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| Friday, June 30, 2006 |
| Weekend - India Telecom Updates |
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Hindujas who exited out of Hutch in a shady deal, have said that they see a great potential in Indian GSM based mobile market and want to re-enter if they good stake at the right price - right price ? I doubt if Hindujas know what the right price is, oho well that’s all you can expect from a lifetime Trader who hardly understands what Manufacturing or Services is ;-)
Reliance Communications want to grow beyond India. It has stuck deal in Saudi Arabia earlier this week and now it wants to provide GSM based services in Sri Lanka. The going may not be easy in Sri Lanka as Malaysian Maxis Telecom and Singapores SingTel are also in the race. I would request Anil Ambani to first bring transperency by declaring quarterly results of Reliance Communications .
And ofcourse the Tatas are also expanding. I seriously doubt what Ratan Tata’s Telecom dreams are with inter company investments and holdings to launder money and have half a dozen companies to operate under, viz Tata Indicom, Tata Tele Services, Tata Telecom, Tata Power Broadband, VSNL and Idea Cellular from which they have exited. |
| Published on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 9:05 PM |
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| Mobile internet users in India at 3% |
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| Mobile phone consumers using internet in India is at mere 3% of the total subscriber base. Most of these users use the GPRS based services and bulk of them are on Bharti-Airtel network. Hutch and Reliance have also announced big plans to offer Blackberry and mobile internet services. Meanwhile in a separate development, Yahoo! Go Mobile has tied up with Nokia to ofeer Go Mobile services for free to Nokia N Series users in India. They can access the services at http://wap.yahoo.co.in/ |
| Published on at 9:01 PM |
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| Wednesday, June 28, 2006 |
| Royalty is the issue, not spectrum policy - Maran |
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Dayanidhi Maran has made it clear that their is no fault in India’s spectrum policy. Qualcomm chief also offered to establish and fund a Telecom research institute in Chennai,India. Maran and his officials maintained that it is the handset cost and incompatability of CDMA handset with GSM technology that is scaring away consumers from opting for CDMA based services. Qualcomm has also hierd US Ambassador to India to lobby for the firm with IT ministry officials.
Soon after the meeting Maran, Paul Jacobs said
- There was no meeting of minds on the spectrum issue.
- The policy artificially influences operators’ technology considerations by actually rewarding the selection of the less spectrally-efficient technology and is causing distortions in the marketplace, such as the present case in which Reliance Communications reportedly must consider GSM so it can stake claim to double the amount of spectrum limits the ability of CDMA operators to pursue aggressive subscriber growth plans and introduce next-generation wireless
Reliance has also asked Qualcomm to make CDMA handsets compatible with GSM technology to which Qualcomm is highly reluctant and has always supressed the issue. My insiders tell me that Reliance-ADAG officials have already chalked out plans on converting CDMA handsets to GSM should their grandiose GSM plan turn into a reality. |
| Published on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 9:45 PM |
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| Qualcomm - Tata Indicom Talks Fail |
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FE is reporting that the talks between CDMA pioneer Qualcomm and Tata Indicom have failed. Tata Indicom team for the meeting included Ratan Tata and Darryl Green, while Paul Jacobs led the Qualcomm team. It is understood that, Jacob expressed inability to reduce the 7% royalty which was one of the main issues on the agenda.They have also discussed the fate of Tata Indicom in the event Reliance switches to GSM. Details of this are unavailable. In a separate development, Qualcomm officials denied a statement issued by Korean Information and Communications minister Rho Jun-Hyong that Koran manufactirers Samsung & LG can stop paying royalties to Qualcomm from August this year on handsets seold in the country. However, Qualcomm quickly denied about the royalty waiver. Qualcomm team is expected to meet IT minister, Dayanidhi Maran later today and Reliance-ADAG chief, Anil Ambani tomorrow. |
| Published on at 1:17 AM |
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| Tuesday, June 27, 2006 |
| 3G Spectrum wars in Indian Mobile Space. |
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With Reliance’s application for GSM spectrum, the war has intensified further. Some pointing that the spectrum allocation policy by DOT is totally flawed. Lets try to understand what the current policy is.
GSM operators have been allocated spectrum in the ranges of 890-902.5 MHz paired with 935-947.5 MHz and 902.5-915 MHz paired with 947.5-960 MHz. This gives the GSM operators total of 25+25MHz. CDMA operators have been allocated 824-844 MHz/869-889 MHz 20MHz+20MHz. DOT reasoning was that CDMA operators were more efficient in using the same and hence slightly lesser. Operator who adds more number of subscribers can get more spectrum.
While in most other countries, spectrum is auctioned off when a mobile license is provided. This helps in efficiently deploying and using the network. However, in India, due to severe crunch(Defence & Military holds the Majority), DOT awarded initial spectrum upong issuing a license and upon request additional allocation was made. Also DOT favored GSM over CDMA because the latter networks were more efficiently using the same. TRAI in its recommendations had asked DOT to have a technologically neutral approach while allocating the spectrum.
Insiders learn that Qualcomm executives will meet Telecom Minister, Mr. Maran. However, Maran is bent upon forcing Qualcomm to cut the roylaty charged to Indian CDMA operators on equipment and handsets which is abnormally high in India.
Why did this WAR breakout ?
GSM in India currently runs on 2G networks. With demand for value added services on mobile phones, networks have to be upgraded to 3G. For GSM operators W-CDMA a technology developed by NTT DoCoMo is the natual choice and migration path is also easier with the availablity of multiple equipment vendors. For CDMA vendors they have to migrate to CDMA-2000 to provide 3G equivalent services. The migration path for CDMA vendors can prove to be little bit expensive.
Qualcomm executive Mrs. Singh adds that,
- All royalty charges are levied directly by equipment and handset manufacturers.
- Primary challenge for CDMA operators in India is lack of spectrum. Current Indian regulatory policy favours GSM by making significantly more spectrum available for them.
Mr. Singh, instead of pointing fingures at Handset & Equipment manufacturers, take a lead and convince your San Deigo management to cut royalties.
It is likely that, TRAI & DOT will adopt a technology neutral approach while awarding 3G spectrum, but that may not stop Reliance to backout from CDMA. |
| Published on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 9:29 AM |
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| Sunday, June 25, 2006 |
| Bharti-Airtel world's 10th best technology company |
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| India’s number one mobile service provider, Bharti-Airtel is world’s 10th best technology company as rated by BusinessWeek Magazine. Bharti has inched up from 19th rank previous year to 10th. Bharti-Airtel is likely to announce terrific growth in its customer base over the next four quarters. In my earlier blog, I had reporetd that Bharti-Airtel’s unique business model was applauded by IBM CEO and followed by Hutchinson in India. Congratulations!, Sunil Bharti Mittal. |
| Published on Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 8:36 PM |
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| Reliance Telecom's GSM Conspiracy |
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Earlier last week, Reliance Communications through its GSM subsidiary, Reliance Telecom moved to DOT seeking fresh GSM spectrum in Delhi, Mumbai & more spectrum in its existing 7 circles of operations. DOT had sought further clarification from Reliance Telecom which has been totally confidential.
Apart from the royalty issue, lets closely examine why ADAG group Executives have decided to go the GSM way. It is a well known fact that CDMA phones are not appealing and will lock you to the telecom operator, unlike their GSM counterparts which are interoperable with any GSM operator and consumers have wider choice to choose from. Dhirubhai Ambani started Reliance Infocomm with a dream to put power of communications to the poorest Indian, but the poorest Indian is not a mobile savvy user for a profitable business model.
I have said it in the past and say it again, East Asia & Europe are going to be the hottest markets for Mobile service providers. DOT & TRAI India, are thinking of announcing the availablity of additional spectrum in 2000MHz for Mobile operators to realize their 3G/Super-3G dreams. For GSM operators the natural migration is WCDMA that works at 2000MHz. Susanta Mazamdur adds that,
For Reliance Infocomm, this CAPEX would be higher and what Anil would be thinking is to go for GSM and put a GSM overlay on the CDMA backbone and eventually migrate to WCDMA in the 3G space.
Also their are reports that Reliance Infocomm has asked Qualcomm to open its CDMA chip technology enabling customers to use the same handset between CDMA and GSM operators. Hopefully, Reliance ADAG will conducts itself ethically this time unlike its founder's license raj controversies detailed in The Polyester Prince. |
| Published on at 1:58 AM |
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| Friday, June 16, 2006 |
| Hindujas out of Hutch. Shady deals in the past 6 months. |
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Hindujas have finally settled at $450 Million for their 5.1% stake in Hutch. Earlier I had reporetd that the Hindujas were demanding $600 million valuing Hutch @ $12 Billion. After Hinduja’s selloff, Hutchinson Telecommunications Ltd(HTL) stake in Indian venture is at 48% while Essar groups Ruias stake will be at 33.6%. Taking a closer look at some of the previosu deals by Hutch and their shady investors, the Hinduja deal appears to be on the higher side. In October 2005, Essar bought 3.2% of Hutch from Analjit Singh at mere $147 Million, almost at half the price at which HTL bought their stake from Hindujas. In March 2006, one of the early investors in Hutch, Kotak Mahindra was forced to sell out his 8.33% at $226 Million in favour of Analjit Singh and Telecom Investments India Limited. Considering all these murky deals, do you think the management is transperent in its operations ? Not really. Recollect 50% of Hutch subscribers in Haryana had obtained mobile on fake identification. Hutch has accepted the same and hopefully the concerned authorities bring Hutch to book as this is matter of serious national security and can increase the crime rate in Haryana and the NCR.
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| Published on Friday, June 16, 2006 at 9:11 PM |
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| Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
| Reliance Communications gets Aggressive in the US. |
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Earlier I reporetd on RelianceTelecom’s push for GSM spectrum. Now it is another arm, Reliance India Call. Reliance has now tied up with Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS, mobile service providers in the US to provide roaming services to the customers of those companeis in India on Reliance India Mobile network. Check out the e-mail being sent to Reliance India Call users.
Also Reliance India Call service from the US was limited to call India. It is now being expanded to call 8 more countries, which have significant presence of Indian expats. However, one must have already experienced that Customer Service of Reliance India Call is not even acceptable and not to forget the long wait times(30-45 minutes) one experiences, especially during the weekends. |
| Published on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at 2:35 AM |
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| Tuesday, June 13, 2006 |
| Update: 3G Association meet at New Delhi |
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For the first time, an India - Bharti-Airtel's founder and Chairman, Sunil Mittal was inducted on the board of 3G Association. Sunil stepped up to host the 3G Association conference in India @ New Delhi.
Some of the key highlights from the meet are as follows.
- Their are 2 Billion GSM users in the World. GSM Telcom operators took little over 12 years to achieve the first Billion subscriptions mark, while the second billion was achieved in mere 2 and half years span.
- China is the worlds single largest GSM Market with 370 million users. Russia comes second at 143 million and India growing at more than 35% YoY, ranks third with 83 million GSM subscribers.
- Dayanidhi Maran told that India has the highest GSM mobile growth rate and cheapest call rates. Sure it does :-) Maran called for cheaper international roaming rates, which the operators have to look upon now.
- Maran argued that spectrum was scarce & favoured charging fees for 3G licenses, while Bharti's Sunil Mittal was not in favour of any additional fees for 3G services and quoted how our neighbors, Pakistan & Bangladesh have migrated to superior 3G networks.
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| Published on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 at 7:44 PM |
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| Monday, June 12, 2006 |
| Why Anil Ambani wants to revive the GSM arm, Reliance Telecom ? |
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PTI & Hindu have reported that Reliance Telecom, GSM arm of Reliance Communication’s has applied for additional spectrum. It is well known fact that Reliance Infocomm , the CDMA arm of Reliance Communication’s is the third largest mobile telecom service provider in India. While its GSM arm, Reliance Telecom has a mere market share of 2%. It is speculated that Reliance Telecom will start services in Delhi & Mumbai circles soon. Internationally telecom has been a rapidly evolving technology. With the advent of VoIP, their are limitless possiblities on how communications can be established at fraction of the cost. However, for value added services and to maintain excellent Quality of Service, IP networks involve significant investments too. It is learnt that, their are companeis like SIPPhone,Tropos, and others who want to provide mobility on IP networks. However, advanced telcos like NTT DoCoMo have invested heavily to make the transition from 3G towards super 3G and 4G with a ton of value added services. I am unaware of the developments in CDMA. Now why is Anil interested in reviving the GSM arm ? Reliance has to pay 7% royalty on every CDMA compliant equipment and mobile handset it uses or sells. While CDMA operators in China pay 2% and telcos in the US pay 0% royalty. Additionally, Anil Ambani had always favored going the GSM way but it was Mukesh who went the CDMA way. One another main reason is, India has 80% GSM subscribers and continue to grow at a faster rate than that of CDMA operators.(Reliance & Tata Indicom). Indians are carzy about fancy handsets. Investments in CDMA handsets locks you to that operator. Also CDMA users have limited handset choices. Officials from rival GSM operations were also of the opinion that Anil could be just speculating and blocking other Telcos from getting the spectrum - like father, like son.
Call it Anil’s ego to KILL Mukesh’s baby(Reliance Infocom) or embrace the superior GSM technology, Reliance Telecom has got a Thumbs Up from the Ambani. Sky is the limit for Reliance Telecom now.
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| Published on Monday, June 12, 2006 at 7:39 AM |
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| Saturday, June 10, 2006 |
| AOL to enter mobile market in India |
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| Late last month I had reported about Google Mobile’s ambitious plans for India. Now AOL has gotten serious about its ambitions in India, especially the cell phone market. AOL through its wireless division, Tegic, is trying to develop localizations for the Indian market. They are mainly targetting Class B & Class C cellular circles where most people want to send and receive SMS in local languages. Tegic, has now launched T9 software to support Bengali. |
| Published on Saturday, June 10, 2006 at 11:49 PM |
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| Thursday, June 08, 2006 |
| Spice Telecom plans major expansion. |
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In my earlier report on Spice Tele, they had spoken about major expanison plans. But the latest corporate roadmap unveiled by Spice looks very ambitious. Telekom Malaysia, CEO Abdul Wahid Omar, has IPO plans. Spice has applied for NLD and ILD licenses as well. It also wants to expand in 6 more circles for which they have applied for licenses. However, their approval is dependent on the availabilty of spectrum and TRAI guideliness. Currently Spice has partnered with Idea cellular for romaing services except in the states of Punjab and Karnataka. After the entry of Telekom Malyasia, Spice is monetarily comfortable for expansion and can dare to have a bigger CAPEX account.
Can Spice really deliver ? They have been in Business in Karnataka since 1995 and still have a very small subscriber base of 0.46 milion users. While Bharti-Airtel has 2.4 Million subscribers in Karnataka. Also Bharti Airtel added 200,000 subscribers in May-2006, while Spice added mere 20,000customers. One would expect, more growth from Spice since it is smaller compared to other players, but that's not happening. An IPO at this stage will most likely be a poor show and might get Thumbs Down from the investor. |
| Published on Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 8:45 PM |
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| Wednesday, June 07, 2006 |
| Kudos to TRAI. IPTV not to be under Cable TV act. |
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3 cheers to Nripendra Mirsa, Chairman, TRAI for keeping IPTV out of CableTV act. What's the big deal ? CableTV networks in India are highly unorganized and controlled by local politicaians or men with muscle-power except SitiCable and Hinduja's TMT. You might want to recollect how Siticable MD was murdered in the cable wars during the Dot Com Boom.(See BusinessWorld Magazine, dated 13th November 2000) The nostalgic story doesn't stop there, Gangster Chotta Rajan controlled Hindujas cable Network in Mumbai and SUN TVs Sumangali Cable Vision forced BPL to move out of Coimabtore. Indian Telcos, Bharti-Airtel & Reliance didn't want to deal with the mess of CableTV and had lobbied for a separate act. Technically, IP networks are different from Cable networks, however, we are heading towards an era of convergence and most experts are of the opionion that, all future innovation & services will be on IP based networks. Hopefully, they will sail through easily as TRAI hasn't finalized the guidelines and has invited suggestions and opinions from various experts. |
| Published on Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 7:34 PM |
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| Security glitches in Bharti-Airtel Broadband portal |
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I am trying to access www.airtelbroadband.in and seeing this picture. Looks to me like its mis-configuration of iplanet server. Big deal ? Well, Bharti-Airtel broadband is India's number two broadband service provider and you don't expect their Dev/Test Manager to run such a poor show. They have exposed some source code as well. What will their million customers think of them ? Who cares ;-) Exactly. I first called the registrant of the domain, "rajanikanth.kaushik@bharti.com" at 011.51709045 and then 011.41709045 but none replied. Then I called their Delhi office # 011-416 66000 at 22:19 IST and the gentleman who answerd the phone didn't even know what a website was. So finally I got their customer care number in Karnataka 4251234 and alerted them.
Indian companies, really especially the Telecom service providers still don't consider "Customer is the most important vistior on their premises" as told by the Father of their Nation, Ghandhiji.
Sooner Foreign/MNC companies will teach Indians the first lesson of globalization, you were in business because you had customers ;-) |
| Published on at 10:11 AM |
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| Reliance Communications heads to Middle East. |
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Anil Ambani controlled Reliance Communications Ventures plans to provide broadband, interactive TV and media solutions in association with OCC - Orbit communnications of Bahrain in the Gulf. The solution is branded as RiTV(most probably an acronym for Reliance India TV) and will service the hospitality sector(all 5 star and 4 star hotels) initially in the Middle East in association with OCC. Their is a huge demand for Indian content in the Gulf, especially Bollywood movies. |
| Published on at 10:09 AM |
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| Anti-Reservation studenst release ringtones. |
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Folks opposed to the government of India's implementation of additional reservation based on caste and race have released a ringtone to create mass awareness and let others know about what they are going through. Ofcourse they are the cerative and innovative pillars for a better and brighter India who have come up with this idea :) They have tied up with PRXOnline and released ringtones for your cell phones. Download them here. Their is no download link visible on the website, you have to click on PRXPro(Gentleman on bottom right hand part of your screen). or Click here to download.
Lyrics is something like,
Koi Chota Nahin, Koi Bada Bhi Nahin. Hum Sab Hey Desh Key, Hey Aam Nagrik.Hum Darengey Nahin, Hum Thakengye Nahin... Aggressively forward the link and exchange ringtones through Bluetooth or Infrared. Spread the message. Indian telcos have remained silent and are not letting you download this ringtone from their network and have rejected it to be someones caller tune as well. Cellcos have to do business and don't want to take sides and face embaressment and bashings from our RACIST Netas. NOTE: I have got responses asking for the link. Available in MP3 and AMR formats here. |
| Published on at 8:25 AM |
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