China Mobile subscriber base rises to 833.1 million in Nov
China’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile’s total mobile subscribers in November increased to 579.6 million, including 18.8 million 3G subscribers.
China Unicom which is the country’s No. 2 mobile carrier has stated that its total mobile subscribers increased to 165.5 million for the month, including about 12.8 million 3G subscribers.
China Telecom claimed that its total mobile subscribers rose to 88 million in November.
Smart Mobile and Star-Cell merge their operations in Cambodia (Asia)
Smart Mobile and Star-Cell will combine their operations in Cambodia under Latelz Co., Ltd. and its brand Smart Mobile.
Smart Mobile will become with this combination one of the market leaders with more than 850,000 subscribers and aims to be a market leader both in subscriber base and new subscriptions through its further aggressive growth and strong market presence.
The enlarged Smart Mobile will give the joint subscriber base of Smart Mobile and Star-Cell great value by a substantially larger within-network community, a nationwide coverage as well as a superior service portfolio combined with Smart Mobile’s known premium customer service level.
Smart Mobile subscribers will enjoy the benefits of the merger without any change of telephone numbers and SIM cards. Further, Smart Mobile’s network will, after both networks have been combined, serve 23 out of 24 provinces of Cambodia and will extend to the remaining province in the course of 2011.
Bharti Airtel subscriber base rises by 1 million every month
Bharti Airtel is gambling high on the African market. The company has started to restructure its Africa network and has now set a target of achieving 100 million subscribers by 2012.
Manoj Kohli the joint MD and CEO of Bharti’s international operations in an interview talked about Bharti’s strategy to turnaround Zain.
According to Kohli, the operations of Zain actually declining for last 18 months or so. Revenues, profit, EBITDA, market share was declining and his first job there, was to get the decline to be over so that the company can revive it and start a growth trend and that he thinks they have done within the first three months.
He added that since the last month, there has been very good growth. Minutes are growing, Minutes of Usage per customer are growing, revenues are growing and customer satisfaction is growing and today the company is launching as a brand in Africa. People will see a very remarkable change in this market.
When asked about the recently cut tariffs in Kenya he stated that the company’s strategy of course is taking the network deep into the market, into small town, into rural areas, also offer affordable services. Now strategy is affordability and not has price wars etc. which some people are portraying it as. The company is going through a restructure period which can take a couple of quarters. There are around 6 7 big restructurings that they are doing in Africa. The company’s network is being fully restructured.
The company has more than 40 million active customers and is adding more than a million active customers a month. But he added that when the company took over they had shed about 6 million from 42 million to 36 million.
China mobile subscriber base increases to 824.3 million
China Mobile, China’s largest mobile carrier, total mobile subscribers in October increased to 575 million, including about 17 million 3G subscribers.
According to China Unicom, the country’s No. 2 mobile carrier, its total mobile subscribers rose to about 163.8 million for the month, including 11.7 million 3G subscribers.
As per China Telecom, its total mobile subscribers rose to 85.5 million in October. It added that it’s 3G subscriber base increased to about 9.2 million users at the end of September.
E-Plus reaches 20 million subscriber mark
German mobile operator E-Plus, a subsidiary of Dutch telecoms group KPN, has announced it has doubled its subscriber base within the last five years to reach 20 million at the start of November.
According to the company it had a subscriber base of 19.899 million, of which 65.4% were on a pre-paid basis on 30 September. It will continue expanding its mobile internet network to work towards offering the country’s best data network by 2012.
According to reports, E-Plus hopes to use 900MHz frequencies for expanding its UMTS network in rural municipalities in Pfalz, Mecklenburg and Uckermark.
According to the company, the expansion would enable it to offer mobile broadband services at HSPA+ speeds to the households in these areas. The expansion requires approval from the Federal Network Agency (FNA), however, as 900MHz frequencies are reserved for the provision of GSM services and not for UMTS.
DoT’s proposals may facilitate dual tech players(India)
DoT has proposed a policy that supports Dual Tech operators which will considerably expand Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices operations.
According to the legal advisor, DoT, the GSM licensees who have received the initial start-up spectrum of 4.4 Mhz and meet the eligibility conditions for grant of additional spectrum up to 6.2 Mhz may be given top priority, as this is the assured quantum of spectrum as per the License Agreement and also their vested right.
RCom in particular is likely to gain enormously as it meets the subscriber base criteria in prime locations. It is expected to bag additional GSM spectrum in such circles.
TRAI in the recent times had recommended that operators with 6.2 MHz of spectrum should be considered first for allocation of additional spectrum, as they have already made an investment to roll-out their networks.
Strong subscriber growth but flat revenues for telcos in Q1
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Out of the 175 million new subscribers or revenue sources added during the three months ended March 31, 2010, some 70% came from the Asia/Pacific region. India and China remained the dominant players in the telecom sector in terms of wireless subscriber numbers and accounting for 54% of all net new subscribers in the quarter, thus becoming the sole drivers of regional growth.
Both Indonesia and Vietnam joined India and China in the first quarter in the top six groups of wireless growth markets. Brazil and the USA were the only non-Asian countries in the half dozen. 112 million mobile subscribers were added by the six countries together during the three-month period. However, the scene was not very rosy for Western Europe as for the first time it saw a decline in its wireless subscriber base, albeit by a small amount.
With just 41% of quarterly additions by Asia/pacific region, broadband subscriber growth was distributed more evenly across the regions. Western Europe and North America are adding substantial numbers of subscribers each quarter with each region contributing 16% of the quarterly additions. China, the United States, Russia, India and the Philippines were the top five growth countries with France, Brazil and Germany all close behind.
A decline of 2.1% revenue over the previous quarter is also significant as there has been some seasonal storm in the market and a drop in Q1 is not unusual, but this drop is substantially bigger than that seen twelve months ago. India has seen an amazing 50% growth in wireless subscribers over the last twelve months and now has almost 600 million subscribers but still there is not a single Indian operator in the list of top 30 service providers by revenue.
The reason is that the big subscriber growth numbers are coming from countries where ARPUs are low and intense competition is pushing them even lower. Meanwhile, brutal price competition has had a sharply negative impact on Indian service providers’ revenue growth.
Indian mobiles set to get 11 digit numbers
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Get ready to add one more digit to your already difficult to remember mobile number from January next year. National Numbering Plan 2003 has been amended by Department of Telecommunications (DoT), migrating the current 10 digit numbers to an 11-digit numbering plan in mobile services.
As per the amendment, an extra ‘9′ would be prefixed to the existing two-digit PLMN Access Code. According to an internal DoT note, the proposed migration may be implemented from January 10, 2010.
Earlier, number ‘2′ was prefixed to all BSNL and MTNL fixed-line phones across the country a few years ago to accommodate more connections.
Every service provider has its own PLMN, identified by Mobile Country Code (MCC) and the Mobile Network Code (MNC). The PLAM connects with internet service providers for data and internet access and interconnects with other PlAMs and public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) for telephone communications.
The unexpected growth in India’s mobile subscribers has made this numbering plan imminent. With 10-14 million mobile subscribers added to the list every month, the wireless subscriber base has already crossed 500 million, making it compulsory for DoT to re-examine plans in order to accommodate more subscribers.
India’s GSM subscriber base reaches 335.5 million
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The GSM subscribers of India have grown by 9.31 million in August, taking its total base to 335.5 million, as per the data released.
According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the apex body of GSM operators, Bharti Airtel remained the front runner with 2.8 million additions, taking its number of subscribers to 107.9 million.
Followed to this is Vodafone with the additon of 2.19 million, taking its subscriber tally to 80.8 million.
The monthly data does not include GSM subscribers of Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices, which report figures separately, COAI said.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has gained 1.3 million subscribers, Idea Cellular added 1.5 million subscribers in August.
