For buying 3G equipment Vodafone will invest 500 million dollars
Marten Peters, the chief executive officer of Vodafone Essar stated that the company for procuring electronic equipment for its third generation service will spend in the tune of four hundred to five hundred million dollars before the launch of the same in the first quarter of 2011.
The company will arrange for the funds by taking bank loans and offering some new shares to its existing shareholders.
Vodafone Essar the third biggest telecom provider of the nation in terms of subscription had spent in the tune of eleven thousand six hundred and eighteen crores of rupees for acquiring the 3G spectrum in the month of May. Mr. Peters added that the company paid that massive amount as there was an artificial dearth of bandwidth.
Vodafone will launch its services, dividing them into phases. The 3G services will first start from metro cities like Mumbai and Delhi and gradually it will spread over all circles of Maharashtra, Kolkata, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and West Bengal. These facts were given by Mr. Sanjoy Mukherjee the director of business operation of Vodafone Essar.
Marten Peters added saying that Vodafone is negotiating with other top quality and long term operators like the Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel to distribute 3G services where Vodafone does not have 3G airwaves.
The whole idea of taking this move is to provide the customers the experience of 3G services all across the country regardless of the circle owned by Vodafone or any other operator as stated by the Vodafone director of business operations, Mr. Sunil Sood.
Sanjoy Mukherjee further stated that the 3G service will have reasonable pricing and will vary from location to location and on its usage. He cited example stating in cities video calls will be less expensive from the video call s of a remote village.
Vodafone Essar selects Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks for 3G roll-out (India)
Vodafone Essar, India has selected Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson to roll-out 3G network. The financial details are not yet disclosed.
Ericsson will provide equipment to cover India’s largest metropolitan cities; Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, while Nokia Siemens Networks will supply, employ and manage its 3G network in six circles – Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh (East), rest of West Bengal and Haryana – where it secured 3G spectrum.
Ericsson will provide the RAN system, network rollout services, tuning, spare parts and training services, along with the 3G common core platform and will start the transmission in the coming months.
Nokia Siemens Networks will provide services like network planning and project management to enable 3G network implementation. Nokia Siemens Networks will also operate the 3G network for three years under a managed services contract.
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 bandwidth auction-Pan India price hits $2.33 billion
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: As expected, the bidding amount for bandwidth for 3G mobile services nearly tripled to 103.48 billion rupees ($2.33 billion), at the end of day 20 of the country’s 3G Auction. The starting price was touted to be INR35 billion.
As per the department of telecommunications, the bidding will again start on Tuesday for each pan-India slot starting at about INR104.43 billion.
While Mumbai kept its place as the most-sought-after service area with four bids each at INR17.06 billion for the three slots available. Delhi followed with three bids for the three available slots at about INR16.54 billion each, data from the department showed.
The third highest bid was received by the western Indian province of Maharashtra at INR10.41 billion, with two bids for three slots. The forth position was bagged by the South Indian province of Andhra Pradesh while Tamil Nadu stood on the fifth position.
While Andhra Pradesh received four bids at INR9.13 billion each for the three available slots, Tamil Nadu got two bids at about INR9.02 billion each for three slots.
Virgin Mobile India unveils special pack for GSM users
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A pocket friendly local calling pack has been launched by Virgin Mobile India for all its GSM subscribers. The pack is worth Rs. 45 with a validity of 30 days allowing the customers to call any local number at just 1paise/2seconds.
The offer is available across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa, Mumbai and Maharashtra circles.
The company has made it clear that the pack is profitable on both minute and second billing profiles. Consumers are also provided an option to choose per minute tariff or a per second one. A differentiated tariff proposition of 20p/min for STD and local calls to any Virgin Mobile number will be offered on per minute tariff.
40p/min for local and 50p/min for STD calls will have to be paid for calling any other network.
Launch of MNP again delayed in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The launch of the mobile number portability in India has again been delayed by the government from March 31 to June 30, 2010. Earlier the implementation was scheduled to take place in December 31, 2009 in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai as well as in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
According to the government, operators are yet to test if their networks are ready to launch mobile number portability, or MNP, services and the government has set a deadline of May 15 to complete the tests and on the basis of the successful completion of the action taken (tests)…, the DoT will finally decide the dates for MNP implementation.
The launch has already been delayed twice despite the fact that the government decided to launch MNP by the first week of May, with initial launches in the southern cities of Bangalore and Chennai.
Virgin mobile launches GSM service in Maharashtra (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Virgin mobile famous for targeting youths in its promotions has launched its GSM service in the Maharashtra and Mumbai circles. 20 paise per minute for Virgin-to-Virgin calls across any circles will be charged to the subscribers across Maharashtra and Mumbai. The rates would be 40 paise per minute for local and 50 paise per minute for STD calls for other networks.
T
he consumers can also opt for another plan that provides all local and STD calls at 1 paise per second with a recharge of Rs. 12 and with a talk time of Rs. 10.88, valid for 365 days.
Tata DoCoMo has tied up with Virgin Mobile to offer its GSM services in the country and Virgin has tied up with Tata Indicom for its CDMA network. 10% of the market of Virgin mobile comprises of the urban youth segment.
Maharashtra to receive BSNL’s 3G service next month
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The BSNL subscribers in Pune, Goa and around 50 other cities can enjoy 3G services within a month as the state-owned mobile network operator set to introduce the circles in Maharashtra circle.
According to BSNL’s chief general manager for the Maharashtra circle, Aloke Kaul, BSNL will start providing 3G services in Pune in February and later in Goa and other cities in Maharashtra circle after which all the BSNL’s customers can enjoy better and advanced telecom services.
GSM service soon to be launched in India by Virgin Mobile
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With the goal of expanding its reach among the people and especially youths, Tata Teleservices youth brand, Virgin Mobile is planning to launch its GSM services.
Virgin Mobile GSM may use TATA DOCOMO’s network and will be first introduced in Chennai and Tamil Nadu Circle and Mumbai & Maharashtra circle.
TATA DOCOMO’s service is yet to roll out all over India while Virgin Mobile will also take time to establish its mark among the masses. Currently, Virgin Mobile is using TATA Indicom’s network to operate.
Highest no. of subscriber during the past 3 months has been recorded by TTSL and TATA DOCOMO is considered to be the major factor behind this growth.
