Uninor subscriber base crosses 38 million (India)
Telecom operator Uninor has reported subscriber additions amounting to 2.49 million in January this year, reaching a total customer base of 38.79 million.
This brings great news to telecom operator Uninor, a joint venture between Telenor Norway and Unitech, whose 22 licenses were cancelled by the Indian Supreme Court earlier this month, claiming that the licences were obtained by illegal means.
As per a company statement, Uninor has claimed that in their 13 commercial circles in 2011, the highest number of subscribers chose Uninor. Further, they are satisfied to see that this strong preference continues into 2012 as well.
The operator added that it is their intention to continue competing as a mass market mobile service and ensure that the Indian mobile users continue to benefit from this competition.
Telenor had recently announced that it plans to form a new joint venture with another Indian entity in an attempt to continue its operations in the country.
Telenor to start new venture in India (Norway,India)
Norwegian telecom company, Telenor Group has issued a notice to Indian partner, Unitech Ltd., seeking compensation and indemnity, following the Indian Supreme Court’s order to cancel 22 licences held by the firm in India.
As per a report by the company, the Telenor Group holds Unitech Ltd. liable for the breach of warranties related to the cancellation of the licenses – seeking compensation for all investment, guarantees and damages caused by the Supreme Court Order. Telenor Group also makes an indemnity claim against Unitech for the failure to obtain spectrum in the strategically critical Delhi circle.
Pal Wien Espen, Group General Counsel, Telenor Group has said that the legality and validity of the licenses was a fundamental term of the share subscription agreement between Telenor Group and Unitech Limited. Further, they believe that the Supreme Court’s cancellation of the Unified Access Service Licenses (UASL) conclusively demonstrates a clear breach of Unitech’s warranties.
Espen added that the fact is that Uninor as a consequence of the judgment will no longer hold any UASLs. Telenor will therefore exercise its entitled right under the share subscription agreement to hold Unitech Ltd. liable to indemnify and compensate Telenor Group for its investment in India.
However, the company claims that they intend to continue their operations in the country through another venture, and are on the lookout for a new Indian partner. As per a company statement, this new entity will serve as the platform to approach the upcoming auctions for fresh licences as mandated by the Supreme Court. As a part of this process, the new entity will also seek requisite approvals from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to allow Telenor Group to take up 74 per cent ownership. The telecom firm added that till such time that Uninor’s business is transferred to the new Indian company, Uninor operations will continue as before.
According to reports, Unitech has retaliated saying that it is shocking that Telenor intends to transfer the entire business to a new affiliated entity owned by itself. This not only shows complete disregard and oppression of the minority shareholder by Telenor, but is also against all principles of related party transactions. Telenor cannot transfer any assets of Uninor without the consent of Unitech because they have veto right in the shareholders’ agreement as well as in the articles of association for such matters.
Batelco sells 42.7 per cent stake in Indian venture STel (Bahrain, India)
Telecom operator Bahrain Telecommunications Co, commonly known as Batelco, is the first operator to sell its stake in an Indian venture following the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict for cancellation of 122 2G licences. According to reports, Batelco has sold its 42.7 per cent stake in STel, to Sky City Foundation for US$175 million.
As per a statement made by Batelco, this is a part of an earlier understanding with its Indian partner to exit, given the circumstances surrounding the 2G probe in India over the past 12 months. Reports reveal that Shaikh Mohamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, CEO, Batelco Group has said that as Batelco continues to grow and diversify its operations, they remain interested in other investment opportunities that will enable them to participate in the Indian telecom market. He said that they are actively exploring all options in this respect.
Sources claim that the verdict will result in a cancellation of six licences for telecom operator STel. As reported earlier, Telenor Norway, which offers services in India under the brand Uninor, had also hinted at a possibility of exiting the Indian mobile market owing to the cancellation of the licences acquired in 2008.
Telenor aims to increase stake in Unitech to 74 percent (Norway, India)
Telenor Norway has reportedly revealed plans to increase its holdings in Unitech Wireless, which offers mobile services in India under the brand name ‘Uninor’, to 74 percent from 67.25 percent. The remaining stake is held by realty firm Unitech. The Norweign operator has reportedly told the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) that it would induct other resident Indian shareholders in the event that its partner refused to support the rights issue.
According to reports, the two partners have been involved in a dispute regarding the US$ 1.6 billion rights issue, as Unitech has reportedly opposed Telenor’s plans for the issue. As per sources, Fredrik Baksaas, CEO, Telenor group, had previously stated that it would look at inducting another partner for its Indian operations if Unitech does not meet its obligations and participate in the rights issue.
Telenor Norway completes mobile network upgrade for LTE (Norway)
Telenor Norway, a leading mobile operator, has upgraded over 9,000 base stations in a total of 6,379 different sites throughout Norway, including Svalbard and oil installations in the North Sea. With the new network, Telenor has acquired improved data traffic capacity, thus enabling it to offer customers higher speeds. The new equipment will reportedly be used to deploy the next generation mobile network, 4G/LTE, starting up in 2012.
As per reports, Berit Svendsen, CEO, Telenor Norway has said that this new mobile network secures its users higher speeds and greater capacity when surfing on PCs, tablets or mobile phones. He added that they’ve expanded the network to ensure that customers throughout the country can enjoy superb coverage and the capacity required to make use of all the new services to come, even in the future.
With an increasing number of people using the mobile network for various services such as sending pictures and videos, browsing the news, reading emails and sharing information on Facebook, the data traffic has been rapidly increasing over the years. Telenor estimates 15 times more data traffic by 2015.
Telenor Norway launches mobile office service
Telenor Norway has launched ‘Mobilt Bedriftsnett,’ a mobile office service which is focused on both small as well as large businesses.
Gintel has developed some custom software for this project, including a special switchboard for inbound call management.
The service will be offered across Norway to enterprises and SME customers and leverages the Trusted Services Gateway, which Gintel also developed for Telenor. The service’s monthly cost per employee starts from US$7.
Telenor launches Wimp, a music streaming service (Norway)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Wimp, a music streaming service for Norwegians has been launched by Telenor Norway along with Aspiro Music and Norwegian multimedia store Platekompaniet.
It’s a subscription-based music service that enables users to gain full, legal access to an online music library through the internet from their PC or mobile phone. New music could be searched and discovered by the users besides creating playlists, favorites, and recommendations.
The company has signed a deal with 20 content providers for over 6.5 million songs, including four major record companies and a number of smaller independent partners. An editorial crew to categorize music, publish playlists and recommending new and old releases with a special focus on Norwegian music is also established.
Telenor leans towards LTE over WiMAX
Norwegian incumbent expects degree of convergence between the two access technologies; NTT urges greater focus on backbone networks.
Telenor said Thursday that it is leaning towards LTE rather than WiMAX to deliver next-generation mobile broadband services.
“As an incumbent we see LTE as the most promising technology at this time it comes from the 3G family and is therefore in keeping with HSPA,” said Berit Svendsen, head of product and IS at Telenor Norway.
She explained during a keynote presentation at Telecom World Congress in London that Telenor is currently rolling out WiMAX infrastructure to provide fixed wireless Internet access in remote areas, but is growing its HSPA coverage in order to provide mobile broadband.
“We are keeping both options open but we have a strong bias towards the 3GPP family…we don’t want to have to invest heavily in both, we do have capex requirements,” said Svendsen.
She said WiMAX is more suited for greenfield markets as long as it continues to be developed as a network technology.
“We believe mobile WiMAX can play a role but only if the industry supports it,” she said.
Furthermore, she maintained that there is very little to choose between LTE and WiMAX on a technical level.
“It is not possible to pick a winner on a technical level both have similar uplink and downlink speeds, and both require a broad chunk of spectrum,” she commented.
With that in mind, Svendsen predicted that a certain level of convergence will take place, where both LTE and WiMAX will be incorporated into carriers’ models.
“We believe there will be some convergence between the two technologies in devices, core networks and standards,” she said.
Despite the promise of high-capacity mobile broadband delivered over LTE, Svendsen said she doesn’t foresee it substituting fixed-line broadband, at least not in Norway.
“The fixed broadband market in Norway is very advanced. We are using DSL, fibre and WiMAX to deliver good services and we don’t see that we will need [LTE],” she said.
Meanwhile Japan’s NTT Communications said it is all too easy to concentrate on the access side of broadband.
In a separate presentation, Kazuyoshi Terada, vice president of NTT Communications, said that consideration needs to be given to backbone networks.
“The capacity of our networks is still expanding but we can’t continue this rapid growth forever…it is important to utilise very efficiently the capacity of the network,” he said.
He explained how NTT’s Smart Content Delivery Service uses dedicated cache servers around the world to effectively replicate Websites and thus lighten the load on origin servers.
“Broadband access should be discussed, but on the network side there are possible new technologies that could provide consistent access,” Terada commented.
