Mobile, Internet, etc

The telecom ministry is not duty-bound to follow the industry regulator’s advice on policy issues, the solicitor general has said, fuelling concerns that roles of regulators are increasingly getting diluted under this government. Solicitor general Gopal Subramanium has said the ministry can change the terms and conditions of existing licences and the Telecom Regulatory Authority [...]

India will start using IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) from March 2012, according to a new roadmap released by the Indian government. All telecom and ISPs will have to be IPv6-compliant by the end of next year and offer IPv6 services thereafter, the government said in a statement issued on Wednesday by the country’s Press [...]

Television subscribers of digital platforms such as DTH and IPTV will soon be able to pick and choose the pay channels they want to watch. This is because the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a new tariff order that mandates service providers on digital platforms to offer pay channels on a-la-carte or individual [...]

The Northeastern states are plagued by low tele-density and inadequate telecom services, hindering economic growth and development, a study said. “In addition to the low tele-density, the quality of services in the region is also a matter of concern. The telecom network is inadequate to handle the traffic resulting in repeated congestion, a statement by [...]

Norway’s Telenor said mobile price competition in India has not become more intense since it launched operations there late last year and affirmed its ongoing push for market share above margins. Chief Executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas told Reuters in an interview that Telenor would keep its present push to win market share and customer loyalty [...]

The number of high-speed Internet users is likely to touch 275 million from nine million by 2015, as telecom firms roll out Broadband Wireless Acess (BWA) air waves that were auctioned in June, a study said. “Recent broadband wireless auctions, in which operators were allocated spectrum, come as a much-needed respite for the future of [...]

India needs to allocate more spectrum to achieve its target of 100 million broadband subscribers by 2014, Robindhra Mangtani, senior director of GSM Associations, said today. GSM Associations is an organisation of global mobile communications (GSM) operators. “To achieve the target of 100 million we need to allocate more spectrum. We have been talking about [...]

Telecom operators added over 59 million new subscribers in the January-March quarter this year, but witnessed an over 8 per cent decline in average revenue per user. The total number of mobile subscribers in the country stood at 621.28 million at the end of March, 2010. Source

There are growing signs that the implementation of mobile number portability may miss its freshly set October 31 deadline, this time because government-run firms BSNL and MTNL are unprepared. Telecom regulator Trai has written to DoT saying, “the Authority is apprehensive that unless DoT, which is the administrative department for these PSUs, takes a firm [...]

The country’s mobile subscriber base is expected to touch 993 million by 2014, led by the rural market, according to research firm Gartner. Gartner expects the world’s fastest-growing mobile market to close this year with over 660 million subscribers, it said in a statement. “The arrival of new players in the Indian mobile sector has [...]

Indian GSM telecom operators added 12.29 million new subscribers in the month of June, taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 456.58 million, according to cellular operators’ association COAI. Bharti Airtel, the number one GSM operator, added three million new users in June, taking its total subscriber base to 136.6 million, data released by [...]

The telecom services industry posted 2.5% yearly revenue growth to Rs 1,59,510 crore in 2009-10 due to intense domestic tariff war, says a survey by telecom industry journal, Voice & Data. The previous year’s earnings were Rs 1,55,683 crore. “This is the worst telecom services revenue growth in the last five years. More tariff wars [...]

It is going to be tough time for them for quite a few quarters, but at the same time if I look at the way the stock prices had corrected over the last year or so, at a certain price, it still looks attractive if you have a longer term horizon. It remains to be [...]

New telecom players mull rival association. In a declaration of war against the country’s largest telecom association, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and its older members, Tata Teleservices Ltd’s (TTSL) Managing Director Anil Sardana said they were waging a “wilful” campaign to “subvert” the regulator’s recommendation on spectrum pricing which was aimed at [...]

Voicing its concern over reports that its telecom companies have been blacklisted by India, China on Friday asked New Delhi to treat its firms fairly and called for an open and transparent system for them to operate in. “We have noticed the list and are making an investigation. We hope India will provide a fair, [...]

Finally some relief for telecom operations as the government is soon going to resume the imports of cheap Chinese telecom equipment into the country. The Department of Telecommunications is finalising guidelines to allow equipment import which will also cover telecom equipment imports from Chinese manufacturers. Source

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics dominates the worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) turf globally with almost 40% market share. It has joined the companies supporting Wimax standard technologies instead of long term evolution (LTE) and is holding discussions with Indian operators to launch the services immediately. Both WiMAX and LTE are broadband wireless access (BWA) [...]

As an “interim measure,” Infotel Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd, the vehicle that will launch billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s dream project to offer broadband services across India, may opt for WiMax as the core technology and not LTE, two persons involved in the discussions said. This is at a time when telecom operators in India are trying [...]

Wynn Telecom, a part of the Rs 2,500 crore SAR Group, today said it plans to invest Rs 500 crore in the Indian market by the end of FY12. The company plans to invest Rs 100 crore in the 2010-11 fiscal on distribution and service network development, product development, brand development and advertising. Source

Indian state-run telecoms firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd will shortly seek expressions of interest for franchisees for its third-generation (3G) wireless services, Chairman Kuldeep Goyal said on Wednesday. Goyal also said the firm would have have 4 million 3G users by March 2011, up from 1.3 million currently. BSNL, which has about 72 million subscribers, [...]