MNP deadline to be missed by MTNL, BSNL (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BSNL and MTNL, both state-controlled telcos in India will not be able to meet the deadline set by Indian government for supporting mobile number portability (MNP). Both the companies have said that the deadline of end of 2009 will not be met as the necessary upgrades to their systems will take few more months.
The Department of Telecoms earlier decided that key metro markets will offer MNP by the end of this year while the rest of the country will receive it from next June. However, the service was supposed to be available from the end of September but the problems with the regulators and operators lead to its delay.
According to TRAI chairman JS Sarma, the companies may be labeled as anti consumer if they fail to meet the deadline this time. As per the guidelines decided by the Department of Telecommunications, country will be geographically divided into two Number Portability Zones namely zone 1 & zone 2, with11 licensed service areas each.
The license for Zone 1 (Northern and Western India) was granted to Syniverse Technologies while MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions received the license for Zone 2 (Eastern and Southern India).
The selections were done on the basis of the guidelines for MNP service license.
Cisco technology for Batelco – Bahrain
Batelco has announced plans to collaborate with Cisco to bring international standards in voice, mobile, data and broadband capabilities to the Bahrain’s telecom infrastructure.
The new agreement will form part of a joint effort to bring improved services and new technologies to Batelco’s corporate, small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) and individual consumers.
Peter Kaliaropoulos, Batelco’s Chief Executive, said: “Our collaboration with Cisco is part of Batelco’s commitment to providing world-class service and technological capacity throughout its network.”
Batelco and Cisco will cooperate in the four areas of wireline and mobile infrastructure; managed services development; building broadband and addressing the demands of rapidly growing real-estate sector in the Kingdom.
“Cisco will be working closely with Batelco on several service areas critical for the development of any new world telecom infrastructure,” said Samer Alkharrat, General Manager of Cisco Gulf.
He added: “The concept of managed services, for example, is prevalent in Europe and the US, and is picking up pace in this region. Batelco will be one of the service providers in the region that is planning to embrace ‘Managed Services’.”
Managed Services from Batelco will provide customers with a suite of communication solutions, removing much of the burden associated with the enterprise’s IT operational expense and overhead, thus allowing enterprises to optimise cost and focus on their core business.
Nadim Khoury, Regional Manager for Service Provider in Cisco, summed up the new deal: “With Cisco’s cutting edge solutions, we are planning to look at various options to how Batelco can maximise the potential of its mobile service delivery through the creation of value added services for mobile customers.
Combining this with managed and broadband services being created will position Batelco as one of the permanent service providers in the region.”
Source- http://www.menafn.com
