Indian Supreme Court rejects plea of telecom operators (India)
The Supreme Court in India has rejected the appeal by telecom operators to reconsider the judgement cancelling 122 2G licences awarded in 2008. As reported by Wireless Federation earlier, the Indian Court had ruled to cancel the 122 licences on suspicion of corruption and bribery.
As per reports, the Court has said that they have carefully perused the review petition and the record of the case and are convinced that the judgment of which review has been sought does not suffer from any error apparent warranting its reconsideration.
The companies affected by this decision include Videocon Telecommunications Ltd, S Tel Ltd, Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), Tata Teleservices Ltd, Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Pvt Ltd, Etisalat DB Telecom Pvt Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd.
India Allows Two Firms to Import in Telecom Equipment from China
The Indian government has allowed Reliance Communications Ltd. and Tata Teleservices Ltd. to import telecom equipment from two Chinese manufacturers.
A source close to deal revealed, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices can now source equipment from China’s ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies respectively.
The approval shows that government is now taking the matter at ease. Recently government restricted imports of telecom equipment, particularly from China, because of security concerns. While there was no formal ban, Indian telecom operators stated their growth plans were being affected as the central authorities were rejecting their proposals to import equipment.
The products created by these Chinese companies are in demand as they are cost effective when compared to any other manufactures.
DoT’s guidelines stated that, if violation of security is perceived, equipment must be taken out of service. And in such matters, DoT can impose a penalty of US$ 10.730 million per purchase order and 100% of the contract value on service providers. DoT can also blacklist the equipment vendor.
GSM firms see big sales, user revenue down
NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 5: India’s private GSM carriers posted a 49-per cent rise in first quarter revenue as rockbottom local call rates helped boost usage and attract new users in the world’s fastest growing wireless services market.
India, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, is adding more than 5 million new telecom users each month — roughly equal to the population of Finland.
Even though the combined sales of seven carriers shot up to 56.21 billion rupees ($1.22 billion) during the April-June period, the monthly average revenue per user declined 11 per cent to 347 rupees due to falling tariffs.
“The decline in APRU is a strong evidence of the ever improving affordability of GSM mobile services,” said T.V. Ramachandran, director general at the Cellular Operators’ Association.
The data covers seven operators including Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s top mobile services provider which is 30.8 per cent owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. It also covers Hutchison Essar Ltd. and Idea Cellular Ltd.
It does not include the financial performance of state-run telecom firms Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.
GSM carriers also compete with CDMA-operators like Reliance Communications Ltd. and Tata Teleservices Ltd.
The nine GSM firms had at total of 82.41 million mobile users at the end of July, more than three quarters of the market.
Source- http://www.financialexpress.com
Technorati : CDMA, GSM, India, Mobile
Ice Rocket : CDMA, GSM, India, Mobile
