A committee headed by Sam Pitroda, advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, suggested that state-run telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd scrap its controversial 93-million GSM lines tender.The committee said BSNL should change its method of growth from outright purchase of equipment to lease arrangement. The vendor who would supply the equipment should be responsible for installation, maintenance and operations, besides future expansion.
Sunil Mittal opined that all new GSM players will lose out in 3 years and Vodafone almost echoed this view.
In a desperate attempt to grab spectrum and start operations in new circles ahead of rivals, leading GSM operators have informed the government that they are willing to start services with less than 4.4 MHz spectrum. Vodafone Essar has intimated its willingness to start operations in new circles where the availability of spectrum is less than 4.4 MHz.
The deal will be limited to 2G lines only.
State-run BSNL has convened its board meeting on Monday to review the 18.5-billion-dollar GSM tender for expanding its mobile network.
The total subscriber base crosses 115 million mark.
According to sources, Idea Cellular has agreed to provide interconnection to RCom thereby not becoming a part of Cellular Operators' Association of India's likely petition against Trai's directive on the same. Besides, other operators to provide interconnectivity to RCom GSM network are Aircel and Spice Communication.
GSM operators added 8.89 million subscribers in June, taking the total number of subscribers using the technology to 315.8 million.
Firming up its plans to rollout 3G services in the country, Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications (RCom) is planning to overlay a 3G infrastructure on its nationwide GSM network.
As the reports trickled that the permission for the use of twin-technology would benefit the aspiring Reliance Communication, an Anil Ambani group company, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) shot a letter to the government saying that such a permission was against the existing policy and is tantamount to favouring a few.
According to figures released by Cellular Operators Association of India today, Bharti Airtel maintained its leadership position with a market share of 31.88 per cent although its net subscriber additions during the month declined marginally at 2.03 million, against 2.06 million in September. The company has a total subscriber base of 50.90 million across the country.
The GSM-based mobile subscriber base has gone up by 994,000 in April at 2.71 crore (27.1 million) customers with the Bharti Group cornering almost one-fourth of the market with 67.58 lakh (6.76 million) customers.
Delhi high court had last week stayed BSNL to award the contract till the next hearing, but had allowed the public sector company to continue with the evaluation process.
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd will soon expand its network by an additional 4 lakh GSM lines. The company has awarded a contract for this purpose to US-based telecom equipment vendor Motorola.
Decision against panel's suggestion.
The company plans to leverage its tie-up with NTT DoComo to offer many value-added services.
The dry-run for roll-out of 3G mobile services is finally taking off, as the government has provided low-power spectrum to GSM players like BSNL, MTNL, Bharti and Hutch to carry out interface check on a non-commercial basis.
Cabinet defers decision on fee for additional spectrum with CDMA players.
Leading GSM service provider Hutch would roll out its services in West Bengal and Sikkim by the end of the current year, executive director of Hutchison Essar Sandip Das said in Kapurthala on Thursday.
Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel maintained the top slot with a market share of 32.18 per cent and a total user base of 57.41 million. The company added 2.25 million users in January, up from 2.2 million added in December. COAI did not provide subscriber numbers of Reliance Communications, even though the CDMA major has GSM operations in the country's north-eastern circles.
If BSNL were to take the minister's advice, the public sector company may have to reconsider disqualification of US equipment supplier Motorola and its Chinese partner ZTE from the tender -- a quarter of which was for rolling out 3G lines.
The company's new chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal also said BSNL generated a revenue of around Rs 39,715 crore (Rs 397.15 billion) and net profit of about Rs 7,806 crore (Rs 78.06 billion) in 2006-07.
With seven million new subscribers, India accounted for the highest net addition of mobile subscriptions globally in the second quarter of 2023, according to the August edition of Ericsson Mobility. Among national markets, India was followed by China with five million and the US with three million subscribers. The subscriber penetration in India, however, stood at 79 per cent, compared to 120 per cent in China, the report said.
Apple will launch three new watches this year, including the Apple Watch 8, an updated SE, and a tough Pro watch, according to Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman. According to reports by GSM Arena, the Apple Watch Pro has the first fresh look since 2018. However, it won't be all that novel because it will maintain its rectangular shape (rather than changing to a circular one) and won't have flat edges as some speculations claimed.
Mustafa-Ibn-Jameel, a 27-year-old calligrapher from Kashmir, broke the world record by writing the Quran on a 500-metre scroll.
Market leader Bharti Airtel added the maximum 17.22 lakh (1.72 million) new users during the month to take its base to 19.65 crore (196.5 million) at the end of November.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, whose earlier 45.5 million GSM line tender was cut to half, will invite fresh bids for installing up to 50 million lines to expand its cellular capacity.
Reliance Jio has suggested an alternative plan to the The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) under which spectrum required by non-geostationary orbit satellite (NGSO) operators to run their gateway terminals should be auctioned geographically, based on districts, rather than circles as done for mobile services. For spectrum which would be required to connect user terminals (like individual homes), Jio has suggested it should be auctioned frequency-wise and exclusively to an operator at a pan-India level. The move is significant as the auctioning of satellite space spectrum has been vehemently opposed by low earth orbit satellite operators (satellites which circle at low altitudes of 200-2000 km).
The officials said Pakistani intelligence operatives have adopted the modus operandi of investing in illegal call exchanges that switch Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls to normal Indian mobile calls.
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd is preparing to apply for permission to set up a nation-wide broadband telecom network for internal (non-commercial) use.
The country's two top telcos, Reliance Jio and Airtel, are working overnight to undertake one of the fastest global roll-outs of 5G services in any country just a month down the line. India might be late in the game (already 70 countries have some kind of 5G and there are 698 million 5G subscribers across the world), but it's moving at breakneck speed. In his speech at the Reliance Industries AGM, Mukesh Ambani unveiled his plan to roll out the fastest 5G network in the world, starting from four metros in October but hitting every town taluka and tehsil - there are some 5,600 of them - in the country in 18 months.
BSNL, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications, who also provide GSM technology-based services, are not part of the report.
The attack reflects the open schism in the association, in which TTSL is a new member with other Unified Access Service Licence holders such as Loop Telecom , Etilasat DB, Uninor and STel. The older, established, operators are represented by Bharti, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular.
The GSM operators decided to withdraw their plea when the TDSAT was about to reserve its order on the maintainability of the petition after hearing the case for more than one-and-a-half hours.
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