Rajshri Media, the digital arm of the Rajshri Group is bringing some of the evergreen blockbusters on your mobile phone.
The company has launched ‘Timeless Classics’, a special zone on operator portal from where users can download wallpapers, themes, ringtones and videos of a classic film. A classic film will be released for mobiles on the operator portal every Friday and users can search the archives for the films they have missed.
Rajshri Media currently holds mobile rights to almost 250 films in Hindi and other regional languages. Classics scheduled to be released include Amar Akbar Anthony, Maine Pyar Kiya, Guide, Anari, Aradhana, Bombay To Goa, Ek Duje Ke Liye, Kalicharan and Kati Patang amongst many others.
Mattel Toys India and Rajshri Media have entered into a strategic partnership to present Barbie Entertainment properties to mobile phone users in India all through this year.
Rajshri has recently launched three Barbie blockbuster movies, Barbie Fairytopia Mermaidia, Barbie Diaries & Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, across all leading mobile networks in India.
Rajshri and Mattel are planning promotional contests and innovative activities with mobile operators.
Good old DD is going hi-tech. It plans to start its DVB-H based mobile TV service in the second half of this year.
DD will also digitize its archive and make it available on a per view basis with the operators as streaming videos.
Doordarshan director general Navin Kumar:
“With this technology, we will be able to make available the content of our four national channels on mobiles. Earlier, we had made available DD News in moving vehicles in Delhi through the Digital Video Broadcasting to terrestrials (DVB-T) earlier. Now with the DVB-H technology, we are entering the mobile space,”
Except Nokia N92, there are hardly any handset models with a DVB-H receiver. Although its nice to see a broadcaster taking mobile TV initiatives, I am not sure if the market is ready for such a service yet.
Related: Mobile TV in India
- Mobile subscriber base figure authentic: TRAI
Read this post for a background on this story.
- US cries foul over BSNL reserving quarter of mega contract for ITI
ITI has tied up with French vendor Alcatel to manufacture cellular equipment.
- Motorola to set up manufacturing plant in Chennai
Motorola is likely to make the announcement next week.
- TV show Bid2Win collects over a million bids in its opening week
The technology is powered by UK-based company Cellcast.
- Spanco to raise $25 mn via bonds
The company is a telecom systems integrator and one of the largest domestic call centres.
Sounds familiar? Have been receiving at least 1-2 SMS every week since last month, trying to make a gambler of me. Forget about winning, going by this ET article - it might even be illegal to play.
Some mobile operators are offering what appears to be an online lottery, though it is described as an online contest. These contests run by mobile operators such as Hutch, Reliance and Airtel are to some extent a ‘game of chance’ with an element of ‘game of skill’ built into it at a later stage.
It works like this. The operator sends you this SMS (short messaging service), “Have you played Jackpot today? Amulya Rathi & Neeraj Motwani have won Rs 1 lakh. Today could be your lucky day! SMS JACKPOT to 7007 now.” When you enter through this route, another message pops up on your mobile screen that goes somewhat like this, “Welcome to JACKPOT. Answer the question correctly and one lucky winner will win Rs 1 lakh every second day.” And the question follows.
The mobile operators charge Rs 10 for answering the first message and regular charges for replying to the second SMS.
The Lotteries (Regulation) Act 1998 defines lottery as
“a scheme, in whatever form and by whatever name called, for distribution of prizes by lot or chance to those persons participating in the chances of a prize by purchasing tickets.”
According to the above definition, the contests run by mobile operators are lotteries, say some experts. The first SMS is a ‘game of chance’ though answering the latter question requires some skills so the entire contest becomes a ‘game of skill’.
The Maharashtra government is contemplating a legislation to bring these games under the purview of the Lottery Act. Kavita Gupta, former state director of lotteries and the current treasury secretary says:
“Clearly, the mobile operators have circumvented the Lottery Act by making it appear a game of skill,”
Rediff article questions whether the current declared mobile userbase of 90 million is accurate.
It cites a Yankee Group report which states that Indian operators might have to eliminate 10-20% of their subscriber numbers over the next two to three years to wean away a growing base of technically non-existent users.
The report brings about the imbalance based on relationship between handset sales and increase in subscriber numbers.
In the fourth quarter of 2005, the report estimates that around 10 million mobile devices were sold in India. This is much below the 12 million net addition of subscribers that were reported by operators.
It cites the cases of countries like Portugal and Taiwan where high pre-paid ratios and multiple SIM cards created a non-existent customer base.
Those who favour the report say that various factors could increase the gap - the free incoming-for-life scheme, the easy TRAI norms on definition when a subscriber should be moved off, and the large grace period given to pre-paid customers to recharge their mobile numbers.
However, COAI rubbishes the report. It says that 32 million handsets were sold in India between January-December 2005. The number of subscribers was more or less the same. Between April 2005 and March 2006, the number of handsets sold was around 37 million again matching additions to the subscriber base.
TRAI has suggested formation of a trust by all telecom operators in order to create consumer awareness for refund claims.
In the past, the regulator has ordered various telecom operators to refund excess charges to subscribers. In many cases, a significant number of subscribers didn’t come forward to claim refunds.
“This trust can help in creating awareness through various programmes. There are 24 regional consumer councils. The trust can help them in organising conferences and conducting various programmes,” said Trai chairman Nirpendra Misra.
Funding for the trust will come from unclaimed refunds from the consumers. Presently, the telcos have a total undisbursed amount of about Rs 10 crore. If a subscriber comes forward to claim his refund, the trust can always give his refund.
Source: ET
The Da Vinci Code, a virus bearing the film’s name is spreading on bluetooth-enabled mobile phones in India.
The virus, which spreads via wireless Bluetooth technology, causes a message to pop up on Bluetooth devices: ‘Receive message via Bluetooth from Da Vinci Code?’ Once a curious mobile phone user accepts the message, the virus enters the system and destroys the phone’s data.
Mridul Sharma (32), an operations manager at an event management firm, received the virus during a corporate presentation a few days ago. “The Da Vinci Code name actually excited me. I assumed the file was either an MMS clipping or a still and accepted it.
My entire system collapsed and data was deleted. I had just bought my Nokia N91 handset worth Rs 31,000 and had to pay Rs 1,500 to format my mobile hard disk and reload the software,” said Sharma.
Types of mobile viruses:
Skulls: A Trojan horse called Skulls, once downloaded, replaces all phone desktop icons with images of a skull
Comwar: A worm that spreads vis MMSes and Bluetooth. It infects devices running under Symbian operating system
Duts: The first known virus for the Pocket PC platform. It attempts to infect all EXE files in the current directory
Tips on staying safe from phone viruses:
- Don’t keep the Bluetooth radio on by default
- Don’t accept file requests from unknown senders via Bluetooth
- Delete messages from unknown senders
- Download ringtones and games from trusted sites only
Source: Mid-Day
Via: Avinash Rathod
The defence ministry will release 45 Mhz of spectrum by the end of this year for providing 3G services. DoT has asked the TRAI to give its recommendations on pricing of 3G spectrum.
Article in ET also quotes telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran saying that an investment of about $10-11 billion can materialise in the telecom manufacturing sector in the next 2-3 years.
He projected that India would have 500m telephones by ’10. “The current subscriber base in the country is 150m. The target for ’07, which has already been announced earlier, is 250m new phone connections. Now we are setting a target of 500m telephone connections by ’10,” said the minister.
From June 1, calls between Delhi and Mumbai on MTNL’s fixedline network will be charged at local call rates of Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call.
Currently, MTNL charges Rs 1.90 for a one-minute call between Delhi and Mumbai. Private operators are also likely to follow MTNL. They currently charge upto Rs 2.65 a minute.
The company, on Tuesday, announced the launch of its national long distance (NLD) services. Currently, BSNL is the NLD carrier for MTNL. BSNL charges 65 paise per minute from MTNL to carry its NLD traffic. VSNL has offered very attractive rates to MTNL to lease its network. Therefore, MTNL is able to offer very low rates.
“MTNL has been paying huge carriage charges for its calls routed outside Delhi and Mumbai. By tying up with VSNL, we shall be buying huge bandwidth capacity (4 STM1s) at a cost of Rs 2.64 crore annually, thereby saving Rs 8-10 crore on cost,” said Anita Soni, director of finance, MTNL.
MTNL has about 38 lakh subscribers in the two cities, accounting for about 90% of the total fixedline subscribers.
It earns between Rs 100-150 crore as revenue from STD calls between Delhi and Mumbai which registers about 12 crore STD minutes with 80% of them made from fixed line phones.
Source: ET
Update: STD rates for both fixed and mobile locations in rest of the country are also set to fall significantly as MTNL receives bids at much lower rates for carrying its pan-India STD traffic.
With the launch of many music-phone models, handset manufacturers are gearing up to offer iTunes like music service on their phones in India. There are a spate of tie-ups between mobile handset brands and record labels, artists, content providers, online music stores and software companies.
Motorola has tied up with Apple iTunes worldwide and is in talks with record label Saregama-HMV for sourcing music for its Moto RAZR and ROKR phones here.
“We have a 3,00,00 strong music library with Bollywood and lankguage music, digitisation of music is the next step for us.
To distribute our music we are in talks with equipment manufacturers like Motorola, wherein, their phones will music embedded with the choice of customised offerings,” says Subroto Chattopadhyay, president & CEO, Saregama.
Nokia is working with record labels such as Universal Music.
“This is the era of convergence, and we are creating a content download platform to expand the market,” says Gautam Advani, director, multimedia, Nokia India. These efforts are just beginning, and the market potential is so huge, that it looks like a win-win game for all at the moment.
This platform of distributing music would be beneficial for all, be it service providers, record labels or handset manufacturers like us.”
Sony Ericsson is banking on its parent’s content lineage to stay ahead.
“We don’t need to look any further than Sony Music for popular chart-topping music and artists,” says Sudhin Mathur, GM, Sony Ericsson India.
Source: ET
The only really useful number from this article in ET is the size of the ringtones market in India - Rs 130 crores and Videotones make up around 3-4% of that.
But over the next four years, close to 60 per cent of the new 100 million handsets that get added in india will be high end and support video ringtones,” says Arun Gupta of ‘Mauj’, another mobile content maker.
Considering, videotones only work with Nokia Series 60 handsets like 6600, does it mean that around 60 million Series 60 handsets will be added by 2010?
AT&T Inc is planning to re-enter the Indian telecom market through a joint venture with Mahindra Air Services.
The venture, 74% owned by AT&T Global Network and 26% by Mahindra Air Services, will offer Internet, international long-distance and national long-distance services. The new company will also offer services like global networking and broadband services, video multicasting and global scheduling.
The new company will be called AT&T Global Network Services India and AT&T will invest Rs 18.50 crore in the business initially as its equity contribution.
This will be AT&T’s second innings in the Indian telecom services market. AT&T Wireless had a 33% stake in Idea Cellular Services along with the AV Birla Group and the Tata Group. The stake was sold in 2004.
Source: Business Standard
Soundbuzz India is gearing to launch a pre-paid music download card in the Indian market before end of this year. The prepaid music cards will serve as an alternative payment option for downloading songs online.
Mandar Thakur, general manager of Soundbuzz in India
“India is predominantly a mobile music market, with low but rapidly growing broadband penetration. While in developed nations, digital music revenues that touched $1.1 billion in 2005 were divided 60:40 between online and mobile, the situation is the opposite in India.
More than 85% of the digital music revenues (over Rs 400 crore) come from the mobile sector alone. This ratio is in for a change with broadband development already in the process,”
How the online service would differ from similar full-song-download services launched by Hutch and Airtel on mobiles.
While a full track download on the mobile network would cost Rs 20 (like in the case of Hutch), in addition to per KB data download charges that would differ from one service provider to another, buying music online works out much cheaper.
“It’s almost half at Rs 10 or Rs 12 per track. This apart, the download is faster and the quality of the song is superior at 3MB to 4MB per song as compared to 1MB to 1.5MB on the mobile network,” says an official from one of the Indian music labels.
On the distribution strategy, Soundbuzz plans to associate with consumer durable chains besides those in the music retailing business like MusicWorld etc.
Headquartered in Singapore, Soundbuzz is a online and mobile music company. Operating in 13 markets in Asia, with an online music store in the US, the company registers monthly sales of over 200,000 encrypted music downloads and 2 million ringtone downloads. India will be the third country to see the launch of this music download card by Soundbuzz after Australia and Singapore.
India’s broadband and internet subscriber base in 2005 were 3 million and 6 million, respectively. This is expected to go up to 9 million and 18 million in 2007, and 20 million and 40 million, respectively by 2010.
What are the implications of this on mobile VAS? If it succeeds, the music download card will establish prepaid cards as an alternative payment mechanism to operator billing for mobile VAS.
BSNL has reduced charges for local calls to private fixed line networks like Bharti and Reliance by a whopping 75% by increasing the pulse rates from 45 seconds to 180 seconds, correcting one of the major discrepancies in call tariffs.
This means earlier a subscriber was paying Rs 4.80 for a three minute local and intra-circle call from a BSNL fixed line phone to a Reliance or Bharti fixed phone, now this has been reduced to Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call.
The PSU also reduced intra-circle (within a circle) call charges to other networks by 25% whereby it reduced the rates from Rs 1.60 a minute to Rs 1.20 a minute. For calls from BSNL fixed phones to other fixed networks over 50 kms, pulse rates were increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.
WLL service of BSNL have also been made cheaper and tariffs have been brought at par with the BSNL landline rates.
The disparity was earlier there due to per minute access deficit levy where a BSNL-to-BSNL local call was charged at Rs 1.20 for three minute while for other networks, it was Rs 4.80 a minute.
“Difference of tariff on the basis of technology has been done away with due to change in ADC regime from per minute basis to Adjusted Gross Revenue basis for domestic calls,” Sinha said.
Source: ET
Business Standard reports that Spice Telecom is looking at the possibilities of offloading 20% stake through an initial public offering in November this year to raise $200-250 million.
BK Modi, chairman, MCorp, which owns 51% stake in Spice Telecom
“We are looking at the possibilities of a listing in November and ground preparations, like appointment of merchant bankers, are on. Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley have valued the company at $1 billion. We are considering offloading 20 per cent to raise $200-250 million.”
Spice Telecom offloaded 49% to Telekom Malaysia in early March for around $180 million.
Spice has around 2 million subscribers in Karnataka and Punjab. It is also bidding for licences in Jammu and Kashmir, UP East and West, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.
ORG Informatics has informed that its subsidiary ORG Telecom has got a $5 million order from a Tanzanian telecom firm to help roll out a CDMA network in Tanzania.
ORG Telecom has also won two orders in Maldives, the company said.
Source: ET
Sunit Mittal shares the problems faced by Bharti in its attempts to go global. He says the valuations of operators worldwide have been driven to crazy heights by the Chinese and Middle-East investors.
Asset prices are being driven by the Chinese, who have the go-ahead from their government to go and acquire, and Middle East investors, who have plenty of cash with current oil prices.
Last year (in May), we did bid for Celltel, which is present in about 17 African states. Our bid was at $2 billion but STT (Singapore Technologies Telemedia) bid $2.45 billion and MTC (Mobile Telecommunications Co., Kuwait) even higher at $3.45 billion. We did not even participate in the just-closed bidding for Millicom International Cellular. The bids were just astronomical: China Mobile’s bid was at $5.5 billion beating UAE-based Investcom’s $5billion.
Bharti’s strategy is not to acquire but to grow organically by bidding for licenses in international markets.
We don’t intend to move into the international market in a major way at this point of time. Not that we did not try but there’s total madness in telecom valuations…
There’s no way we would bid such astronomically high prices. We have to move cautiously; we don’t have that kind of cash lying around. But we will keep looking for licences and pick them up if they fit in our scheme of things.
On outsourcing telecom infrastructure and IT:
In the first 11 years of our business we’d set up a total 10,000 base stations. Last year alone we installed 10,000 and this year we will put up 20,000. There’s no way we’d have done this on our own. IBM today has 2,000 people on its rolls running the IT department for us; that’s a large load that’d have otherwise befallen us. Costs are marginally up, but there are no more fires to be put out in quality. Call drops earlier used to be 2-2.5%, now it is 1%. Networks outages have come down.
Source: Financial Express
Powered by ActiveMedia Technology’s mobile coupon platform, Hutch has launched the “Hutch Tuesday” programme that provides exclusive offers to its subscribers across retail partners in Mumbai.
Under the terms of the privileges program, subscribers will receive exclusive two-for-one offers on a Tuesday and other ancillary offers the rest of the week to be redeemed at participating stores.
Close to 400 retail outlets in Mumbai, spanning entertainment, cinema food, and lifestyle, have signed up to participated in Hutch Tuesday.
ActiveMedia’s technology includes an m-coupon authentication and redemption application preinstalled on customised handsets located at participating retailer partners.
To use the service Hutch customers text the short code 123, call the Hutch voice portal on 123500 or visit PlanetHutch (WAP site) to download a m-coupon in the form of a SMS. The mobile voucher is then presented at the point of sale at the participating outlet and the special offer is redeemed.
Naveen Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer, Hutchison Essar, puts it as a loyalty programme for its customers.
“Hutch Tuesday is another advantage that our customers get from being on the Hutch network. While it benefits our customers with good bargains, it also helps our retail partners to increase traffic on otherwise lean Tuesdays. We are delighted to join hands with ActiveMedia Technology and power this initiative of ours with RAPOSTM to deliver and track the m-coupon in real time.”
Two Indian operators, Bharti and Shyam Telecom have got licenses to provide services in UK.
Bharti has bagged the license to operate full-fledged telecom services, including international long distance, in the southern most state of the British Isles - Jersey.
The company proposes to invest over 20 million pounds (GBP) in setting up the network and IT systems in partnership with Nokia (telecom infrastructure) and IBM (IT solutions).
Jersey Telenet Ltd, a subsidiary of Bharti Global has been granted a license to run comprehensive telecom services in Jersey which include 2G and 3G mobile services and international long distance services. Services are expected to commence from October 2006.
This is the second international telecom venture of Bharti Global. Telecom Seychelles, a subsidiary of Bharti Global, has been offering mobile and basic telephone services in Seychelles since 1998 under the Airtel brand.
Shyam Telecom has got a licence for providing GSM-based cellular mobile services in Britain. The company will focus mainly on providing seamless mobile coverage in office buildings.
Generally, the GSM networks are so designed that their quality deteriorates in basements and buildings. Shyam Telecom, will cater to this segment of customers, who require good coverage in buildings. For this, the company will tie up with local GSM service providers, Rajiv Mehrotra, chairman of Shyam Telecom, said.
Shyam is a telecom equipment manufacturer. Shyam telelink, its sister concern, provides fixed line and CDMA services in Rajasthan under Rainbow brand. About three years ago, Shyam sold its GSM business to Bharti.
Source: ET and New Kerala
