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 [...]