Qatar telecom & GBI sign LPA agreement
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A Landing Party Agreement (LPA) agreement has been completed by Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and Middle Eastern submarine cable operator Gulf Bridge International (GBI) under which a landing station in Qatar for GBI’s Gulf regional undersea cable, which when completed will connect all the Gulf countries to each other and provide onward connectivity to Europe and Asia.
The GBI Cable System is scheduled to launch in 2011 and designed to operate for up to 25 years and will have a design capacity of up to 5Tbps on certain sections, aimed at meeting the rapid growth in demand that has been forecast for traffic originating and terminating in the Gulf.
According to Dr. Nasser Marafih, CEO of Qtel, by connecting Qatar to this new global cable system, the company is layering an additional level of resilience to the existing infrastructure to enable and maintain seamless and un-interrupted communication across the world.
KT to introduce per-second billing n South Korea
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Per-second billing will be introduced in South Korea by telecom operator KT Corp from December 2010. Earlier, similar service was announced by another telco SK Telecom. It has been claimed by KT Corp that change will enable savings for individuals of up to KRW8,000 (USD7.14) per year and expected the total annual savings to reach KRW128 billion.
The announcement for this kind of move was made by SKT in February 2010 and it was claimed at that time also that the move would save its subscribers up to KRW16.8 billion each month.
Till recently, the high cost of mobile services has been an area of concern for telecoms regulator the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and its focus has been paid off the latest move by both KT and SKT to introduce the new strategy.
Idea’ six overlapping licenses to be acquired by Indian govt
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Idea Cellular is going to be asked by the communication ministry of India to all six overlapping telecom licenses it got following its acquisition of Spice Communications in 2008. Idea Cellular is currently in the process of hiving off these six overlapping licenses it inherited from Spice Communications into two entities.
The operator intends to sell them later but the move of the government can act as a major blow. Airwaves or spectrums that have been allotted to these licenses will also have to be surrendered by Idea. Even the entry fee for these licenses will not be refunded implying that the telco will have to forgo the Rs 800 crore it paid as entry fee.
Last year, Idea planned to demerge licenses for Punjab and Karnataka into a company named Vitesse, while Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh licenses was decided to be spun off into an entity called Claridges Communications. After acquiring Spice Communications in October 2008, Idea’s licenses for six regions namely Punjab, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra were held by Spice.
Spice’s licenses were not utilized by Idea cellular in the four regions – Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra — since the Aditya Birla-promoted telco already offered mobile phone services in the regions.
Uninor subscribers to get call destination based discounts
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Adding fuel to the already ignited tariff competition in the Indian market, discounts have been offered the subscribers by mobile operator Uninor on the basis of where they make their calls from. Depending on congestion levels at the tower where the call is initiated, discount up to 60% will be offered to the subscribers for local calls.
The user is eligible for the maximum discount of 60% on the standard call rate of 50 paise per minute if the load on a tower is very low. Users will be able to see on their handsets the discount that will be available at any point of time.
According to the company, aim of its new services is not to set off another tariff war but to offer this interesting service to all its users. Telenor service along with Grameenphone is already a hit in Bangladesh.
Airtel soon to launch Virtual Phones in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Virtual Phones, a technology that allows users to use as many as 10 different numbers from a single phone is planned to be launched by India’s leading telecom operator by subscriber, Bharti Airtel. After the arrival of this application, it will be the first time that users will get as many as ten numbers from a single SIM and that too, with just one handset.
Comviva Technologies, owned by Bharti has developed this application embedded with the SIM card and offers users to “opt” for his number whenever the user requires it. Each user will have a password to access the phone as the user group will be password protected. Airtel expects the technology to be operational in two months time and India might see the first services roll out in the rural areas of the country.
The main aim of the technology is to provide subscribers more value with just a single instrument. Singapore’s SingTel and UAE’s Etisalat and South African MTN already have this system in place. MTN has provided this system along with Comviva.
Bharti’s employees Q4 headcount shrinks 25% (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A reduction in manpower has been reflected by Bharti Airtel’s Q4 and year 2009 financial results which have gone down from 24,538 in March 2009 to 18,354 by the end of March, 2010. A managed services deal for the Telemedia Services signed with Alcatel-Lucent has been cited as a reason.
The headcount at the company’s Telemedia business unit dropped to 3,921 by March, 2010 from 10,022 in March, 2009. However, an increase in headcount from 7,832 to 7,969 in a year has been reported by the Mobile services business unit of the company.
According to Sanjay Kapoor, CEO, Bharti Airtel, the company will continue to explore opportunities for outsourcing functions which we feel can be handled more efficiently by outside agencies as the firm focus on its core strength of offering services.
Bharti, MTN might lead to expansion by others in Africa
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Expansion by leading telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and MTN are making the headlines. It was Bharti’s acquisition of Zain that forced MTN to enter talks to buy Egypt’s Orascom Telecom.
This has posed a new challenge to smaller companies while other multinationals are looking for avenues to join the league.
With Africa emerging as an exclusive and lucrative destination for business expansion, Millicom International Cellular, Portugal Telecom, France Telecom’s Orange and Vodafone’s Vodacom are also likely to eye African assets. So in the near future it can be expected that small, African operators having units or stakes scattered across the continent can be acquired by the big players. Meanwhile, the question remains that do they have the capacity and capability to and skills to survive for a long term.
While more opportunities for operators are available in Africa, penetration in Latin America, another emerging market, is much higher at around 80 percent. Companies like Millicom might target unlisted Econet Wireless International, which does business in nine countries in Africa, as well as Europe and Asia.
For those aiming to enter Africa’s biggest telecoms market might find another unlisted firm, Globacom, which is Nigeria’s second-largest mobile phone operator, as a good bet. South Africa’s Cell C can also be eyed by major players of the telecom industry worldwide.
