Number Portability

Economic Times speculates – “Keep the number, kick the network“! Under number portability, a subscriber can retain his number even while switching to a new operator. This could be big news for the Indian telecom industry and its users. With number portability, operators loose their biggest stickiness-factor i.e. number lockin. This is good in general [...]

Reliance Infocomm valuation

Reliance Infocomm which has a subscriber base of 11 million across 20 circles has been valued at around Rs 22,500 crore. In the first major step towards untangling the cross-holdings in the Reliance group companies as part of the settlement between the Ambani brothers, the board of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on Tuesday decided to [...]

Birlas in race for Cingular’s Idea stake

Economic Times scoops that the AV Birla group, which till last year was not keen on expanding in telecom and was looking to exit Idea is now considering a buyout of Cingular’s stake in the cellular operator. It has floated a proposal under which it could buy out both the Tata group and Cingular’s combined [...]

Hutch-Essar applies for STD licence

Hutchison Essar has to pay hefty carrier charges to existing NLD operators for routing mobile STD calls originating on its networks. With an NLD licence, it will have the option to lease fibre capacity at a fraction of current charges and also strengthen its tariff margins on long-distance calls. In the absence of an NLD [...]

MTNL-BSNL

Economic Times reports that the proposed MTNL-BSNL merger has been put on hold due to MTNL’s reservations over becoming a subsidiary of BSNL. MTNL recently withdrew its Rs. 1500 crore tender for 3G equipment. It also started providing international long distance (ISD) services in Mauritius where it had acquired licence to offer telecom services last [...]

Other Notable News & Articles

Software imports by telcos not to attract tax BSNL announces data tariff cuts Raza Micro announces India operations Trai proposes zero-entry fee, 100% foreign ownership for satellite radio One-state-one-rate from Reliance Infocomm

Nokia Backed Funds Add to Indian Team

Press release talks about Indian activities of two venture capital firms supported by Nokia. BlueRun Ventures is a global venture capital fund focused on early stage companies in the IT, mobile, and consumer electronics markets; Nokia Growth Partners’ mid-to-late stage focus complements that of BlueRun Ventures. BlueRun Ventures established its office in New Delhi in [...]

Notable News & Articles

Mukesh’s e-mail message to Reliance Infocomm’s employees Microsoft’s Low Cost Smartphone Peabody Nears Completion NMS Communications sets up India office M/A-COM Likely to Setup Design and Manufacturing Facility in India

One India

The Minister of Communications Dayanidhi Maran recently announced a ‘OneIndia‘ vision of uniform call rates for local and long-distance calls, treating the entire country as a single market. Here is an article from Vikram Mehmi, CEO of Idea Celluar on the issues facing OneIndia. Long-distance calls generally comprise three charges: the originating charge, the carriage [...]

Visual Radio

Story on Visual Radio entering India. Had seen a demo of Visual Radio at CommunicAsia and came back impressed with it. I think it has the potential to be an alternative distribution channel and business model to iTunes. Availability of compatible handsets could be a limiting factor though. “VRT handles the metadata related to the [...]

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