DoT considers asking Google, Skype for a decryption solution (India)
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is considering to ask voice over internet protocol (VoIP) service providers like Google and Skype to devise a decryption solution of their services.
The move, if implemented, will mean that the government will be able to track emails sent through Gmail as well as intercept voice calls made through Skype.
In an internal meeting with DoT, officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has told the telecom department that Google and Skype need to provide decryption of their services whenever required by the security agencies for lawful interception.
According to the DoT internal note, there was also a need to bring some parity between the Information Technology (IT) Act and the Indian Telegraph Act-1885 to deal with interception and monitoring.
A Google spokesperson stated that they have not been contacted by the government yet on this issue and thereby, they are unable to comment.
During the meeting, DoT stated that such issues may be taken up at international forums such as ITU, WTO and United Nations wherein service providers are mandated to take permission from member countries before launching new services.
The note further stated that the legal protection for business entities may have to be strengthened against consumer protection or any civilian Act, where business secrets are disclosed to government agencies due to security considerations.
Intelligence Bureau (IB) will also prepare a list of issues faced by them while monitoring services and will be jointly addressed by the department of telecom and IT.
The interception/monitoring issue cropped up after security agencies expressed concerns about intercepting highly encrypted services such as BlackBerry amongst others.
DoT plans annual subsidy for BSNL, MTNL (India)
India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is reportedly planning to support the country’s two economically-challenged state-owned telecoms operators with an annual subsidy of USD655 million.
It is believed that both Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) will benefit from the additional funding, with the former given help towards supporting its operations in remote and rural regions from the country’s Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
MTNL, meanwhile, will use the extra money it is handed to cover higher pension and retirement payouts. With initial estimates by the DoT that BSNL is currently incurring a loss of between US$443.86 million and US$554.82 million from its landline business, the regulator has called on the telco to specify what level of losses it attributes to its social telephony obligations before it finalizes any plans for additional funding.
DoT scans messenger services, says no deadline for operators
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is examining various kinds of messenger services and has not set any deadline for operators to give the interception solution for BlackBerry enterprise services.
According to Telecom Secretary R Chandrasekhar, they are in discussions with the home ministry separately, so it will be between the two departments to do whatever is necessary for interception. When asked about the deadline for operators to give the interception solution, Chandrasekhar stated that the department had not fixed any such deadline. He added that a separate set of discussions are going on not just on the BlackBerry but on various kinds of messengers services and various kinds of communications with reference to amenability to interception being addressed
Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry smartphones, has maintained that the company cannot provide access to the its BlackBerry enterprise services as it does not possess any key.
The company has already given a full solution for interception of its BlackBerry messenger services in January. RIM had earlier given a manual solution for monitoring messenger services. There are over one million BlackBerry subscribers in India.
The home ministry has asked DoT to ensure that all telecom operators submit by the end of this month their plans on when they can provide access to all services, including BlackBerry enterprise services.
Vodafone to introduce 3G services this week (India)
India’s third largest telecom operator, Vodafone Essar will launch its third generation (3G) mobile services over the coming week. As a forerunner, the company recently launched its advertising campaign with its mascot Zoozoo during the cricket World Cup matches.
According to company officials, they will be launching their services in a phased roll-out this week onwards.
This will make Vodafone the third operator to launch full 3G services after Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications. India’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel has also launched services in some service areas, but launches have not been made official yet.
Vodafone tested its 3G services in December, but launches for most companies were delayed due to objections from the Department of Telecommunications over the security surveillance of services such as video calling.
For now, it rests to be seen if the cricket season will help Vodafone to deliver on the advertisement tagline, Faster, Smarter, Betterâ€.
AT&T in talk with Qualcomm for licence to 4G (India)
Global telecom giant, AT&T is reportedly in talks with chip maker Qualcomm for a possible partnership in India. Qualcomm holds the licence and spectrum to offer fourth generation or 4G wireless broadband services in four telecom circles in India.
AT&T had exited Indian mobile telephony market in 2006, when it divested its stake in favor of its partners — the Tata group and the Aditya Birla Group — and failed in its attempt to gain an entry in 2008.
In the May 2010 auctions conducted by India’s Department of Telecommunications, Qualcomm won spectrum urban circles in New Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala for around US$ 1 billion.
Reliance Comm increases $255 mln via ECB for 3G (India)
Reliance Communications has raised $255 million of external commercial borrowing (ECB) to partly refinance payments made for acquiring 3G, air waves.
According to the company, this loan is funded by a consortium of banks led by Australian and New Zealand Banking Group, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, DBS Bank Ltd and Intesa Sanpaolo. Reliance Communications won bandwidth for 13 service areas in a government-led auction in May last year for US$1.88 billion.The refinancing extends the tenure of the borrowing as well as lowering the interest costs for the company.
Last month, Reliance Communications signed a memorandum of understanding with China Development Bank to refinance the $1.33 billion paid for 3G spectrum to the Department of Telecommunications. The MoU also covers financing of up to $600 million towards equipment and services to be procured from Chinese vendors such as ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies.
RIM in positive discussions with India
Research In Motion Ltd. is in talks with the Indian government to allow interception and monitoring of its BlackBerry messenger , corporate email services and declares that it will continue to be constructive.
India was worried that terrorists could use BlackBerry’s highly encrypted software to communicate with the concealed BlackBerry corporate email services if RIM fails to come up with a solution for monitoring the service by the end of August.
India, who is in talks with RIM since the end of August, later extended the deadline for monitoring services by 60 days.
According to Indian Telecommunications Secretary R. Chandrashekhar, the government and RIM officials are in talks in order to find an appropriate solution to the issue.
India had warned that RIM would have to set up a server in India if it wishes to continue operating in the country. The Department of Telecommunications is expected to submit its report on using a local server by the end of October this year.
Bharti hails audit reports from Indian govt
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The findings of the government-appointed special auditor have been welcomed by Bharti Airtel. According to the operator, the audit showed that the license fees and spectrum charges paid by the company conform to the license conditions and rulings of the regulator.
However, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has got an option to claim Rs 98 crore from the company as additional license fee and spectrum charges because of the reports. The amount is the likely license fee impact on distributor margin.
However, it has not been specified in the 306-page audit report, which was submitted last week to the government whether Bharti is liable to pay this amount and has left it to DoT to take a final view on the issue.
However, it has been categorized that Bharti will not need to make any additional payment. According to company spokesman, based on specific request from DoT, the auditors have done their own estimates of the likely license fee impact on distributor margin and there is no liability whatsoever on this account as the company has paid license fees on actual realized revenues.
India’s 3G auction postponed again till Feb 25
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The date for India’s 3G auction has again been postponed by the India’s Department of Telecommunications. The operators bidding in the auction will again have to wait for couple of weeks from the scheduled date of February 12.
The government expects to wrap up the auction by March 3- 5 so that the money raised can be used to in this budgetary year which finishes March 31. $5.5 billion from the auction of three 2×5 MHz lots of 2100 MHz spectrum in most circles is aimed by the Indian government. Meanwhile, India mobile operators are facing the prospect of increased Spectrum Utilization Fees (SUF).
Communications Ministry proposal to up SUF’s by 2% a year has been signed off by India’s Empowered Group of Ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as per which the operators will have to collectively pay 20 billion rupee ($433.75 million) more in SUF’s to the government a year.
Why Anil Ambani wants to ride two horses in telecom
: It happened almost simultaneously. Just when Reliance Communications applied to the government for a pan-India GSM spectrum, it announced a mega deal with Nokia for two million CDMA handsets.
The two parallel developments have sent out mixed signals to the industry on whether Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications, which is the leading CDMA player with around 23 million subscribers, is interested in GSM or CDMA or both.
A few months ago, the company had applied for spectrum in six circles to operate GSM (global system for mobile communications) service. But it has now upped the ante by applying for a pan-India GSM presence, except in two circles (north-east and
).
Reliance maintains that it is “committed to pursue the world’s leading mobile technologies, whether CDMA or GSM, to provide the best and competitive services to our many million customers”. Reliance Communications runs GSM services through a subsidiary, Reliance Telecom.
Will Reliance then ride two horses at the same time? A source in the GSM camp said that Reliance may progressively tone down the CDMA focus. The company may target additional growth in GSM, he said.
Over a period of time, it may even look at shifting its CDMA subscriber base to the GSM platform, the source added.
Subsequently, introduction of dual mode world-phones (common for GSM and CDMA) in
will make things easier, he claimed. Another industry insider, however, argued that Reliance would not leave CDMA, where it has such a strong subscriber base.
“A dealer who sells all kinds of products is the best dealer,” he said. The company’s aim seems to be to multiply faster than others so that it becomes the top player in the country.
There are four reasons for Reliance’s strategy shift. One, thanks to handset limitations, higher-end users tend to prefer GSM, especially since international roaming is better on GSM.
Two, GSM operators continue to bill about 40% more than CDMA subscribers, indicating that they have better pricing power.
Three, by offering both CDMA and GSM, Reliance can design different schemes targeting different segments of the market.
And for, GSM is by far the dominant technology worldwide and in
, outnumbering CDMA 2.5:1 in
.
The evidence from circles where Reliance offers both CDMA and GSM suggests that one does not cannibalise the other. In the six circles where both are available (MP,
, Kolkata,, Orissa and Himachal), Reliance has 3.5 million subscribers and 2.1 million GSM ones.
The GSM subscriber base is much higher, both in
and globally, thereby making it logical for Reliance Communications to focus on GSM technology, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ associate director Arpita Pal Agrawal.
“The economies of scale are much better in the case of GSM,” she said. She also pointed out that while CDMA is very effective for high-speed data applications, the current Reliance base includes a large number of low-cost customers.
As for government policy, a senior official in the department of telecommunications (DoT) told DNA Money that “licences are technology neutral”.
He gave this reply when asked whether Reliance required to surrender some of its CDMA spectrum to expand in the GSM space. However, there are concerns within the government and the industry over the additional spectrum allocation sought, as spectrum is considered a scarce resource.
Also, a senior representative of DoT recently told the media, “the government policy is not to shut doors (on any player)”. He added that BSNL and MTNL also offered both GSM and CDMA in some common circles.
Interestingly, Reliance Communications is learnt to have told DoT recently that its decision to expand in GSM is linked to government’s teledensity target.
The company indicated that it aimed to have the largest marketshare in the Indian telecom sector by 2010 end, and that it must opt for GSM expansion to reach there, according to sources.
While communications minister Dayanidhi Maran has set a target of 250 million phone connections by the end of 2007 and 500 million by the end of 2010, Reliance Communications is understood to be eyeing anything between 110 million and 125 million subscribers by then, representing a marketshare of around 25%.
Even as the CDMA growth has been robust, in terms of absolute numbers it is nowhere near GSM. As against 1,820 million GSM users across the world as of March, 2006, CDMA had only 250 million subscribers, excluding the 3G user base.
If 3G users are taken into account, the GSM base has crossed 2 billion and CDMA 318 million.
In
, GSM is way ahead with 86.6 million users, while CDMA has managed over 35 million, including its wireline and fixed wireless subscribers.
GSM players in
include Bharti, Hutch, Idea and BSNL, while Reliance Telecom has over 2 million GSM users in eight circles. CDMA is represented mainly by Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices.
From December, 2001, to December, 2002, the CDMA base in
grew 125%, against 92.5% in GSM during the corresponding period. From December, 2002, to December, 2003, CDMA recorded a growth of 800% against 110.5% in GSM.
(It was in December, 2002, that Reliance launched its CDMA service). From December, 2003, to 2004, the CDMA growth rate was 75.3%, against 70.3% in GSM. From December, 2004, to 2005, CDMA showed a growth of 76%, against 56.8% in GSM. However, from December, 2005, to May, 2006, the CDMA growth rate has been lower at 26% against 28.5 per cent in GSM.
Global numbers also indicate a better growth trajectory for CDMA, as opposed to GSM.
From the fourth quarter of 2001 to the corresponding period in 2002, CDMA growth rate was 819.4% against 46.3% in GSM. From Q4 of 2002 to Q4 of 2003, CDMA recorded a growth rate of 158%, against 25% in GSM.
From Q4 of 2003 to Q4 of 2004, the global CDMA user base grew 70.9% against 28% in GSM. From Q4 of 2004 to Q4 of 2005, the CDMA growth rate was 54.1% against 31.8% in GSM.
From the fourth quarter of 2005 to the end of first quarter of 2006, the CDMA growth rate was 11.2% against 6.4% in GSM. The 3G figures have not been taken into account for calculating the global growth rate in GSM and CDMA.
Source- http://www.dnaindia.com
Technorati : Airtel, CDMA, GSM, Hutch, Idea, India, Mobile, Reliance Telecom
Ice Rocket : Airtel, CDMA, GSM, Hutch, Idea, India, Mobile, Reliance Telecom
