www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BSNL, the state owned telco, has posted loss of nearly 21% in fiscal year of 2008-09. The revenues dipped to Rs.11,505 crore from Rs.14,499 crore the previous year.
The operator also saw a drop in number of BSNL landline connections. “The number of working BSNL landline telephone connections has reduced by 7.27 lakh during the last six months – from 297.03 lakh in November 2008 to 289.76 lakh in May 2009,” Minister of State for Communications and IT, Gurdas Kamat reportedly said.
Kamat said the main reason for the surrender of landline connections was the increasing usage of mobile phones.
On 07.16.09, In Mobile, By Editor
On 07.11.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: O2 UK introduces a new service dubbed as Fixed Number Anywhere, which will be a service based on convergence for SMEs. The service will give users a landline-style number that channels calls straight through to their mobile phone, a O2 spokesperson reportedly said.
Subscribers who sign up in 2009 will be able to port their existing BT local number to O2 at no charge. They will also be able to get the service at a promotional price of £10 per month, which is slightly less than the cost of a BT landline.
The service will launch in August and further details will be revealed later. Though a media report suggests that different versions of the package will see multiple landline numbers routed to a single mobile phone, or single landline numbers routed to multiple mobile phones.
On 04.30.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Etisalat, country’s largest mobile operator, will be fined Dh400,000 for failure to comply with fair-competition rules demanded by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA).
The country’s two operators were asked to introduce carrier pre-selection service, which enables landline telecom users to choose between the operators.
According to the regulator, the deadline was given to both the operators in June’08, the deadline which Etisalat failed to fulfill.
It was last month that TRA fined Etisalat Dh200, 000 and issued a new deadline of April 16, which also remained unfulfilled. The fine has since been doubled to Dh400, 000 and a new deadline of May 16 has been set. The regulator said the fine would continue to be doubled for each month of non-compliance.
Etisalat said it had upgraded 70% of its network to enable carrier pre-select, while the remaining 30% allows the service to be used with special dialing codes or devices.
“They decided unilaterally that they will not go with the full system. It was unacceptable to us. We believe it will lock competition in the fixed-line service because the second operator cannot launch a service in islands of geographical locations,” Mohammad Al Ganem, director-general of TRA said.
On 03.30.09, In Mobile, By Editor
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The German Parliament has given consent to set a limit on the price of calls from mobile phones to customer service 0180 numbers. The Bundestag has reportedly agreed to a cap of EUR 0.42 per minute and EUR 0.60 per call. Earlier, the call charges were EUR 0.69-0.87 per minute. The call cost from a landline is a maximum EUR 0.14 per minute and EUR 0.20 per call.