Reliance Communications launches 3G services in Jharkhand (India)
Reliance Communications has launched the first 3G network in Jharkhand. In the first phase, the services will be available in 6 towns of Jharkhand including Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Jharia. Recently, Reliance Communications had launched 3G services in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chandigarh.
The network is capable of offering peak speeds up to 28 Mbps.
Reliance Communications will be launching Reliance 3G services across all 13 telecom circles, where it holds 3G licenses, by end of Fiscal 2010-11. The company is aiming to offer national 3G coverage through associations with other 3G licensees in the balance 9 telecom circles during the course of next year.
Reliance Communications holds 3G licenses in the telecom circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, North East, Jammu & Kashmir, Orissa and Assam.
Videocon faces tough competition: Planning to sell 26% of Videocon Telecommunications
Videocon Industries is busy looking for possible buyers to sell 26% of its telecom arm Videocon Telecommunications that has 1.9 million subscribers and has a market share of 0.31%. The company in the recent past had started discussion with South Korean company SK Telecom, UAE’s Etisalat and Turkey’s Turkcell. By selling 26% of Videocon Telecom, the main company will raise around INR 15,000 crores which will be employed to improve services and expand operations to improve customer base.
According to a source, Videocon is struggling to keep up with the major players like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, and Vodafone due to fewer offerings to the customer.
The telecom company currently operations in Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, Mumbai, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, UP East, UP West and Himachal Pradesh. Videocon recently announced 1 paise/sec international calling to US and Canada. Such schemes may help the company in fetching new customers, but if the company wants a stand in the market it needs to improve service and infrastructure to handle larger customer base.
Nokia, Samsung & LG reduce mobile handset prices to check grey market in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In order to check grey market growth and ensure standard retail prices across the country, Nokia, Samsung and LG have cut mobile handset prices in different cities of India including Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
These vendors have joined hands, arguably for the first time for reducing the price by up to 8%, in order to stop customers flocking to grey markets due to higher value-added tax (VAT).
According to Pankaj Mohindroo, national president of mobile phone industry body Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the mobile phone industry has rallied at its own cost to save the legal trade from total capitulation by the grey market. The association estimates that higher VAT has impacted legitimate trade worth more than Rs 4,500 crore in Maharashtra, Delhi and West Bengal alone.
A Nokia India spokeswoman was of an opinion that almost 60% of legitimate sales in Maharashtra has gone to the grey market since the state increase value-added tax a year ago. Maharashtra increased the VAT on mobile phones from 4% to 12.5% in May last year. It was followed by Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh where rates are 12.5% and 14%, respectively.
Delhi and West Bengal joined the list last month.
India 3G auction bid crosses 10,000 crore mark
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 116 rounds of bidding has already been concluded and the provisional winning price for a nationwide license has crossed the Rs 10,000 crore-mark in the auction conducted by the Indian government for third generation (3G) telecom services in the country.
On the 20th day of the auction which began on April 9, winning price for a pan-India license stood at Rs 10,347.67 crore, up 195.6% from the Rs 3,500 crore reserve price fixed by the government. The provisional revenue at Rs 41,765.66 crore from the sale is more than what the government has expected.
With Rs 1,706.07 crore, Mumbai stood at the top of the bidding chart while the provisional winning price for Delhi stood at Rs 1,653.87 crore, followed by Maharashtra at Rs 1,041.23 crore.
Not a single player bid for Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), Madhya Pradesh, Orissa belt. The auction is expected to conclude this week.
According to telecommunication minister, slots for three-four players are available in each of the 22 circles into which the country has been geographically divided for the 3G services, which will facilitate much faster connectivity than now and enable applications such as internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.
Etisalat DB to enter Indian market as Cheers Mobile
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: GSM service of Etisalat DB will be soon launched in India under the brand Cheers Mobile Service. The website of the company has already gone live providing information on various tariff and customer care numbers. Etisalat DB is one of the pre-qualified bidders for 3G spectrum in India, the auction if which is expected to begin on April 9, 2010
The GSM Mobile Network of Telecom Talk has already gone live in Tamil Nadu and Kerala but it is still to come to Delhi. The commercial service of the operators is also expected soon in Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh and other circles. On launching its service in April, the operator will become the fourth telco to launch GSM services in the last 5 months and second this year.
Etisalat DB is a joint venture between Etisalat and Dynamix Balwas Group after Etisalat bought 45 percent share for $900 million in Swan Telecom.
UASL license has been granted to Etisalat DB to operate 2G services in 15 circles including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
Indian telco Aircel reveals 2010 investment plans
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With a view to expand the areas of operation, an investment of approximately USD1.4 billion in 2010 has been planned by Indian mobile network operator Aircel. The aim of the company is to roll out services in five circles by June 2010.
The five circles include- Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Punjab. 17 of India’s 22 telecoms circles receive Aircel network. In addition to the investment this year, around USD2.6 billion between 2011 and 2012 will also be spent by the company.
Around 17,000 towers to GTL Infrastructure was divested by the mobile operator in January 2010, in a deal worth approximately INR85 billion (USD1.85 billion). According to Sandip Das, CEO of Maxis, the company’s growth is not restricted for lack of funds. The tower hive off had given us liquidity of around USD3 billion.
Unitech Wireless enters five more circles in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Five more telecom-service areas in India will start receiving mobile service from Unitech Wireless, a joint venture between India’s Unitech Ltd. and Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor ASA.
Unitech Wireless after launching its operations in eight of the India’s 22 telecom service areas in December will next enter the service areas of Mumbai, Maharashtra, Kolkata, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Unitech Wireless operating under the Uninor brand currently has about 2.5 million subscribers.
Meanwhile, Telenor has invested about INR20.22 billion more in the joint venture as planned for a 7.15% stake, taking the Norwegian company’s total stake in Unitech Wireless to 67.25%.
TATA and BSNL enter Network Sharing deal (India)
Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), India’s fastest-growing pan India telecom service provider, today announced the signing of a landmark ‘Master Services Agreement for Passive Infrastructure Sharing’ with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
Becoming the first Indian private telecom operator to enter into an agreement of this nature. The agreement which is valid for 15 years will be applicable to both Tata Teleservices Limited and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited in all of India’s 22 telecom Circles.
This is a moment of pride for us, as we have become the first private telecom operator to enter into such a strategically important agreement with BSNL, one that will allow us to expand our telecom footprint across the country much more quickly,†Mr Madhav Joshi, President, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Tata Teleservices Limited, said.
The agreement comes at a very strategic time for Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited (TTML), as both companies have been aggressively expanding their network presence on the CDMA side with Tata Indicom, while also rolling out GSM services under the TATA DOCOMO brand name. In the short space of just three months, we have already rolled out our GSM services in nine Circles—Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh and Haryana,†Mr AG Rao, Chief Technology Officer, Tata Teleservices Limited, said. This agreement has the potential to not just speed up our network expansion and rollout process, but would also have a substantial impact in terms of reduced costs,†he added.
Under the terms of the agreement, TTSL and TTML will have access to thousands of BSNL towers all across the country.
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
