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 for the consumer since the operator has to do more to please him. Also, Value Added Services (Data) could be a major beneficiary.

“We will come out with the consultation paper on mobile number portability within two weeks,

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 hike its stake in its telecom venture Reliance Infocomm to 65.9% by conversion of preference shares into equity.
The conversion price is Rs 32 a share (face value: Re 1). The move has also enabled the first possible authentic equity valuation of the company at around Rs 22,500 crore.

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 stake of about 67% in Idea.

Singtel, Maxis, Telekom Malaysia, Sistema are the other foreign companies showing interest in Cingular’s stake. Idea was formed as a joint venture between the Tata group, the AV Birla group and AT&T (Cingular) in 2000.

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 licence, Hutch-Essar has to rely on other NLDOs. Its variable payout to route mobile STD calls is huge, including access deficit charges (ADC) payable to BSNL, carrier charges payable to the rival NLD carrier and terminating charges payable to the network into which the mobile STD call terminates.

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 year.

Other Notable News & Articles

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 2004 when it brought on Sujit Banerjee as a Principal. The fund invested in Pune based Nevis Networks in May of 2004. Nokia Growth Partners recently announced an investment in Bangalore based Sasken in April. In addition, BlueRun Ventures’ India office has significantly increased focus and activity with the addition of Vineet Buch as a Principal, and Vasudev Bhandarkar as a Venture Partner. The two will jointly work with Banerjee to manage BlueRun Ventures’ Indian operations.

Notable News & Articles

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 charge and the termination charge plus the ADC. In order to make India One dream a reality, the carriage charge and ADC is what needs to be drastically reduced. The stage was set in the first phase when Trai (telecom regulator) announced a reduction in leased line charges by nearly 70%. This would presume a proportionate reduction in carriage cost for national long-distance operators (NLDO)

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 radio program and it has tools to build the interactive elements, like quiz shows, for the program.

VRT communicates with the radio station’s content management system, to receive the radio station’s playlist and synchronization information for mobiles. The playlist is used as a skeleton for the Visual Radio content. Once the playlist is available, a journalist or an editor can either automatically or manually generate the Visual Radio content,

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