Some of the oldest forms of fuel, cow dung, jatropha and cottonseed, may help power rural mobile telephony in India. The country’s first base station powered by biofuel is set to become operational at a rural area near Pune in the next couple of weeks.
The rural areas are plagued by erratic power supply and mobile companies depend heavily on diesel gensets.
P Balaji, VP, marketing & strategy, Ericsson India:
“Driving telecom penetration in rural areas is a major challenge. Uninterrupted power supply is a major issue as power cuts are frequent. A key reason why some regions lack GSM coverage is the limited reach of the electricity grid. Availability of diesel is another problem where gensets need to be up and running to ensure continuity in coverage,”
The initiative is part of a pilot project by Ericsson, Idea Cellular and the GSMA in India. Should the pilot project succeed, GSMA and Ericsson plan to rope in other cellular operators into the network.
The first phase of the feasibility study would involve rolling out the project across eight to ten locations in rural areas near Pune.
Source: Financial Express
Hindu Business Line has a story on leading cricket portal Cricinfo’s mobile plans. Read through the post to learn about the plans. But there’s one problem. Go towards the end of post to find out.
Anil Nair, Creative Head, Wireless Media, Cricinfo:
“We were one of the earliest providers of mobile cricket content. It started as a basic need through SMS scores when one couldn’t watch the match as he was away from the TV or travelling. But as technology is growing and handsets are getting better, activities on the mobile phone are getting more sophisticated. Although SMS still dominates the range of value-added services, its market is slowly being saturated. We are trying to prepare for the next stage through more complex applications through channels like MMS and WAP sites,”
Cricinfo works with Bangalore-based company Dhruva Interactive for its mobile phone applications and offers games, scores, alerts, ring tones and audio match analysis, apart from an application called Cricinfo Genie, which allows consumers to watch cricket live on their phones in an animated format.
Cricinfo Mobile will promote its services aggressively by buying online inventory and advertising on niche Web sites. Cricinfo believes all this will lead to a 25 per cent increase in uptake of all its mobile services during the World Cup. It is also expecting a 10-15 per cent conversion (of audience) from its portal Cricinfo to its mobile platform.
Some factoids from the article:
- Mobile value-added services industry is worth Rs 2,850 crore
- It could be Rs 4,560 crore by end-2007
- And cricket is a key revenue driver of this
- About 15% of mobiles in India are on the GPRS platform
- And a large portion of that is in the 15-25 age bracket
- There are 3-4 million unique visitors to Cricinfo.com a month
- The second highest traffic on Cricinfo.com comes from the US
The plans look good and Cricinfo might be well positioned to capitalise from the mobile VAS business. But there is a problem which the HBL article does not mention. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 is in West Indies. And due to the different time zones, all the matches are scheduled to begin after 7 pm India time. Which means almost everyone will be home, well in time to watch the matches on TV. This reduces the addressable market size, as there will be lesser number of people who would need to catch the action on-the-go because of office or travel.
So this time, mobile operators and VAS companies are at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the TV channels.
Business Standard has a good article on the pricing innovation happening in the Indian mobile gaming market.
A look at the innovative pricing / business models:
- Pay-per-play
- Satchet packaging
- Time-based gaming or subscription model
- Advergaming - the use of mobile games for promotion of a product
- Game stacks - where packs of three games can be downloaded for Rs 100
- Splitting of a game into various levels/ parts which allow users to download only a part of the game for a minimal amount
- Interactive model where users can buy additional weapons, add-ons to enhance the gaming experience
Price points are expected to fall from Rs 50 per download on GSM mobile phones to Rs 25 per download. The cheaper pricing and pay-per–play model is already a hit with Reliance CDMA customers.
Salil Bhargava, CEO, Jump Games
“Free games receive over 100 per cent more downloads than paid games,” and added that the company was working on three advergames.
Vishal Gondal, CEO and founder of Indiagames
“In India, a hit game gets about 2 million downloads of which CDMA at price points of Rs 5 and GSM at price points of Rs 50 contribute equally to the revenues of the game,”
Rajiv Hiranandani, CEO of Mobile2Win, says his company is in talks with a GSM operator to launch a play-per–play business model next week.
“Mobile marketing is Rs 8-10 crore industry and is expected to grow 10-fold to become Rs 70-80 crore industry in one year and advergaming will grow at 350 per cent to contribute Rs 4-5 crore to the overall mobile marketing industry,”
Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea
“We are looking at getting high quality of GPRS to improve the gaming experience, sourcing better content besides business models such unlimited package use and play per use,”
Hungama Mobile is in talks with telecom companies to introduce sachet games and add-ons to games at price points Rs 5-10 in the next six months.
Chennai-based Venture Intelligence is organizing Internet & Mobile Connect, a roundtable event on Venture Capital investing in the Internet-based Services and Mobile Value Added Services sectors. The event will be held on March 15 in Mumbai.
“The Online Services and Mobile VAS sectors have emerged as favorite sectors among Venture Capitalists accounting for almost 50% of all VC investments in the IT & ITES industry,” said Arun Natarajan, Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence.
Key themes to be addressed include:
- Internet Businesses: Is the boom for real this time?
- Mobile VAS: Time to look beyond Ring Tones and Wallpapers?
- Raising & Leveraging Venture Capital
The first panel consisting of experienced investors and entrepreneurs – including Alok Kejriwal of Contests2win.com, Ashish Gupta of Helion VC, Anurag Dod of Guruji.com and Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners - will discuss the opportunities and challenges before the Internet-based businesses in India.
The second panel – including Sanjay Swamy of mChek, Sandeep Singhal of Nexus India Capital, Arvind Rao of OnMobile and Rajesh Sawhney of Reliance Entertainment - will discuss what the future holds for the Mobile VAS sector with a special focus on new business models.
The final panel – including speakers like Nitish Mittersain of Nazara Tech, Probir Roy of Paymate and Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners - will throw light on what VC investors are looking for from Internet-based Services and Mobile VAS companies and what it takes to be a VC-backed company in these sectors.
Click here for more information and to register for this event.
Idea Cellular has won the GSM Association’s Global Mobile Awards award under the “Best Billing or Customer Care Solution” category.
“CARE” is a SMS based application which a Idea user initiates by sending a keyword “CARE” to 4444. Thereafter he gets a return SMS, which guides him to send various other keywords like “CARE”, “RCV” or “HOT” to get the desired information which is again conveyed back to him through return SMS’s. The service is automated and free. “CARE” was developed and launched in Idea’s Gujarat Circle this year.
The most common reasons why prepaid Subscribers call the call center is to check on “voucher details, schemes, a/c balance and last call details ”. E.g. Data prior to launch of “CARE”, showed nearly 70 % hits on IVR for checking out the same. Earlier, the customers had to make several attempts to get through to an already busy call center. Not only that, they had to go through a long list of commands on the IVR to get the desired info – now they get it in seconds. There has also been a substantial increase in Idea’s operational efficiency due to a spurt in self-service calls of prepaid subscribers, which have moved up from 23%(Aug-06) to 35%(Nov-06) post-launch. This increase in self-service calls has made it easier for other customers to access the call center, thereby substantially reducing the abandoned calls % from 13%(Aug-06) to 2%(Nov-06) at the agent level. Further the service level (% of calls answered within 30 seconds of call) has moved up from 68%(Aug-06) to 94.3%(Nov-06) now.
Indian prepaid subscribers being low-spend customers are extremely cautious and like to get into details of everything that has an impact on their cash outflows, namely the recharge voucher that they should buy to get maximum talktime, promotions on various recharges, current balance etc.
Idea Cellular is the sixth largest mobile operator in India with a presence in 11 circles. Idea’s IPO last week was oversubscribed more than 57 times in the process generating the highest ever demand of Rs 1,21,557 crore.
According to ORG-GFK figures, Nokia has seen a dip in its Indian market share in the last one year.
Nokia’s market share in the GSM handset market in terms of units sold has come off its highs at 78-80% in end December 2005 to around 70% at the end of December 2006.
In the same period, Motorola has gained from 5% to 15% while Sony Ericsson has gained to around 8%.
Motorola, which was down at almost 2% market share in August-September 05, has grown almost 10 times since then on a very small base.
Sources said Nokia sales boomed in the first half of 2006 and it gained market share. The subsequent dip in market share may not be a huge worry for Nokia as its own volumes have grown at a healthy rate and it may stay away from competing at unprofitable prices. Industry watchers predict that Nokia market share may stabilise at around 70-72 %.
Last year, Nokia launched 33 models, Motorola launched 18 models and Sony Ericsson 17 models. The remaining players launched close to 53 models.
Credible numbers about the Indian handset market are difficult to get. Detractors raise question regarding the methodology employed. I have heard objections which say that many reports are skewed because they rely on sales data from the top 50 centres which does not represent the rural market. But the numbers are indicative anyways.
Essar Telecom Retail, an Essar group company, is all set to enter mobile retailing in India with the launch of its “The MobileStore” outlets across the country. The company already has 40 stores across 11 cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.
Speaking to DNA Money, Rajiv Agarwal, CEO and director of Essar Telecom Retail, said:
“We should have over 150 stores across 11 cities in another month’s time. And by March 2008, there will close to 1,000 stores … scaling up to 2,500 stores across 600 cities by 2010. While it will be too early to project revenues at this stage, we intend to achieve a turnover of Rs 5,000 crore after our complete roll-out three years hence.”
MobileStore outlets will offer:
- Mobile handsets and accessories
- Repairs and servicing
- Bill collections
- Value-added-services
- Digital cameras, iPods, gaming devices, DTH connections
The management envisages mobile handset sales to contribute to the extent of 80% to the turnover while VAS and accessories will be 5% and 15% respectively. This apart, in-store advertising and branding is expected to generate considerable revenues as well.
Not taking the franchise route for their mobile retail store expansion, the company will launch stores in three formats i.e. large (1,000-1,500 sq ft), medium (800-1,000 sq ft) and compact (200-500 sq ft) stores. The ratio being identified is 20:60:20 across large, medium and compact stores respectively.
“All of these will be leased-owned-managed stores with a breakeven of 2-3 years from the day of launch,” said Agarwal.
ETRL envisages an overall investment of $250 million (Rs 1,125 crore) for setting up this retail network across the country. The set-up cost of each of the three formats will be in the range of Rs 5 lakh (compact) to over Rs 50 lakh (large).
Related:
Pantaloon gets into telecom retailing
Mobile retail chain launched in Bangalore
The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association representing more than 700 mobile operators, presented its Government Leadership Award 2007 to India for exceptional achievement in the field of mobile communications policy.
India has been selected because of its success in establishing a framework of policies and regulations, which have enabled and stimulated the growth of mobile telecommunications over the past three years. The Government has transformed the policy and regulatory environment by:
- relaxing rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)- raising the limit for foreign investment in a telecoms company from 49 per cent to 74 per cent
- reducing the access deficit charges payable by mobile operators to the fixed line incumbents
- liberalising the domestic and international long distance markets
- facilitating the sharing of network infrastructure
- simplifying and speeding the planning procedures for new cell sites
- increasing the amount of commercially available spectrum and
- securing spectrum for 3G in the IMT-2000 core band
- stimulating telecommunications equipment manufacturing
The GSMA’s Government Leadership Award was given to Brazil in 2005 and to Pakistan in 2006.
The February event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will take place on February 19th.
Big thanks to Astrolife.com for sponsoring the event and supporting the Mobile Monday community.
Topic:
Convergence of Internet and Mobile business models
How internet websites are integrating mobiles in their services and business models.
Agenda:
When:
Monday, 19th February, 2007
6.30 pm - 9.30 pm
Where:
Kohinoor Hotel,
Ruby Party Hall,
Opposite Siddhivinayak Temple,
Dadar.
Sponsors:
Admission to the event is free for mobile industry professionals and enthusiasts. But seats are limited and admission is strictly for confirmed registered participants only.
Click here to register for the event.
Here are some interesting tidbits from a story on the doctoral research done by Carolyn Wei of the University of Washington.
“What Carolyn has done it take this really interesting element of youth culture – courtship – and identified how mobile phones interact with those pre-existing patterns of interaction,” Kolko said. “Technology doesn’t trump culture, it doesn’t change culture on its own, but it is a force that pushes against cultural patterns.”
Technology also played a role in arranged marriages, something most study participants considered as an option for finding a partner. She discovered instances where people used mobile phones to get to know partners vetted and approved by their parents. Mobile phones could influence the trend toward relaxing traditions on the amount of contact permitted before marriage, Wei said.
The research found several instances where mobile phones played a role in romance:
- In arranged marriages: A young man was given some time alone with a prospective bride-to-be and he had one question for her: “What is your mobile number?”
- Between working couples: One research participant called or sent text messages to his wife, also living with him in Bangalore, often. If he lost his mobile phone he would be scared, he said, not because he had lost a phone but because he had lost this connection with his wife.
- Traditional etiquette: Indian mobile phone companies typically bill the person making the call. Men will occasionally ignore or hang up on a girlfriend and then call her right back, a modern instance of picking up the tab.
- Domestic spats: One partner might deliberately ignore calls to punish the other, or one might become angry when the other wasn’t answering. In one instance a participant threatened his partner that he would not answer her calls for a month.
Vodafone purchased Hutchison Telecommunications’ 67 per cent stake in Hutchison Essar for $11.1 billion (Rs 48,540 cr), which values the Hutch Essar at $18.8 billion, including debt.
Hindu Businessline quotes Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel saying that the company would up the ante knowing that Vodafone would come hard to grab more market share.
When asked to comment on the Vodafone bid, Mr Mittal said that if he were representing Vodafone, then he would have paid a few billion dollars more to acquire Hutch.
On the other hand, the two giants are also co-operating.
Bharti has signed an infrastructure sharing agreement with Vodafone, which would allow both operators to share nearly 70,000 mobile towers across the country.
Bharti would also be Vodafone’s preferred long distance telephony service provider.
Bharti would make Vodafone its preferred roaming partner.
Business Standard reports that the company is set to introduce low-cost handsets and new value-added services such as mobile payments and money transfers.
Vodafone recently reached the 200-million subscriber mark. The company believes that emerging markets are approximately 60 per cent of the total expected growth in the next five years. The CAGR is 12.3 per cent as compared with 4.4 per cent in developed markets.
Speaking to the media at the 3GSM World Congress 2007, Arun Sarin, CEO, Vodafone mentioned that he wanted Asim Ghosh to retain his position in the company.
He noted that while India boasted of 400 minutes of use per subscriber per month, Europe speaks of 150 minutes and the US of 800 minutes.
The company has already been exploring the mobile advertising and social networking spaces, besides the mobile payments (including money transfers) and mobile TV.
Vodafone already has partnerships towards these ends with the likes of YouTube (videos), MySpace (social networking), Google (search), Yahoo (Instant messaging) and eBay to name a few.
Sarin, however, cautioned that “we need to define common standards. We need to define the size of banner advertisements and video advertisements besides reporting platforms to make mobile advertising a success”.
Also Read: Vodafone, Citigroup set sights on international money transfer
France Telecom-owned Orange could take rival Vodafone’s lead and consider acquisitions in the Indian mobile market, says its chief executive Sanjiv Ahuja.
“India is a fast growing market and if a right opportunity emerges at the right kind of valuation, we would look at it. I wouldn’t rule anything out,”
But its current focus is the fast growing African markets.
“Africa is where we look at significant growth in terms of subscribers. We have been very very successful and continue to plan to expand in those markets,” he added.
Orange had 97 million customers in 24 countries at the end of 2006. Its biggest operations are in France and Britain.
I find the following comments in the article telling. Look! Heres a leading operator from a developed mobile market talking about the state of VAS.
Mobile operators have struggled to increase data revenues from areas other than text messaging. Third-generation mobile services such as video-calling and high-speed Web access are yet to provide a significant increase in revenues.
Ahuja said data-based services such as mobile music, video, mobile blogging and user generated content were gaining traction in Europe.
“That’s where I see Europe evolving to as a mature market… Is any one of these by itself significant enough, it’s not clear. But if you put them all together, its absolutely clear that these next generation services are playing a significant role in the future of this industry,” he said.
Source: ET
India added 6.8 million new mobile users in January to take the total mobile user base to 156.3 million. GSM subscriber base increased by more than 5 million, while CDMA operators added 1.8 million (including WLL-fixed) users.
Within the Category C circles, the highest growth was recorded by Assam (8.3%) followed by North East at (6.8%).
Within the Category B circles, Haryana recorded the highest growth at 9.1%, followed by West Bengal & Andaman & Nicobar at 7.7%.
Category A circles also witnessed a growth of 4.9% in January. Karnataka recorded the highest growth of 5.2% followed by Maharashtra at 4.9%.
The Metro subscribers also grew by 2.8% over the previous month. Mumbai recorded the highest growth at 3.8%!
Vodafone has acquired Hutch for an estimated enterprise value of over US $19 billion (Rs 85,000 crores). Vodafone is the world’s largest mobile phone group by revenue and Hutch is India’s fourth largest mobile operator.
CNN-IBN reports that Vodaphone has offered Essar to become a partner firm. Essar welcomed the offer and said it is indeed “good price” for the company.
“This is a good price, which reflects the premier position of Hutchison Essar as India’s leading operator. Essar owns 33 per cent of the company and we are delighted that Hutchison and Essar have together created this value,” said the company in a statement.
Essar owns 33% of Hutchison-Essar Limited has 21 days time to decide on whether to exercise its RoFR (matching the top bid) or the tag-along right (to sell its 33% stake in the venture).
Hutchison Telecom first announced in December last year that it had been approached by various bidders for acquisition of its stake in the Indian venture. This was followed by announcements by Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Essar Group and Hindujas expressing their interest in the acquisition.
I think it is good for the Indian consumer to have a world leader competing and growing the telecom market.
Related: The Swayamvar of Hutch
