New findings from Informa claim that the global wireless market has 1.8 billion subscribers, representing worldwide penetration of 28 percent. The four largest wireless growth markets are the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
Italy, the UK, Sweden and Hong Kong have already exceeded 100 percent market penetration, and other markets that could follow this year include Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and Portugal
Source: Mobile Message Solutions
According to a 5,600 household survey from Forrester Research:
* 67% of US households have at least one mobile phone.
* The top three mobile carriers will own seven out of 10 mobile households: Cingular+AT&T Wireless (28%), Verizon (27%), and Sprint/Nextel (15%).
* Basic features like price, battery life, and ease of use continue to be most important features to consumers.
* Less than 10% of subscribers says that a camera is important in their phone purchase decision.
* While basic features are most important to consumers when choosing a phone, wireless data functions, such as the ability to access email and share photos, are becoming increasingly important.
* The only age group below 50% penetration for mobile phones is the 65 and older age group.
* Prepaid users have doubled in the past two years, reaching close to 11% of mobile phone consumers in 2004.
The GSM Association (GSMA) has welcomed the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for global spectrum harmonization of 3G services by choosing IMT2000. This ensures that India retains alignment with the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) IMT2000 core (2GHz) band for 3G services.
According to the press release, last year the GSMA called on TRAI to remain within the global IMT2000 scheme for harmonized 3G services and reject the US PCS band and the mixed-band plan proposals, which would have led to isolation of India’s mobile telecommunications and IT sectors.
Economic Times reports that Hutch and the Essar Group are bidding for BPL Mobile which provides services in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala circles. A no-brainer for Hutch if it comes at the right price; since Hutch doesn’t have presence in the three states except Mumbai.
Essar is the front runner in the auction for BPL Mobile. Other bidders include Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte., and Russian telecom company AFK Sistema, the paper says, citing unnamed sources close to the deal.
Business Standard has a good write-up on the issues pertaining to the new TRAI policy recommendations on 3G.
Also check this related story: Ratan Tata favours revenue share and license fee for 3G.
Bodhtree Consulting plans to launch next month a framework that will enable mobile users to book classified advertisements by sending SMS to publications.
Bodhtree Consulting CEO Sanjiv Gupta said, “A speech interface is embedded on to this framework that will provide users with information like the number of words the classified ad can have, the amount that will be charged for the respective number of words, etc. The mobile operator would pay the publication and users are charged accordingly on their mobile bill.”
Talking about other services, he said that the company is also working on a framework that will read updates of news on mobiles as per the subscriber’s request. “If a subscriber of a publication is closely following any particular news item, the immediate updates would be transmitted and read on the mobile,” he explained.
Sunil Mittal of Bharti got a double delight when he was adjudged the ‘Best Asian Telecom CEO’ and his company Bharti Televentures bagged the ‘Best GSM Carrier’ at the Telecom Asia Awards 2005. According to the latest figures Bharti is the top mobile operator in India.
Today is the 36th World Telecom Day. Here’s how the Indian industry is celebrating.
If you can talk about EVDO we can boast about HSDPA. This is what comes across from the Business Line story which says Indian GSM operators are now looking at deploying this latest technology.
Looking at!? We don’t even have decent 2.5G implementations and the operators are already looking at deploying HSDPA which can be called as 3.5G. Maybe, if we delay it some more we can bypass 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G and go straight to 4G.
To be fair, the article does say that availability of handset is a major issue apart from the fact that the Government is yet to come out clear with its 3G policy.
Business Standard story on how astrology services are turning out to be the new money-spinners for mobile operators.
I think the model for mobile content services should differentiate between the content platform and the content provider. It is not the business of mobile operators to produce content. They should proivde the platform and delivery mechanism while independent content producers use it.
Idea Cellular, Hutchison Essar and CDMA service operator Tata Teleservices have also launched this service through “Ganesha Speaks”, a programme spearheaded by noted astrologer Bejan Daruwalla. This service is available to all pre-paid and post-paid customers without any additional subscription charge.
The Ganesha Speaks programme seems to be one such arrangement between the content provider (Bejan Daruwalla) and the platform providers (Telcos).
Kerala students who sat for the state medical and engineering entrance tests tried to acquire their results from the website www.kerala.gov.in, which was overloaded with heavy incoming traffic. The government website’s loss was mobile operators gain. According to this report , majority of the students used the mobile services to get the results.
Balram, an engineering entrant said, “I received my results through SMS and so did most of my friends, as the websites were jammed. I should say the mobile services were quite quick in displaying the results.”
A few more such star / killer apps and the mobile phone will become a mainstream device for connected data-applications for the masses.
The Indo-Asian News Service reports that minister of State for Communications Shakeel Ahmad informed the parliament on Wednesday that Bharti Cellular Ltd is the country’s leading mobile phone company as on March 31, 2005.
Bharti Cellular = 10.4 million subscribers
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd = 9.4 million
Reliance Infocomm Ltd = 9.3 million
Idea Cellular Ltd = 3.1 million
Hutchison Max Telecom Pvt Ltd = 1.5 million
Terming India as its fifth largest market, global mobile handset major Nokia, today said it would start production of handsets in the first half of the next year at its Chennai plant.
A government press release on the state of telecom scene in India on completion of one year of UPA government.
The number of phones provided in the country up to 1995 was only about 2.2 crore since the introduction of phones in India. In the recent past, every month more than 20 lakh phones get added i.e. about 70,000 persons are provided phones each day. The tele-density has increased from 7.15 per cent on April 30, 2004 to 9.15 per cent in April, 2005. Now the number of mobile phones has overtaken the number of fixed phones. The share of private sector has also increased to more than 45 per cent in the total phones.
The annual turnover of telecom industry is more than Rs.51600 crore. The telecom operators contribute about Rs.6000 to Rs.6500 crore per annum to central exchequer through Licence Fee, USO levy, spectrum charges, Dividends, etc. Of this, BSNL alone contributes about Rs.2500 crore per annum.
The available studies suggest that the incomes of business entities and households increase in the range of 5-10 per cent by the use of telecom services.
It has been visualized that by 2007, the country will have 250 million telephones and the tele-density will be about 22 per cent. Of these phones, around 180-200 million phones are estimated to be mobile phones and the public sector operators would contribute about 50 per cent.
More than 87 per cent of the villages have already been covered by providing 5.30 lakh village public telephones (VPTs).
Rural tele-density is only 1.7 per cent. It is being envisaged that the passive infrastructure such as land, building and towers may be funded through USOF and can be shared by all the operators for mobile telephony in rural areas.
Investment of about $ 800 million (Rs.3500 crore) is expected to be made by various telecom equipment manufacturers.
GSM operators are fearing that forthcoming TRAI recommendations on spectrum would favour CDMA players in terms of allocation and enable the largest CDMA player in the country an instantaneous ‘back-door’ entry to the third generations (3G mobile) services.
“Any provision of additional carriers now to CDMA players would be grossly anti-competitive as it would enable them to offer 3G services immediately via EVDO. Such move would benefit only the largest CDMA operator,” according to an internal spectrum note of COAI.
“Thus a backdoor entry into 3G could be secured by the largest CDMA player while the GSM players (along with the second largest CDMA players) would be kept waiting till the IMT-2000 spectrum is made available to all.”
India’s second largest GSM operator BSNL will float a tender within a couple of months for 40 million cellular lines, majority of which would be on 3G networks. Its 3G services are expected to roll-out in 2006.
‘‘The government is of the view that we should go for the latest mobile technology. So, for our next phase of cellular network expansion, we have decided to set up 3G networks,’’ BSNL CMD AK Sinha said. ‘‘These 40 million lines will be rolled out by March 2008’’ he added.
Business Standard reports that TRAI is likely to recommend the IMT-2000 2Ghz frequency band for both GSM and CDMA mobile operators, in its spectrum proposal.
“IMT-2000 2Ghz band should be allocated to mobile operators for offering IMT 2000 service, which support both WCDMA and CDMA2000 (the 3G growth path of both GSM and CDMA). It is not desirable to allocate spectrum both in IMT-2000 and USPCS 1.9Ghz in a mixed manner to take care of the interference problem between both the bands leading to poor service and high network upgrade cost,” a Trai paper said.
No word in this article on earlier reports that TRAI may propose zero entry fee for 3G spectrum, bring down the annual spectrum fee and introduce rollout obligation for 3G services.
Insuring mobile phones used for WLL services of Reliance Industries and Tata Teleservices by the National Insurance Company (NIC) and the Oriental Insurance Company have come under attack from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
The CAG has said that NIC has run up claims of Rs 253 crore against a premium income of only Rs 89 crore, while Oriental Insurance Company, will have to shell out Rs 33.45 crore in claims.
But the CAG report says the two public sector insurance companies, faced heavy losses, as the risks were underwritten “without careful evaluation of the risk involved and other technical aspects.” Despite the huge losses, the report on the public sector undertakings, says NIC offered a similar policy cover to Tata Teleservices in April, ’04, “even though it was clear that this would be a loss making business.”
Source: Economic Times
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