NZ telecom operators to offer mobile money services (New Zealand)
In an attempt to provide mobile money services to mobile phone customers in New Zealand, mobile operators Paymark, Vodafone New Zealand, 2degrees and Telecom have come together to launch a common platform. According to reports, the new initiative will enable mobile phone users in the country to purchase goods and pay for utilities, using their mobile phone.
The new service makes use of the near-field communication (NFC) technology. A NFC chip is inserted into the smartphone using which users can transfer information from one device to another, by keeping them close together.
According to reports, the companies have said that they will form a joint venture and launch a trusted service manager (TSM) for mobile wallet services. In a statement they said that this initiative will create the infrastructure necessary to enable many of the cards held in a wallet today to be replaced by applications securely stored in a virtual wallet on a mobile phone.
Bharti Airtel reports highest earnings of $ 2.03 billion in the first quarter (India)
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), revealed the earnings for the Indian tele-companies during the first quarter of 2011-12, with Bharti airtel leading the way by accounting for 22 percent of the total revenues of US$ 9.321 billion.
As per TRAI’s India Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report, Airtel had the highest gross revenue at $ 2.03 billion, followed by Vodafone at $ 1.37 billion, Idea Cellular at $ 914.59 million and BSNL at $ 880 million.
The revenues for Reliance Communication, MTNL, Videcon and Quadrant Televentures, showed a decline and were at $ 599.3 million, $ 149.2 million, $ 32.24 million and $ 10.22 million respectively. Further, other telecom operators such as Tata Teleservices reported earnings of $ 569.6 million, followed by Aircel at $ 306.3 million, Unitech at $ 107.1 million, S Tel at $ 7.657 million, Loop telecom at $ 36.98 million and Shyam Sistema at $ 55.47 million.
As per sources, the report also showed that the gross revenue had gone up by 3 per cent from the previous quarter and 13 per cent compared to $ 8.228 billion earned in the same period last year. Further, the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) on which the government charges the license fee grew by 3.56 per cent in the first quarter. As per reports, telecom operators are charges a licence fee based on the category they fall in, such as 10 per cent of AGR in the metros and category ‘A’ areas, 8 per cent in in category ‘B’ areas and, 6 per cent category ‘C’ areas.
NCC orders telecom operators to decongest networks (Nigeria)
If reports are to be believed, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has ordered telecommunication operators to address the poor quality of service in the country or face stiff penalties.
The regulator has particularly asked telecommunications operators to decongest their networks within a period of two weeks.
NCC studies showed that network congestion was responsible for poor service quality. Tests on some 100 base stations showed extreme congestion on 30%.
According to NCC, operators must invest more in the networks over a certain period. NCC plans to publish network congestion levels.
$789 million to be spent on SDM by 2013
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Even though the capital expenditure (capex) budgets of telecom operators has sharply decreased due to the global economic situation, expenditure on the subscriber data management (SDM) solutions is expected to increase in the high double-digit percents annually for at least the next four years. This forecast has been given by Infonetics Research.
A prediction in the growth of SDM market to $789 million in 2013 has also been predicted by the research company. By allowing the operators to extract, normalize, analyze, and pass on valuable subscriber information to their marketing teams, SDM act as strategic tools that can help them better monetize their existing assets.
The SDM investment in Europe is drove by machine-to-machine (M2M) market and the trend is also expected in North America in coming years. Interest in 3G data offload is also acting as a catalyst in SDM investments as operators, while maintaining a consistent subscriber experience, effortlessly shift traffic onto their own or their partners’ Wi-Fi networks.
Roaming charges on Vodafone reduced by 50% in India
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Adding a new spice to the latest tariff war in the world’s fastest-growing cellular market, India, Vodafone Essar, reduced its roaming charges by more than 50% besides offering the option for per-second pulse.
The pay per second plan launched by TATA DoCoMo has made the other operators to join the war. Some are even coming up with other lucrative plans like 50 paise per minute, for all types of calls, local as well as roaming by Reliance Communications and to 60 paisa per minute roaming charges by Bharti Airtel.
Though the customers are benefiting a lot from this tariff war, the mobile operators are losing out on revenues. The stock prices of listed telecom operators like Bharti Airtel, RelCom and others are sliding.
One of the major reasons behind this war is to attract the new users as new operators are entering the market. Norway’s Telenor launch made it the 12th operator playing in the Indian market while, Arab’s second-biggest carrier Etisalat is planning to enter India.
Price war & the Indian regulator cause mobile stocks to tumble
The Indian mobile sector, a darling of the Indian stock markets has just fallen from grace. Fears that a renewed tariff war may bring its dream run of profit growth to an end and could force smaller players to sell out or shut shop has caused the leader, Bharti Airtel to lose 17% in two trading sessions. Reliance Communications has fallen 11% and Idea Cellular fell 8%.
Mobile tariffs in India are already the lowest in the world. On Monday, Reliance (RCOM) announced the slashing of tariffs across the board for local, roaming and long-distance calls to 50 paise, i.e under a cent per minute.
In addition to this, the Indian Telecom regulator suggested on Monday that telecom operators shift to per-second pricing as opposed to per-minute. After the Indian stock market got jittery with this announcement and telecom stocks started tumbling, the regulator (TRAI) was seen as diluting their position on this statement, stating that proposal on per-second billing was at an initial stage and too much was being read into the issue.
TRAI chairman J.S. Sarma also said that mobile operators were free to oppose the scheme and the regulator would consider their opinion during the consultation process.
Sunil Mittal, the chief of Bharti Airtel said tariffs were best left to market forces.
India overtakes China
Indian telecom operators added the highest number of new cellular users in the world in a single month in August.
With 5.9 million new mobile users,
India
has beaten
China
, which added 5.19 million new cellular users in the same period. Other countries in the top five include
Russia
with 3.6 million new mobile subscribers,
Brazil
with 2 million additions and the
Philippines
where 1.9 million new cellular subscribers were added in August.
Explosive Growth
Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director General, Cellular Operator’s Association of India, said that this explosive growth in subscriber numbers was a direct result of the forward looking policies of the Government, the enabling regulatory structure and the commitment of the industry to deliver increased access to subscribers with ever improving affordability. “With this growth,
India
was well on course to exceed the COAI forecast of 130 million subscribers by December 2006,” said Mr Ramachandran
As per global analysts Wireless Intelligence, the last half billion cellular subscribers had come in a record time of 12 months and has been mainly added in the very high-growth emerging markets of
China
,
India
and
Russia
. According to Wireless Intelligence, the global mobile industry has been growing at around 40 million subscribers per month, which is the highest volume of growth that the market has ever seen. The share of the Asia Pacific region in this growth is 41 per cent with
India
and
China
alone accounting for 25 per cent of the total subscriber growth worldwide over the last year.
Going forward, it is estimated that the cellular mobile subscribers will grow by another 500 million to reach 3 billion by the end of 2007. As per experts, the contribution by
India
to this growth would be the maximum and is estimated to be 80 million new cellular subscribers.
Source- http://www.moneycontrol.com
Technorati : Brazil, Cellular, India, Philippines, Russia, operator
Ice Rocket : Brazil, Cellular, India, Philippines, Russia, operator
