected due to PoI congestion.