Vodafone prepares to launch 3G services in UP (India)
India’s GSM operator, Vodafone is preparing to launch its 3G service in the Uttar Pradesh (East) circle soon.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Aircel have already launched their 3G services in the circle. Aircel launched its 3G service in Lucknow last week.
According to COO Ravi Santhanam, in the first phase, the 3G service will be launched in Lucknow and Kanpur and gradually, other pockets would be covered too.
Vodafone is the largest operator in the circle with about 13 million subscribers.
He added that although UP (E) is the biggest circle in terms of population, the penetration level is much lower at 40%, compared to the pan-India average of 55-60%.
Aircel rolls out 3G services in UP (India)
Aircel has launched 3G services in Uttar Pradesh (East) circle, the second circle after Chennai. It is the second company to launch the service after state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to launch 3G services in the area.
In the first phase, the company has launched 3G services in Lucknow and gradually other major towns including Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi would be covered.
According to Aircel National Head (operations and customer support) Vipul Saurabh, the remaining towns and rural pockets in UP (E) would be covered in phases in the next nine months.
BSNL issues Rs 150 crore recovery bill from operators (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In a major controversy surrounding the Indian telecom sector, almost all major mobile phone service providers have been accused by state owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited of not paying correct roaming charges to BSNL. A total loss of around Rs 300 crore has been estimated by BSNL and for the recovery of Rs 150 crore, the company has already issued bills in six circles across the country.
TDSAT has been approached by two companies and they have gained stay against BSNL. It has been claimed by the companies that BSNL has misinterpreted the interconnect agreement. Sanchar Nigam Executive Association (SNEA) first noticed the discrepancies in Gujarat where an alleged irregularities worth Rs 22 crore was detected by a team led by sub divisional engineers D N Shah and B G Patel.
Rs 25 per month for every subscriber are supposed to be paid by the service providers using BSNL infrastructures. According to the agreement, they have to pay only when the subscriber is actually roaming however; it has been argued by the service providers that BSNL wants them to pay for all subscribers who are registered for the roaming service.
BSNL to launch Mobile Banking in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Mobile Money Transfer Services is set to be launched by India’s state owned telco, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited in participation with SBI and YES Bank on electronic platform.
Money orders could be send by the mobile subscribers electronically through text messages (SMS) with the help of this innovative plan. For this, the customers are required to go to the nearest post office and transfer the money by SMS. The receiver can collect the money by showing the unique code contained in the SMS to the post office in his locality.
The service has already been test piloted in Chandigarh and it will soon be rolled out after Reserve Bank’s approval.
Indian telco BSNL eyes 2.2 crore mobile subscribers by next fiscal
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Indian telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has planned to gain around 22 million cell phone subscribers in the next fiscal along with its plan to enter the field of mobile banking and advertising space.
BSNL currently had 8.5 lakh 3G mobile subscribers and according to R. K. Aggarwal Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s Director, a target of 22 million mobile connections will be kept by the company next year (2010-11) including 20 million 2G connections and two million 3G.
The current subscriber number of BSNL is expected to go up to one million by next month-end while the average revenue of BSNL is 40% more than their 2G counterparts per user from 3G subscribers.
Indian telco BSNL expects to cover 400 cities in 2010
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: More than 400 cities is expected to be covered by Indian telco, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited with its third generation mobile telephony services by end of the current fiscal through March.
856,000 users are already there on its 3G network in 318 cities where it offers the high-speed voice and data services, which increases revenue per user.
3G service was commercially launched by BSNL on February 22, 2009, in the southern part of the country and is one of the two state run telco which had been allocated bandwidth for 3G mobile services prior to a proposed bandwidth auction.
A mobile revolution in rural India
The total mobile penetration may have reached 14 per cent of India’s population. However, industry experts assert 13 per cent of this is in urban centres and only one per cent in villages.
The opportunity is not lost on market players like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Reliance Communications who have been present in this segment for a while.
Now Hutchison Telecom, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices too have descended on the turf with big network expansion plans and innovative marketing strategies specially tailored for these regions.
“The B and C category census towns are raking in good business for us. Currently, almost 35 per cent of our business comes from these circles. However, the potential here is immense as only a per cent of the total population actually use mobile phones,” says a spokesperson for Tata Teleservices.
TTS, operating in 20 of the existing 23 mobile telephony circles in India, is using a door-to-door marketing strategy, involving members of gram panchayats and trained market-feelers to make residents of villages and small towns aware of the usefulness of mobile telephony and how the system of pre-paid refills work.
According to the company spokesperson, value-for-money handsets priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,400 with a plethora of tariff plans to choose from is what is driving subscription growth in these regions.
Sanjay Kapoor, joint president, mobility, Bharti Airtel, agrees with the trend and says his company had enjoyed a growth of 166 per cent in June of 2005-06 in circle C towns, as compared to a growth of 65 per cent in metros.
“We are concentrating on improving network connectivity in the rural areas along with existing circles we and are spending $1.5 billion this year for that purpose only,” says Kapoor. Airtel is appointing distributors at the tehsil level and using existing channels of fast moving consumer goods in these areas to push their products.
Reliance Communications will also make investments to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) till March 2007 to enhance its network in the eight global system for mobile communication circles it operates in.
The company plans to extend its GSM network to 4,000 towns in the existing circles of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, north east, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata. Currently, its GSM network covers 340 towns in these circles.
A company spokesperson says the company has added over 200,000 subscribers in its eight Category C circles in the previous quarter alone. Reliance is importing handsets in bulk for use in these markets and is trying to leverage its low tariff plans to increase subscriber vase.
Handset manufacturers too are gearing up. Devinder Kishore, director of marketing at Nokia India, notes that handsets priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 are reasonably popular in these regions.
“While the handset market in India is growing at an approximate rate of 75 per cent annually, about 30 per cent of the demand comes from metros now. The rural market, therefore is growing rapidly in terms of sales and it has a tremendous potential in future,” he says.
Nokia is using channels with territorial reach like Doordarshan and All India Radio to reach the interiors. The company has also incorporated nine Indian languages on certain handsets to promote sales.
Says Dinesh Sharma, marketing and sales head of Samsung CDMA, “Sales in category C towns are growing at a rapid pace. Currently the fasted growing circles for us are the categories A and B. Sales in metros have been slower, although absolute numbers are growing as almost a per cent of urban populace buy a phone every month”.
Sharma feels that for rural areas, incorporating local languages in handsets will become a focus area in future, as will be voice short messaging service, the latter dependent on service providers.
“Rural India is keen on high feature phones but not as much as urban India. A customer in the rural area is happy to have features, which are available in the urban markets. They are happy to have colour handsets, other accessories like phone book wherein he can store details of contacts, games, alarm tones and so on,” explains H S Bhatia, National Product Group Head- GSM Division, LG Electronics India.
Industry experts feel an estimated investment of around $6.5 billion would be needed to increase India’s rural tele-density to four per cent from the current one. With the current investments, the expectation may not be far off the mark.
Source- http://inhome.rediff.com
Technorati : BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Hutchison Telecom, India, Reliance Communication
Ice Rocket : BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Hutchison Telecom, India, Reliance Communication
