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| Wednesday, September 26, 2007 |
| Rush for Licenses + Next Gen Network Guidelines |
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 After Sunil Mittal showing the way of success in Indian Telecom industry, everybody wants to be a Telecom Service Provider. First it was Real Estate major Parsvnath Developers which applied for a Telecom license. Unitech Ltd and DLF followed it and now India's most speculative company IndiaBulls also wants to be a Telco. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is looking at allowing two or three more pan-India telecom operators on stricter entry criteria as part of the new guidelines for allocation of Universal Access Service Licence (UASL).
Don't forget Telecom is a capital intensive business. Indian Telecom License maybe cheap but Spectrum will be really expensive this time as auction will be the only solution for this scarce resource. Bharti-Airtel and Vodafone Essar are the biggest beneficiaries since they already own majority of the spectrum. New entrants will bleed heavily as they will have high entry cost and competing with established players won't be an easy task.
In a separate development, Telecom regulator TRAI will soon come out with recommendations to address issues like numbering plan, interconnection and common exchange to facilitate the migration of mobile operators to Next Generation Networks. |
Published on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 1:28 PM  |
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| Tuesday, September 25, 2007 |
| DoT Freezes Licenses + Bharti DTH + Aircel |
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DoT freezes unified access applications - Following a spate of new applicants for licences to start telecom services, the department of telecommunications (DoT) on Monday put a freeze on new unified access service (UAS) licence applications from October 1 until further orders.
Aircel to invest $2.5bn for pan-India roll out - Aircel will invest US$2.5bn to have a presence in all the 23 telecom circles by 2009. Currently Aircel is present in 9 circles and has already received the licence to operate in another 14 circles. The roll-out, however, will depend on the allocation of spectrum by Department of Telecommunication (DOT).
Bharti Airtel gets DTH licence; to invest Rs1500m in Phase I - Bharti Airtel has received a licence to start DTH services and announced an investment of Rs1500m in the first phase to launch nation-wide operations. |
| Published on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 12:35 PM |
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| Monday, September 24, 2007 |
| JANET chooses VSNL's Global Bandwidth |
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 If Google is planning to lay its own optical fibre network on the Trans-Pacific route, UK's network for research and education, JANET has chosen VSNL for its high bandwidth global internet access across the UK.
JANET connects the UK's universities, FE colleges, research councils, specialist colleges and adult and community learning providers to each other as well as to the rest of the world through links to the global internet. The company will be providing an aggregate capacity of 40 Gbps via four OC192 ports from two diverse locations in London as part of a multiple year agreement.
The VSNL global IP network touts 700 Gbps of high-speed OC-192/STM-64 IP backbone capacity throughout North America, Europe, Middle East, South Africa and Asia. It offers land, sea & sky internet connectivity to customers spanning across 5 continents and over 195 countries, carrying more than 380 petabits of traffic globally per month. |
| Published on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 3:29 PM |
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| Wednesday, September 19, 2007 |
| Reliance Comm's unit ties up with Vanco |
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FLAG Telecom, a unit of India's Reliance Communications, had signed a deal with UK-based Vanco Plc that will help the Indian firm expand its virtual private network services and add enterprise customers.
The five-year agreement will add 81 countries to FLAG's VPN network, taking the number to more than 100. However the company has not disclosed the financial terms of the agreement.
Allen Timpany, chief executive of Vanco, said,
Our customers will benefit from FLAG's strong coverage, especially into India and the Middle East, which are among the fastest growing markets in the world. Vanco Plc is a virtual network operator which does not own telecoms assets but sources infrastructure from carriers. |
| Published on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:34 AM |
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| Saturday, September 08, 2007 |
| Essar-BPL Telecom Play + BSNL Expansion |
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 Ruia brothers of Essar are one of the most hostile business partners one can find in India [Modi's of Spice Telecom rank higher in the worst business partners in India]. They have stuck a deal with Vodafone to safeguard their stake in Hutch-Essar a.k.a Vodafone Essar by getting a price marginally higher [in the worst case] than what Hutch got in the Vodafone-Hutch deal.
Now the prank Ruias are playing is, they hold 9.9% direct stake in BPL Mobile of Mumbai and controlling stake through various investment and Benami companies; using BPL Mobile, they have applied for PAN India GSM license. The only solution to discourage non-serious applicants is to auction the spectrum through which Government will make more money.
BSNL, troubled state owned telco has announced expansion plans which is hard to believe. They want to add 500,000 broadband subscribers every month starting from Jan-2008. In April-2007, India had mere 2.05 Million broadband subscribers, and BSNL wants to add 500,000 every month. Whom are they kidding with ???
BSNL also plans to offer Internet Telephony to its subscribers like MTNL in Delhi and Mumbai. BSNL's GSM mobile services expansion is the only place where they may taste some success as Ericsson has accepted the revised bid. BSNL unfotunately has arrogant employees with really no sense on how to talk to customers / potential customers. |
| Published on Saturday, September 08, 2007 at 8:50 AM |
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| Wednesday, September 05, 2007 |
| Reliance Optical Fibre + Next generation Networks. |
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 A year after relinquishing Reliance Infocomm, Mukesh Ambani is planning yet another extremely high capacity Optical Fiber network connecting India's best states for business - Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The real purpose of this network is to lease the back end infrastructure to ISPs and Telecom Service Providers. As reported by some section of the newspaper, it is untrue that RIL wants to compete with RCom. RIL is just cashing in on the synergies. RIL is laying a massive Gas pipeline in the above said states and along the pipelines they have planned optical cables. This will help RIL network its Retail Operations as well. Earlier Mukesh Ambani was looking for all India Wi-Max Spectrum to link his Retail outlets.
In a separate development, Anil Ambani managed Reliance Communications which has set goals to become one of the Top-5 Telecom companies in the world, awarded a $1.5 Billion tender to Fujitsu to build Next Generation Optical Network connecting Mediterranean, East Africa, Asia and Pacific region. Rcom's Flag Telecom already owns the largest undersea optical network in the world. |
| Published on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 1:16 PM |
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| Saturday, September 01, 2007 |
| Why Consumers hate TRAI and NDNC Registry ? |
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 The Indian Government represented by TRAI has for sure heard the voice of Indian consumer, but in vain. TRAI recommended setting up the NDNC registry with laid back attitude. Why ? Because as a telecom subscriber, I have to register with my respective service provider rather then registering at NDNC Registry. Telemarketers register with NDNRegistry, quote their registration number and then access the data at respective Telecom companies.
Most Indian consumers wanted to register at NDNCRegistry and not with their service providers. Registering with Reliance Mobile has been a pain as reported by some users so also Telcom companies state that it may take few weeks before they are actually included in the Do Not Call list. Here are some feedback from consumers,
Hi,
It’s wonderful to have such site so that customers can register their phone number not to disturb. Tele marketing keep on increasing day by day and its painful to register against each and every company and this site may not cover all the companies. Is there any possibility in future to have one centralized database for this registry and individual companies in turn take feed from this central repository. This will reduce pain for individual end customers.
Thanks
Raju
A person should be required to register only at one place and DND service should be active for all tele marketing companies. Registering with individual companies is next to impossible
Regards
Sanjeev Singhal It seems to us that TRAI didn't want to develop and maintain such a huge and sensitive database but rather pose as a regulator. |
| Published on Saturday, September 01, 2007 at 2:03 PM |
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