The September event for Mobile Monday Mumbai is on the topic “Mobile Music”.
The event will be hosted by Hungama Mobile.
Speakers:
When:
Monday, September 4th, 2006
6.30 pm onwards
Where:
Hungama Mobile, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai.
Registrations are now open.
British Telecom, one of the world’s largest telecom services provider, plans to launch basic fixed-line telephony services in India, to support the company’s corporate customer base.
The launch of fixed-line services by BT is for attracting corporates, particularly MNCs as they use the company to link up to their branch offices in the rest of the world.
Andy Green, CEO, BT Global Services said that the only interest BT has in mobile telephony lies in the converged services for the corporate sector, which is in persistence with BT’s policy for businesses outside Europe.
The British telecom giant is also scouting for an Indian partner to provide data and phone services through VPN to corporates.
“The company has plans for a JV in India, wherein the BT would hold 74% stake, to serve the corporate sector,” Mr Green. The company will apply for a VPN licence in 6 months, he added.
Source: ET
TRAI has come out with yet another directive aimed towards protecting the interests of the consumer.
TRAI has directed the operators to assign a unique docket number (trouble ticket number) for all service request calls made to the customer care helpline as well as special numbers for registering complaints and convey the same to the customer at the time of such call to handle consumer grievances better.
After consultations with the operators, TRAI has asked them to implement this directive before the end of 2006.
I failed to understand the reasons behind operators not assigning a trouble-ticket number at the time of registering complaints or service requests. All service oriented companies implement this simple method of handling grievances so that a particular request can be tracked and the service provider can be held accountable for non-resolution or delays.
Till today, across all operators, consumers have to depend on operator records without any proof of their complaints. So if you asked for deactivation of a service and its not done in time - you have no way to prove that.
I feel this single act of having a handle over requests will make the support departments more accountable and result in better grievance handling.
Kudos TRAI!
Nokia S60 Tech Day
Event for developers of Symbian C++ for Nokia S60 mobiles.
When:
19 - 20 Sep 2006
Where:
Taj Krishna, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad.
India’s largest multiplex chain PVR Cinemas is planning a pan-India rollout of m-ticketing in September.
M-ticketing for movies has been tried out before. Fame Cinemas had announced a IVRS-based service powered by OnMobile where the payment could be made through credit cards. While ConvergeLabs had launched barcode-based m-ticketing for Deep Multiplex in Gujarat.
But the PVR announcement is significant not only because PVR Cinemas happens to be largest chain of multiplexes in India but also because of its plan to launch the service across its multiplexes. The m-tickets will be priced higher to charge a premium for the convenience.
Theatre owners are working with cellular operators to set up an ecosystem that will allow movie-buffs to search, select a movie, pay and enter the theatre - all with just the mobile in hand.
The article does not talk about the technology behind PVR’s m-ticketing.
ET has a candid piece on the fraudulent practises many operators use to make more money off the gullible user.
Out of the 5 things, not one comes as new to me. Must read.
Heres a list of Indian telecom companies part of the “Red Herring Asia 100” - an award programme that recognises the most promising private technology companies in Asia.
Oxford Bookstore has launched a SMS service for book lovers to check for new releases and bestsellers. The technology for this short-code based “pull” service is provided by Mobile 365.
Its basically an on-demand shortcode service where the user sends a SMS with a keyword to 6365 and gets back a reply with the asked-for info.
E.g. Sending “OBSNNF” to 6365 gets you the latest 3 business, new age and non-fiction books.
Rajiv Chowdhry, CEO, Apeejay Oxford Bookstores:
Our focus in initiating this mobile relationship is to understand and value consumer preference when it comes to reading and buying books. In future, we look forward to building a strong mobile community of booklovers through this non-intrusive, quick and well-focussed information distribution channel.
One keyword that is missing and which I would like as a user, is to send the ISBN number or book name and get back some details like the author, its Oxford sales rank (denoting its popularity) and the availability of that book at Oxford.
My latest post on Technology Walla.
Even if DTH only manages to reach the projected 25% penetration of cable homes in 5 years, it would have gained a major victory for the consumer. DTH gives the consumer an alternative to the cable operator, an option which he did not have before.
“Please hear this message before proceeding with your (urgent) call.”
This is what one might hear if the “sponsored calls” service actually comes into being. Business Standard says that one operator is soon expected to offer this service on local calls made within its network. OnMobile is the technology provider and developer of this service.
Forget low call tariffs, cheap text messages, package offers, and discount plans. You could soon be paying nothing for making calls from your mobile phone, provided you have the patience to listen to 30-45 second ad jingles or commercials before a call goes through.
The article also talks about a marketing initiative from Airtel involving 45 restaurants in Bangalore. Subscribers in the vicinity of these restaurants receive SMS from Airtel, offering discounts.
Will it be one of the first mainstream location-based-service (LBS) from an Indian operator?
Bharti Airtel has awarded to Ericsson a one billion dollar (Rs 4500 crore) contract extending over three years, for the expansion and upgrade of Bharti Airtel’s mobile network in 15 circles.
Last year Bharti Airtel had signed a 250 million dollar (Rs 1,075 crore) contract with Ericsson, to set up and maintain Airtel’s cellular network in 3,000 towns and villages across the country. In 2004, they had signed a 400 million dollar agreement for supply of GSM network.
Ericsson will also upgrade the network with mobile softswitch (Media Gateway and MSC Servers), the solution that paves the way to an all-IP network.
Ericsson already manages more than 70% of Bharti Airtel’s network in India.
ET reports that Tatas are picking up 26% in InfraCo, a new telecom company in South Africa. The remaining stake in the company will be held by the South African government.
The joint venture will be the third network operator in South Africa, and apart from offering long distance services within the country, it will also build and operate marine telecom infrastructure for international long distance (ILD) traffic.
The investment of $60m will be routed through VSNL, Tatas’ long distance arm.
VSNL already has a 26% stake in the South Africa’s SNO Telecom, which has licence to provide all telecom services, except mobile services. The Tatas have already announced an investment of about $250m in SNO Telecom, which is slated to launch services by the month-end and become the country’s second fixed-line service provider.
The JV may lead to complications in the South African telecom market due to the different cross holdings involved.
The Tatas will have stake in both SNO Telecom and InfraCo, who together will control significant chunks of the telecom infrastructure in South Africa.
The government currently holds 37% stake in mobile operator Telkom, will also own 74% in InfraCo, with both companies competing in the infrastructure space.
VSNL owns Tyco, one of the largest players in the ILD space.
Nazara has announced the launch of two games based on popular cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni developed for Qualcomm’s BREW platform. It will also launch Dhoni’s wallpapers and screensavers.
In Dhoni Tappebaaz, the user will have to skillfully keep the ball off the ground by striking it with his bat. Dhoni Tappebaaz also will have a community-based feature that will enable users to compete with each other and participate in contests.
Dhoni Dhamaka has been designed with Dhoni’s hard-hitting batting style in mind. In this game, players will have to score the maximum number of runs, hitting as many sixes and fours as possible.
The company has Sachin Tendulkar and Archie Comics in its brand portfolio, and develops mobile media content based on them. Nazara claims to have setup India’s largest dedicated 3D mobile game studio.
ET has press release like article on Mauj. It can hardly be called a company profile, but nevertheless worth a dekko.
Arun Gupta, CEO of Mauj:
There is no fixed formula for success in a new business. “One needs to have a clear idea on what new contribution one can make to the existing value chain. And putting together a good management team is of paramount importance.”
Mauj is one of largest content aggregator and an important player in this space. Therefore, the last sentence in the article is noteworthy.
Going forward, the challenge for the company is to build Mauj as a consumer brand in the mobile content space.
Does Mauj harbour aspirations to become a consumer brand? Is a D2C (Direct to Consumer) initiative in the offing?
Today an aggregator’s presence is hardly noticed by the consumer. A user interacts with the operator, while Mauj and other aggregators are virtually hidden as behind-the-scene technology / content providers. The two brands that the user identifies are that of the operator and the content owner.
Lets see what tactics can Mauj employ to balance its interests in the existing customer (the operator) and its future customer (the consumer).
I’m always pleased to see favourable developments in the uptake of data services. The ubiquitous internet-ready mobile phone has the potential to be the laptop of developing countries like India. We have to move beyond Voice and SMS; for this operators have to bring down the cost of entry and usage, and the content / service providers have to make it compelling for the users.
Hutch Mumbai introduced a zero-rental GPRS plan in June this year, waiving off a monthly rental of Rs 49 and keeping a pay-per-use charge of 10 paise per 10 kilobytes. So if you use 1MB of data while browsing and downloading stuff, it would cost you Rs 10.
Now Airtel Chennai has also introduced a zero-rental GPRS service for its post-paid customers at pay-per-use rate of Re 1 per 100 kilobytes. Which works out to Rs 10 per 1MB.
There are two ways the GPRS service is used.
For on-phone browsing, the amount of data downloaded from the mobile web is comparatively not very high. This is because the web pages, graphics and downloads are optimized in size to suit the slower speeds and smaller screens, and are compressed by the WAP gateway.
A pay per use model will lower the monthly cost for most users as there is no minimum commitment. Another advantage is that users can feel free to try out things and evaluate the mobile web without having to commit a one-time entry fee. The monthly rental acts as a hurdle to acceptance of the service since most users can’t imagine its value to shell out that fee. Provided that there are compelling content and services, this can spur usage as many more users will be willing to experiment with GPRS. It can be a positive feedback loop, in which as more users start using GPRS - more content and services are created for it and so on.
Zero-rental GPRS is a welcome move by these operators and I hope their experiment in these circles succeeds to spread to all other circles and operators.
Its raining deals for Tech Mahindra, an IT solutions provider to telecom companies. The company is in the news for bagging some large international deals.
Digicel deal: It will provide the platform for running mobile virtual network operator services to Caribbean’s largest mobile service provider Digicel.
As per the contract, Tech Mahindra will provide integrated management systems to Digicel, which along with Cable and Wireless are the leading service providers in Caribbean. Additionally, the deal will also see Tech Mahindra provide billing and customer relationship management solutions to Digicel, sources added.
UEFA deal: A three-year deal with the technoligical arm of the UEFA, the govering body for football in Europe, to provide mobile content for events organised by the latter.
The services that the Indian firm would provide include creation of the platform, integrating with mobile operator networks worldwide and delivering football content from UEFA competitions, including the European (Euro) Nations Cup and UEFA Champions League (for top continental clubs).
Hutch Indonesia deal: A project for building and maintaining software for wireless network of Hutch in Indonesia for over $20 million.
“The project is very prestigious for us as we had IBM and HP as our competitors. Tech Mahindra received the order in May this year and the work will be completed by September,” said Milind Kulkarni, vice-president of Tech Mahindra Ltd. We will be maintaining the software for a period of three years, Kulkarni added.
The company is also working for British Telecom’s 21st Century Network (21CN) project.
Tech Mahindra is a joint venture between Mahindra and Mahindra and British Telecommunications. It successfully concluded its IPO and launched a joint venture with Motorola in August.
Business Standard reports that some Indian operators, including Bharti Airtel and Reliance Telecom, have evinced interest in bidding for a GSM-based mobile service licence in Bhutan.
Bhutan started mobile services in November 2003 and has about 50,000 cellular subscribers and over 40,000 fixed-line customers. State-owned Bhutan Telecom is the sole operator until now. This would be the second mobile licence in the Himalayan kingdom, which has a population of just under 7 lakh.
The foreign bidders will have to partner with a Bhutanese company and will be able to take a maximum 49 per cent equity stake in the joint venture…
The licensee can offer mobile virtual network operation (MVNO) services and will be required to abide by mobile number portability.
India is celebrating its 59th Independence Day today. Wishing all of you a great 15th August. Jai Hind!
After content aggregators, Indian mobile payment companies are attracting VC funding.
Helion Venture Partners has announced an investment of $2.2 million in Bangalore-based mobile commerce company JiGrahak.
JiGrahak’s product NGPay is a free downloadable mobile application which enables users to book flight tickets, buy movies tickets, to buy goods and services, and make payment through mobile phones. It supports all kinds of Credit card and Visa.
Sourabh Jain, CEO, JiGrahak:
NGPay has gone live and presently it has tied up with Air Deccan and SifyMall and will tie up with Inox shortly, so the end-users can avail its services…
One can make bill payments, recharge pre paid cards, order a pizza, or buy gifts, books, through NGPay
Helion had announced its $140 million India Venture Fund a week back. It provides multistage funding from the early stages of strategy formulation till the mergers and acquisitions, which ranges from $1-2 million at early stages to $8-10 million to scale up the organization.
Ashish Gupta and Kanwaljit Singh, MD, Helion will join the board of directors at JiGrahak.
Also Read:
Sherpalo and Kleiner Perkins invest in Paymate
SifyMall to use NGPay
Air Deccan deploys NG Pay
Source: CIOL
India added more than 5 million new mobile users in July, taking its mobile user-base to 108 million.
GSM operators added 3.93 million customers and CDMA operator Reliance Communications added 1.1 million new users in July.
Bharti Airtel = 1.26 million new, 24.337 million total
Reliance Communications = 1.1 million new, 23.7 million total
BSNL = 737,135 new, 19.03 million total
Hutchison Essar = 854,903 new, 18.399 million total
Idea Cellular = 0.58 million new, 9.12 million total
Reliance Telecom = 0.19 million new, 2.51 million total
MTNL = 0.07 million new, 2.24 million total
Spice Telecom = 0.04 million new, 2.09 million total
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