TRAI intends to lower mobile tariffs (India)
Telecom Tariffs are expected to fall as the regulator is considering reviewing termination charges. Termination charges can be explained as, if an Airtel subscriber calls a Vodafone subscriber, then Airtel pays termination charges to Vodafone. Presently, termination charges are 30 paise per minute. If termination charges are slashed, call charges will follow.
According to TRAI Chairman Nripendra Misra, Consultation paper will be issued. The paper will review the whole approach to the Interconnect Usage Charge (IUC) — a charge that an operator pays to another for terminating and carriage of a call — regime.
Currently, on every type of calls, the termination charges are flat. The regulator will review whether there can be different termination charges for different categories of call.
However, the low termination charges will suit the new licencees like Shyam-Sistema, Unitech, Datacom and Local Loop. This is because; outgoing calls are likely to be more than incoming calls.
Oddly, existing operators like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and Idea want high termination charges as the number of incoming calls terminating in their networks is higher than the number of calls going out.
Moreover, BSNL wishes to have higher termination charges for fixed line calls.
China approves 3G licences, anticipates an expenditure of $41Bn by operators
The Chinese cabinet has approved of the long awaited 3G licences in the country which is expected to call for billions of dollars in equipment sales. The cabinet further revealed that it’ll issue two global standard 3G licences and a homegrown Chinese standard. The country’s industry minister said in mid-December that Chinese carriers are expected to spend $41 billion on base stations, switching gear, transmission networks and other infrastructure.
The local media anticipates that China Mobile Ltd., the dominant carrier, would be assigned the Chinese-developed TD-SCDMA standard. The global standards WCDMA and CDMA-2000 are to go to China Unicom Ltd. and China Telecom Ltd., respectively.
The coming of 3G will boost the revenue for the industry as companies develop video, Web browsing and other services supported by the technology.
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China to complete Access Testing on CMMB TD-SCDMA handsets
China is expected to complete access testing on CMMB TD-SCDMA mobile phones in January 2009 and then issue access licenses, officials from the nation’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed.
Products under the access testing include TD-SCDMA mobile phones made by ZTE Corporation , Eastcom Corporation, Lenovo Group Limited, Guangzhou New Postcom Equipment Co. Ltd., and Samsung.
Earlier, the Chinese regulator granted the first CMMB TD-SCDMA mobile phone access license to Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.
The move signals that more and more CMMB-enabled mobile phones will come into the market in line with the nationwide deployment of the CMMB networks.
The country is scheduled to build up CMMB networks in more than 100 cities ahead of 2009 and kick off commercial operation of the networks in the second half of 2009, said an official for the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television .
Pakistan’s mobile subscriber base drops by 0.1%
According to the statistics from market regulator PTA, Pakistan’s subscriber base drops by 0.1% to 90.41 million in November. The figures in October were 90.51 million. Mobilink had 30.06 million in its kitty, lost 827,000 customers during November, followed by Ufone with 19.1 million. Telenor stands at third position with 18.88 million subscribers, followed by Warid with 16.66 million subscribers. Zong’s subscribers have reached the mark of 5.39 million, while Instaphone subscribers remained sturdy at 321,134. Mobile teledensity was constant at 56.20% in November.
China Mobile plans a 10% mobile tariff cut in 2009 (China)
China Mobile, world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, plans a tariff cut by over 10% in 2009. China Mobile also plans to issue 3G licence this month.Under the scheme, China Mobile, the nation’s biggest telecoms operator by market value, will be authorized to offer services based on China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA technology, while China Unicom is expected to get a WCDMA license and China Telecom, a CDMA2000 permit.
If so, the number of China Mobile’s subscribers will be likely to shrink because of immature TD-SCDMA terminals. The company should make use of its current user base and tariff advantage to pave the way for new data business in future, said Wang Jianzhou, board chairman of China Mobile.
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AXIS chooses Business Logic Systems to drive incremental revenues and loyalty amongst its recently created AXIS Salam community (Indonesia)
AXIS chooses Business Logic Systems to drive incremental revenues and loyalty amongst its recently created AXIS Salam community. Indonesian mobile network operator achieves real time SMS communication with a targeted community using InTelestageâ„¢.
Business Logic Systems, a specialist in customer intelligence, marketing automation and customer loyalty solutions for mobile network operators, is playing a key role in helping Indonesia’s newest mobile operator, AXIS to drive customer loyalty and increase revenues from its recently created AXIS Salam community.
Launched in August 2008 to coincide with the preparations for Eid, AXIS Salam is a pre-pay offering which is aimed at the Islamic community. To persuade new customers to join the community and encourage existing users to top up, AXIS Salam is giving subscribers the chance to enter a Lucky Draw competition to win a trip to ‘Hajj’ and ‘Umrah’.
InTelestageâ„¢ is being used to communicate with all customers in real time. When a new customer joins AXIS Salam they receive an automatically generated text message to welcome them to the network and to let them know that they have been entered into the Lucky Draw competition.
When users top up, points are allocated to their account in accordance to how much they spend. InTelestageâ„¢ manages this entire process and sends further text messages to let subscribers know how many points they have, as having more points increases the likelihood of winning. Every six weeks InTelestageâ„¢ automatically chooses the winners.
Creating a highly targeted and specialist community is a very clever idea,†commented Vicks Kanagasingam, President Asia Pacific, Business Logic Systems. By using a two-pronged approach where the Lucky Draw campaign attracts new customers and our InTelestageâ„¢ technology creates and maintains regular customer contact, AXIS Salam can reward profitable customers, boost retention and increase the lifetime value of its pre-paid customers.â€
Over 90 per cent of mobile phone users in Indonesia are pre-pay, which makes ongoing customer contact and customer loyalty extremely difficult,†explained Johan Buse, Chief Marketing Officer, AXIS. When we launched AXIS Salam, we wanted to buck the trend and have regular, discreet contact with our users; Business Logic Systems has been key to allowing us to do this.
Once customers have joined the AXIS Salam community, InTelestageâ„¢ is the all important ‘glue’ that enables us to have a regular, two way communication flow with our subscriber base. The system automatically sends informative SMS messages to our customers, which encourages them to top up regularly. This drives ongoing loyalty, which is helping us meet our aim of signing up 200,000 new AXIS Salam customers by the end of 2008.â€
About Business Logic Systems
Business Logic Systems is a specialist provider of customer intelligence, marketing automation and customer loyalty solutions for mobile network operators. Its InTelestage portfolio of products, solutions and technologies helps operators create fully automated marketing solutions that reduce churn, deliver improved subscriber profitability and build long-term customer loyalty.
InTeleStage offers a unique capability to interpret customer usage and behavioural data in real time; this enables operators to link disparate organisational and data silos to provide an holistic view of customer activity, supporting relevant dialogue and accurate campaign targeting for automated marketing campaigns.
Business Logic Systems operates from offices in UK, Malaysia, Australia, Austria and Dubai, with a development centre in Romania. InTeleStage is deployed by some of the world’s leading mobile operators including Celcom, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Telstra and is also licensed to leading network platform providers for the development of their own innovative solutions. Business Logic Systems’ partners include Acision, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson.
For further information please visit: www.businesslogicsystems.com
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