Arun Gupta of Mauj, which happens to be one of the top content intermediary companies in the VAS space, puts the size of the market at about Rs 380 crore, and projects it to grow to around Rs 3500 crore by 2010, reports the Financial Express.
“Revenue from the VAS segment is growing at a rate of 30 to 40 % a year…
VAS is between 5 to 12% of an operator’s total revenues now,” says Gupta of Mauj.
What is unclear in the above figures is the definition of VAS. Value-Added-Services can be categorised into three. To get fair idea of the market size it is necessary to know how many of these three are included.
- Voice - Roaming, Voicemail, Call Management Services
- SMS - P2P, Premium short-code SMS
- GPRS - Ringtones, Wallpapers, Themes, Games, Internet, Email
The article then talks about roaming solutions provider Roamware which enables carriers such as BSNL, Idea, MTNL, Hutch, Reliance.
Given that annual roaming revenues globally exceed $50 billion, the market size is estimated to be at least $700 million in India,” adds Punnoose.
It also mentions SmartTrust which is a provider of SIM toolkit technology that allows operators to build interactive menus on a SIM card containing links to services such as news, horoscopes, mobile banking etc.
SIM toolkit technology has been around for some time now but customer acceptance of it has been lacklustre. To be fair, Airtel’s Trak Ur Mate which was launched as a SIM Toolkit application in 2002 was alleged to have met with success.
- Conference: Mobile Gaming 2005 at New Delhi
21-22 Sep 2005, Hyatt Regency, New Delhi
- Tata Tele switches to 1 minute pulse
Lower rates for calls within its network despite DoT’s plan to ban such offers like Reliance.
- SC admits Infocomm plea against TDSAT
TDSAT upholded the penalty of Rs 150 cr imposed on Reliance Info by DoT for international call re-routing.
- Merrill Lynch buys Subex shares
Allotment of 230,769 equity shares of Rs 10 each at a premium of Rs 290 each
- All about telecom and tax
Are the revenues earned by the companies from the supply of equipment and software to telecom operators taxable?
Fixed-phone service providers using WLL technology (FWT) may challenge in court DoT’s decision to categorise their services at par with mobile services on the ground that the directive has been issued even as the matter is sub-judice. Service providers said the department had jumped the gun and not waited for the TDSAT’s verdict on the issue, which was to be delivered shortly.
Telecom department officials, however, said the government did not have to wait for the TDSAT judgment as the directive was policy-related. “The issue in the courts is a fight between BSNL and Tata Teleservices over the non-payment of access deficit charge. The judgment will have a bearing on FWT services, but this is a policy decision,” said an official.
Officials added that the operators did not comply withrepeated orders from the DoT and Trai to ensure that the phones remained whithin the premises of the subscribers.
This decision will make the GSM operators happy while displeasing the likes of Tata Tele and Reliance Info.
According to the statement of particulars filed under Section 217(2A) of the Companies Act, 1956, Bharti Tele-Ventures has 11 crorepati employees with annual remuneration of over Rs 1 crore each.
The Promoter and Chairman & MD tops the remuneration chart with an annual pay packet of Rs 6.58 crore. Joint Managing Director Akhil Gupta and Rajan Mittal and corporate director Jai Menon, took home over Rs 2 crore last year.
The company had 98 employees under the managerial cadre drawing a yearly gross remuneration of over Rs 24 lakh as on March 31, 2005.
It is readying an ESOP scheme under which 93.67 lakh options will be issued to its eligible employees. The current valuation of these options is close to Rs 300 crore.
ET has a round-up of various music phones available in India. It starts with Sony’s W800i, Samsung D500, Nokias and moves on to Nokia’s plans to rule the segment with N-series phones like N61. Read the article only to get updated on the choices of models available, if you are planning to buy a music phone.
Also read the launch announcement of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series W800i phone on MobilePundit.
Tata Teleservices has approached the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) accusing Reliance Infocomm of failing to provide interconnection in 12 new circles to its mobile and fixed wireless phones. The circles include Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh,Bihar, Orissa, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Kolkata.
At present, calls made by Tata Indicom subscribers to Reliance customers are being routed through BSNL’s network and the company has to pay an extra 19 paise as carriage charges for each call to the PSU. Whereas calls from Reliance phone to Tatas are not being completed.
TRAI directs operators to provide interconnections within 90 days of payments being made by the seeking company.
The Smart Investor puts a buy on Reliance Industries with the following arguments.
Apart from its business plans, what makes RIL an attractive bet is that it provides an indirect play on the telecom sector. RIL stock price has already run up substantially as businesses get separated.
But when the Reliance Infocomm goes for an initial public offer in March, there could be more gains. This is based on the fact that the Reliance Infocomm was valued at to Rs 32,000 crore for the conversion of preference shares held by Reliance Industries. Bharti Tele-Ventures, which has 13.2 million subscribers, is currently valued at over Rs 50,000 crore.
In fact, Reliance Infocomm has a comparable mobile footprint and subscriber base (12 million) compared to that of India’s top mobile operator which means there could be more upsides for Reliance Communications.
Bunty: India is running on SMS these days.
Babli: Really?
Bunty: Of course. Sardar Manmohan Singh.
Good analytical article in Business Standard talking about future telecom growth in the country.
Given per-capita, India will hit the affordability barrier earlier — around the 150-200 million mark if one goes by the rule of thumb of TV-ownership. This is based on the logic that TV-owners can afford telephony services and the two user-bases overlap.
India has (pure terrestial plus cable) about 200 million TV sets. If somebody can afford Rs 10,000 for a TV-set, he can afford the Rs 150/ month for a phone connection.
With the metros and urban markets maturing, any article which talks about growth in users has to focus on rural India.
In major metros like Delhi and Mumbai, density is in the 25-28 per cent range. In rural areas, it’s more like 2-3 per cent. There are big differentials in rural and metro income; it’s not as stark as 10:1. Ergo, many rural people who can afford telephones don’t have access.
BSNL is by far the leader in rural segment among the operators - in terms of coverage, users, value-proposition and brand-recall.
BSNL’s mobile drive reflects this. In its first mobile rollout, the PSU created massive semi-urban and rural capacities, which were immediately mopped up by long-suppressed demand. BSNL’s ongoing second rollout will improve geographical coverage.
Other TSPs are also initiating rural rollouts. Reliance and Bharti are the biggest; both have national footprints. Both may benefit from tapping into the Access Deficit Charge pool. But regardless of ADC, they will go rural. It’s the logical route to volume. For example, Bharti has a $1 billion capex plan for this year. It will have 5,000 town and 2 lakh village coverage by the end of calendar 2005.
LG Electronics India is looking at a sales figure of around Rs 9,000 crore by 2010. It would use India as a production base for exporting to countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Middle East and Africa; with exports contributing 50% of LG India’s revenue from GSM handset sales by then.
LG claims to be the first company to start manufacturing GSM handsets in India. It has invested $ 35 million, both in R&D and manufacturing. The first indigenous product will likely hit the Indian market by 2006.
LG’s revenue from GSM sales is Rs 400 crore and current market share in the mobile handset segment is at around 4 per cent. It plans to spend around Rs 30 crore for mobile sales promotion in FY 2005 and double the handset sales to 80 lakh from 40 lakh in 2004.
It sees good growth potential in the North-Eastern states. GSM penetration in eastern states is far below the national average of 24-25%.
“GSM penetration in Kolkata is 11 per cent whereas for other states in the east it is below 2 per cent, and therefore, the market potential is immense,” he noted.
Source: Business Standard
Motorola Chief Executive Edward Zander is visiting India. He said on Tuesday that Motorola may manufacture mobile phone handsets in India.
Zander said Motorola is planning to launch a new range of mobile phones this fall, including models priced below 2,000 rupees to expand its customer base.
‘We are going to be back with a vengeance. I think, by October to November, you will be seeing a lot of these (Motorola) products,’ Zander added.
The company was one of the first multinationals to enter India, having set up a development center in Bangalore in 1987. Nokia came to India eight years ago, but today controls 65 percent of the mobile phone market. Motorola, in contrast, has just 10 percent market share.
He believes that Motorola’s Indian employment numbers demonstrate the company’s long-term commitment to the country.
What we have here in India are 2,900 bright employees who are building careers at Motorola. I hope they will continue working at Motorola. They are now responsible for 40 percent of new development work.”
“Our competitor, who has 65 percent of the market share, employs only 500 people in India,” he said. Motorola has announced that the R&D center will employ another 1,000 people by the end of 2006.
Nokia, LG, Samsung, Elcoteq and Hyundai are the other companies that have announced plans to manufacture phones in the country.
ET reports about a DoT policy directive to TRAI saying the access deficit charge should be levied on the basis of a percentage share of annual revenue and not on a per-minute basis. Under the existing ADC policy, operators have to pay 30 paise as ADC to the government for every minute of STD call. Revenue based ADC will lead to a drop in tariffs of over 10% for cell users.
ADC is a charge imposed on long distance services and passed on to fixed line access providers who are mandated to provide services below cost. ADC is followed all over the world whenever the market is opened up for competition.
Bharti Televentures has awarded Nokia a $125 million contract to provide it with managed services over a three-year period and expand its network in eight circles including Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa. The deal will help Bharti to increase network coverage to more than 5,000 towns from around 3,000 at present.
This is not the first outsourcing deal for Bharti. It recently offered a contract of over Rs 1,200 crore to equipment supplier Ericsson in June and about a Rs 1,000-crore outsourcing contract to four BPO companies for handling Bharti’s call centre operations.
In 2004, Bharti had signed a $ 275-million contract with Nokia for supplying equipment for two years and rolling out mobile services for three years across the five circles.
Earlier, Bharti had announced that it would invest $1 billion in its fixed line and broadband operations by March 2006.
Article on agencyfaqs critiquing the recent ad campaign by Reliance Infocomm touting the benefits of its services for its customers during the recent Mumbai floods.
Of all the operators, networks of Reliance and Airtel faced lower downtimes. But going by their overall performance, there didn’t seem to be much put into contingency planning or disaster recovery by the telcos.
The campaign shows various situations in which people were stuck during the floods, and how, each time, the various features offered by RIM came to their rescue. The creative idea behind this campaign is certainly effective. However, there is risk associated with advertising of this kind. Using the backdrop of people’s misery to sell a brand might upset consumers who have been through the tragedy.
Budget Airline, Air Deccan is launching a facility where consumers can pay for or reshedule their flights through mobiles. It has forged an alliance with Bangalore-based Jigrahak Mobility Solutions.
‘NG Pay’ is a mobile payment platform. Consumers can call a NGPay call centre to access or download an application using their GPRS-enabled mobile phone or by just sending an SMS. Once the data is loaded, the secured interactive platform is available in the phone memory.
On the consumer’s cue, it shows the airline options - in this case the tickets for any Air Deccan flight. Post this, the customer needs to specify their route and fare option along with credit card details, and soon thereafter the PNR/ticket number is flashed on the screen. The PNR on the phone can be shown at the bookng office of the airport to secure a boarding pass.
According to Sourabh Jain of Jigrahak:
The technology can also be used to book movie tickets. In fact, the company is already in talks with a leading multiplex and also a mobile operator where consumers can pay their post-paid bills and recharge their pre-paid cards using this technology. However it is not eschewing the travel agent route all together.
According Alok Kejriwal, CEO, Contest2Win:
The delay has been due to a lack of secure payment gateways. He feels that mobile phone operators until now have not been keen to make micro-payment gateways, as it involved too many complicated loops.
On the eve of the completion of 10 years of mobile telephony in India, Airtel has declared launch of a developer programme called the ‘Future Factory’. Termed as Centres of Innovation, they will be located in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore.
The four main areas for the Future Factory are - Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Commerce, Wireless Business Solutions and rural applications. These will be conducted in partnership with local application developers who will be provided with the necessary infrastructure and incubated with break through ideas to work and develop applications for the mobile phone user. These Innovation Centres will serve as platform for the application providers to showcase their hardware and software applications to Airtel.
Some of interesting sets of applications developed by Future Factory for rural segments:
Mobile Pay Phone: A mobile PCO - its a community phone application wherein a local entrepreneur can carry his mobile handset on his vehicle and reach out to consumers and enable them to communicate. Rural markets have limited communication needs and Mobile Pay Phone product makes the communication business viable in these markets by enabling him to serve multiple villages.
Mandi Rate: Commodity Market in India is by and large scattered and unorganized. No syndicated source available to farmers to get the price information of commodities. Farmers typically depend on the middleman for this information. Airtel has developed an application where in a farmer can get price updates on any commodity of his choice “any time any where”.
Public Information Display Board: Multiple agencies like Government, NGOs, Media companies, FMCG companies etc need to reach out to rural consumers at right time in the cost effective manner. Public Information display board allows such agencies to broadcast messages remotely from their offices to the rural areas on a real time basis. The messages can be displayed in local languages to ensure effectiveness. Display boards are mobile in nature and can be moved from one location to another as required.
Mobile Reporter: Enables real time data collection from the far flung areas to the central host systems. This product could be used by NGO staff, Census staff, rural health offices, panchayats & other government agencies to collect relevant information. This could be extended to FMCG and rural marketing companies for their sales force automation.
Few ideas from students participating in ‘Vertical Limits‘, a day-long discussion on the future of telecom industry in the country.
The students also pointed out that the penetration of telephones in the urban sector was 15 times higher than rural and urged companies to turn their attention to this ‘vast untapped market’.
“As of now, around 27 persons in hundred have access to phones in cities and towns whereas in the villages the figure is between 1.5 to 2%. The future growth is definitely going to come from such places, as is shown by the current growth figure of 2% for metros like Delhi and Mumbai and 6% for smaller towns,” Sudeep added.
Nothing beats this idea on gaining a captive audience for the adveritser:
“The biggest problem for a mobile-service provider these days must be that of missed calls,” went on Sudeep Mehrotra. “And the best way to make money from this is to first show an add before the person is able to see who made the missed call”.
Nokia’s first ever global investor meet in India will be held in New Delhi on August 25, to coincide with the 10th anniversary of mobile telephony in India. The event is aimed at global investors, financial and industry analysts from a number of global investment banks, financial institutions and research houses.
Nokia’s operations in India include networks and terminals sales divisions, three research and development facilities and an upcoming manufacturing facility in Chennai to produce terminals and GSM infrastructure equipment.
Nokia is seeing strong growth in the Indian market with a market share of 70% and selling 8 out of the top 10 phone models. Some tidbits from Nokia’s history in India:
* The first-ever mobile call in India on a Nokia-deployed network from a Nokia handset over 10 years ago.
* Focusing on localization initiatives to drive adoption
* 1998, Saare Jahaan Se Acchha, first Indian ring tone (Nokia 5110)
* 2000, First Hindi user menu (Nokia 3210)
* 2002, First Hindi text input (Nokia 3610)
* 2003, First Made-for-India phone, the Nokia 1100
* 2004, Saral Mobile Sandesh, Hindi SMS on a wide range of Nokia phones
* Setting up India’s first EDGE Network for IDEA Cellular in Delhi
Source: domain-B
- Reliance Info launches international roaming
Agreements with China Unicon, Sprint PCS (USA), Pelephone Cellular (Israel), Mobile-8 (Indonesia), Telecom Mobile (NZ)
- Telecom link to all 6 lakh villages by 2006
Currently 5,40,000 of the 6,00,000 villages are connected
- You say you have the lowest charges in the world
We heard the same thing ten years ago from Indian Airlines
- Cell operators plan common mobile infrastructure
Mobile operators share just 30% of the existing cell sites
- Indiagames in Red Herring ‘Top Asia 100′ List
Times of India is carrying a story on the 10th anniversary of introduction of Mobiles in India.
Not so long ago, owning a phone was a luxury. Things have changed drastically. Says Bharti CMD Sunil Mittal:
“There is nothing more moving than seeing a carpenter talking business on his mobile, or a fisherman trying to sell his catch, or a farmer keeping track of market information using his cellphone.”
The mood in the sector continues to be upbeat. Says COAI DG TV Ramachandran:
“In April, India had the seventh largest mobile subscriber base in the world. By December 2007, when we hope to have 200 million cellphones users, India will be number three or four, after China, US and, perhaps, Russia. We hope to go past UK, Italy and Germany.”
To put things into perspective, telephone penetration has increased to around 11% in 2005 from a measly 0.8% in 1995. Still there is a long way to go, since cellular networks cover just about 25% of the population.
“About 35% of our costs goes to government in various levies. To make mobile telephony more affordable, these levies have to be rationalised,”he says.
