The roll-out plans of new mobile players could be dampened with some of the existing pan-Indian operators demanding higher rates for providing interconnection.
This includes higher termination rates (levied for ending calls from a new operator’s subscriber to an incumbent player’s network) and port charges (for accepting traffic from a new player to an existing network).
Incumbent operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are at an advantageous position because they have a large subscriber base and, therefore, it is necessary for the new players to interconnect. If the new operators do not interconnect with them then their subscribers will not be able to call users on the incumbent player’s network.
“The interconnection charges being imposed by the existing players are based on the telecom regulator’s order issued…
Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel will launch operations in Sri Lanka in December, a top official announced on Monday.
“We will roll out the services next month as all formalities are done and issues relating to inter-connectivity have been sorted out,” Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman and managing director Rajan Mittal told reporters in New Delhi.
The telecom giant had been facing problems of inter-connection, with local carriers not willing to give inter-connections to the company.
Source: Hindustan Times, Nov 04
Tags: Bharti Airtel, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Bharti Enterprises, Bharti Enterprises Ltd, Delhi, Hindustan Times, India, New Delhi, Rajan Mittal, Sri Lanka, telecom operator.
Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday launched a Rs 200-crore (about US$ 40 million) innovation fund for promoting entrepreneurship in the telecom sector.
The objective of the fund is to provide opportunities to the entrepreneurs to undertake innovation in the field of telecom with regard to content, software and technologies, Bharti Airtel Joint MD and CEO Manoj Kohli told reporters.
This is the first ever telecom innovation fund in the country, he said.
Source: The Economics Times
Telecom major Bharti Airtel today said the company hopes to start operations in Sri Lanka within this calendar year, despite the delay in getting interconnection from the local operators there.
“Discussions are going on with the Sri Lankan telecom regulator and the existing operators there relating to the interconnection issue. It should be sorted out shortly,” company’s CEO Manoj Kohli told reporters here.
“We should be in a position to start our operations there before 2008. It is as per our schedule,” he said.
Earlier a Senior Executive of Bharti Airtel, Sanjay Kapoor said the incumbent operators in Lanka are not giving interconnections to the company, which is anticompetitive in nature.
Responding to that four Sri Lankan operators had issued a joint statement yesterday terming Bharti’s allegations as false.
The…
Indian mobile telecoms firms added 9.2 million users in July, taking subscribers in the world’s fastest growing wireless market to nearly 300 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said on Monday.
Leading mobile firm Bharti Airtel signed up 2.7 million customers, enough for it to overtake state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as India’s largest telecom firm by total subscribers, including fixed-line subscribers.
Second-ranked mobile firm Reliance Communications added 1.75 million customers, and No. 3 Vodafone Essar, controlled by Britain’s Vodafone Plc, added 1.76 million.
India is the world’s fastest-growing market for wireless services and the second-largest market for such services after China, with growth fuelled by cheap handsets and call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute.
See the full story in Reuters here.
…
Tags: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Bharti Airtel, Britain, China, India, Reliance Communications, Reuters, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, United States, Vodafone Plc, wireless market, WIRELESS SERVICES.
It would be the biggest thing to pass between India and South Africa since Mahatma Gandhi moved from one country to the other. This week it emerged that Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile-phone operator in India, is holding “exploratory” talks to buy South Africa’s MTN, the biggest operator in Africa.
According to the Financial Times, Bharti has indicated it would be willing to pay about $19 billion for 51% of the company. That would make it the heftiest overseas acquisition ever made by an Indian firm, more than Tata Steel paid for Corus, a British steelmaker, and seven times the amount India invested in the whole of Africa over the ten years to 2004.
The deal would unite the leading companies in the world’s two most promising…
Tags: Acquisition, Africa, Bharti Airtel, Corus, Gartner, India, mobile-phone operator, MTN, South Africa, Tata Steel, the Financial Times, USD.
India’s Bharti Airtel, China Mobile and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia are UBS’s top three telecom investment picks in Asia for 2008, as their home markets enjoy strong growth rates.
“Growth features such as rising consumption, elasticity of demand and economies of scale will continue to be the main themes for the growth markets, including China, India and Indonesia, which are still under-appreciated by investors, in our view,” UBS said in a report.
India and China, the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets, added around 8 million mobile phone subscribers in October, taking their user base to approximately 217 million and 531 million, respectively.
Read the full story in Forbes.com
Telecoms in India | Full-spectrum dominance | Economist.com
The operators added more than 8m mobile-phone subscribers in October, bringing the total to over 217m. India has met its ambitious target, set two years ago, of 250m fixed and mobile-phone connections. But the government is sadly unprepared. It has not given India’s mobile operators enough space on the radio spectrum to carry calls crisply and reliably. India, the operators complain, faces a “spectrum crunch”.
In November Sunil Mittal, the chairman of Bharti Airtel, wrote to India’s telecoms secretary describing the “extreme anguish” caused by the “pitiful” amounts of spectrum granted to operators using GSM technology, the dominant standard that is used by three-quarters of Indian subscribers. The government had said it would provide extra spectrum to firms once…
In yet another blow to the existing GSM operators, the Communication Ministry has decided to auction spectrum for third generation (3G) mobile services and wireless broadband services through technologies such as Wi-Max.
The auction will be open to new companies wanting to foray into the telecom sector as well as established foreign telecom players. The existing operators had wanted the auction for 3G services to be limited to the licence holders.
The Ministry’s decision to open up the bidding to all players is also a move away from the telecom regulator’s recommendations that it be restricted to existing operators. The move gives a chance to the likes of Deutsche Telecom, AT&T and new Indian players such as Unitech and Hindujas, which may not get spectrum in the…
Tags: 2G services, 3G, 3G services, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Communication Ministry, Deutsche Telecom, GSM, Vodafone Essar, wireless broadband, wireless broadband services.
Reliance Communications took the competition in domestic telecom head-on as it reported operating margins similar to bigger rival Bharti Airtel in the July-September quarter. RCom’s robust performance was aided by higher growth in its wireless and broadband services along with increased operating efficiency.
Net profit has surged 86% to Rs 1,305 crore (USD 330 mil) year-on-year backed by 30% rise in sales to Rs 4,579 crore (USD 1,166 mil). Operating profit has grown 46% while revenue from wireless business grew 45% and the broadband segment 61%.
Read the full story in ‘The Economic Times’
Meanwhile India’s largest wireless operator Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced a 73% increase in second quarter net profit at Rs 1,617 crore (USD 412 mil) , compared to Rs 934 crore (USD 238 mil) for the quarter ended…
Foreign telecom investors, who hold significant stake in India telecom companies, are exploring the possibility of joining hands and initiating an arbitration proceeding against the government of India and department of telecom (DoT) in foreign courts against the new telecom policy.
The move comes as some of the foreign investors say the that the new policy announced last week, which allows dual technology “favoured only CDMA players, especially, Reliance Communications”. Besides, the new policy has also enhanced subscriber-linked criterion for spectrum allocation by multiple times - this implies, operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular cannot get additional spectrum in their existing circles unless they increase their subscriber base between two-six times, a process that will take anywhere between 18-48 months. This has also led…
Mobile phones are about to become the simplest and quickest way to transfer money across borders, under a deal announced yesterday by Western Union and GSM Association, the main mobile phone operators’ body.
The agreement could have a big impact on global cross-border remittances, worth an estimated $500bn a year, and provide a springboard for mobile carriers and Western Union to offer other mobile banking services using “mobile wallet” technology. Cross-border money transfers valued at up to $100 in countries such as India, the Philippines, Mexico and China - which have large volumes of remittances from migrant workers - will be an early priority of the deal.
Thirty-five mobile operators with 800m customers in more than 100 countries have signed up to take part in the GSMA…
Tags: Bharti Airtel, cellular telephone, China, GSM Association, India, Mexico, Mobile banking, Mobile banking services, mobile phones, Sunil Mittal, the Philippines, USD, Western Union.
Today, at a ceremony to sign a large number of investment agreements at the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, it was revealed that Bharti Airtel, Sri Lanka’s fifth mobile operator, is planning to invest USD 150 million. This amount is below industry expectations and suggests that Bharti will start slow, with a conventional rollout concentrated in the Northwestern, Western and Southern provinces.
Pity.
Sri Lanka: Cutting it
Mobile phone use is taking off in Sri Lanka – though not, perhaps, in ways that service operators might have hoped.
FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT
In the world’s poorer countries, the purchase of a mobile phone has become increasingly affordable. Using it, however, can still be a struggle. Low-income mobile phone owners in Sri Lanka are getting around this problem with a novel method for keeping costs down.
Known as ring cutting, mobile phone subscribers rely on ring tones to communicate with others, rather than actually staying on the line to talk. By a pre-arranged signal that will convey the desired message – “two rings means I’m home” – callers negate the need for a conversation. They simply hang up as soon as the…
Tags: Anuradhapura, Bharti Airtel, CDMA, CDMA technology, cellular services, cellular telephone, cheaper technology, Colombo, e-village, electricity supply, GSM, Harsha de Silva, Horizon Lanka Foundation, India, Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri, INTELLIGENCE UNIT
Sri Lanka, Internet Telephony, IP telephony, mobile phone networks, outdoor wireless computer network, Pakistan, rupee, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, telecommunications infrastructure, Thailand, the Philippines, United States, USD, Vilpattu jungle, wired network, workable solution.
Sri Lanka’s telecom sector soared in 2006 to 7.3 million users, led by a 59% jump in new mobile phone connections on competition and falling call rates, an AFP report said.
Quoting the industry watchdog Sri Lanka Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the AFP report said despite a waiting list of around 366,000 for fixed-line phone services, mobile phones, including GSM and CDMA systems, had allowed rural residents to get phone services immediately.
The AFP report further said fixed-line subscribers rose to 1.9 million in 2006 from 1.2 million a year ago after the commission gave CDMA licenses allowing three firms to use the cheaper technology and expand in rural areas.
The number of cellular phone users grew to 5.4 million in 2006 from 3.4 million a year earlier, as…
Tags: Bharti Airtel, CDMA, CDMA systems, cellular telephone, cheaper technology, fixed-line phone services, GSM, India, mobile phones, phone services, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, USD.
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