Inching towards the 50 million mark, the GSM subscriber base in India touched 44.92 million in June, 2005 adding 1.57 million users with telecom operator Bharti enjoying a market share of over 27 per cent.
The Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) upholds government's decision on dual technology for RCom.
This could be a setback to the Home Ministry's plans to secure the country against any misuse of its vast telecommunication network by terrorists.
The mobile phone user base in the country has crossed the 33 million mark at the end of the last fiscal with Reliance topping the list with over 7.2 million followed by Bharti with 6.5 million users.
Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has signed an agreement with Hutchison India for supplying GSM equipment to its nine of the 13 circles.
The GSM operators have asked the government to remove Permanent Account Number (PAN) as a requirement to acquire mobile connection to increase tele-density in the rural areas and also sought rationalisation of multiple taxes and duties in the sector.
Indian mobile handset market was worth Rs 8,805 crore (Rs 88.05 billion) in 2004-05 out of which share of GSM handset was 84 per cent at Rs 7,384 crore (Rs 73.84 billion) with Nokia capturing a sizable chunk of marketshare at 62.3 per cent.
Currently, subscribers pay 50-60p for an SMS. By comparison, Tata Teleservices charges a paisa per word, for up to 15 characters.
Mobile user base, both GSM and CDMA, went up to 3.4 crore during April this year with GSM based cellular operators capturing 2.71 crore subscribers and CDMA based operators like Reliance and Tatas 74.16 lakh.
It offers a discount of up to 96 per cent on data and and up to 92 per cent on call charges.
The initial euphoria over reduction in mobile termination charges (MTC) seems to be dying down, with telecom service providers now alleging that the process is completely "flawed".
Its says reconsider lower reserve price, uniform usage charges; GSM players to bear the brunt.
Buoyed by the entry of new telecom players and entry of Reliance Communications in the GSM space, the Indian telecom industry clocked the highest subscriber-addition in a month, by adding 15.87 million subscribers in March 2009.
The government has held back allocating additional spectrum to Bharti Airtel in Orissa, in view of the telecom tribunal's recent judgment that GSM operators have no vested right to get airwaves beyond 6.2 MHz.
According to the figures released by industry, GSM operators added 7.69 million new subscribers, while CDMA operators added 2.34 million new users taking the total mobile subscriber base to 310 million. Out of the 310 million, GSM subscriber base stood at 233 million, with a market share of 75 per cent.
The US company will provide equipments for BSNL's network expansion in southern India aimed at adding 2.3 million subscribers in the region, it said in a statement. Under the terms of the contract, Motorola will ship GSM network equipment and provide a network services programme, including both software and hardware support, the statement added.
According to a company statement, IOL Netcom will also introduce a variety of value added services. IOL Netcom's CDMA mobile services will offer multi-play services, comprising mobile, data card, desktop CDMA phone, IPTV and broadband services, among others.
The government has prohibited imports of all kind of mobile handsets with fake or duplicate unique identity numbers, a move that will help security agencies in tracking callers using different SIM cards.
The government on Tuesday started allocating GSM spectrum to new telecom players, commencing with the Tamil Nadu circle including Chennai, in a move that would infuse more competition in the mobile telephony space.Five new players -- Videocon-promoted Datacom, Idea Cellular, realty major Unitech, Swan Telecom and Loop Telecom -- have been given start-up 4.4 MHz GSM spectrum in Tamil Nadu circle.
The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal will hear the petition, asking for a stay against the government order permitting crossover allotment, on Wednesday. In its petition, the COAI has said the DoT's decision has been taken with 'unseemly' haste to benefit a few operators that have made a 'backdoor entry' on the basis of 'invalid applications' given in February 2006.
On receiving the award at a glittering function, Mittal said: "This is a tremendous honour and I would like to thank the GSM Association for considering me worthy of this award."
RCom had recently received spectrum in 13 circles under the new cross over technology policy, in which a code division multiple access operator can also operate GSM services with the same licence. IT operates GSM in the remaining circles.
Tata Teleservices has accused Trai of favouring the GSM players in spectrum allocation.
GSM service provider Idea Cellular will invest an additional $400 million (Rs 1,600 crore) for rolling out telecom services in four new circles - Mumbai, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Orissa - for which it has received spectrum from the Department of Telecommunications.
The government on Wednesday accepted spectrum review committee's recommendation of allocating additional frequency to existing GSM operators based on TRAI's subscriber linked formula and in multiples of 1 MHz.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has received permission to offer CDMA services across the country (except Delhi and Mumbai) under the crossover technology policy. Under the policy, existing GSM operators are allowed to offer CDMA service and vice versa within the same licence after paying a fee.BSNL is the third company after Reliance Communications (which is in CDMA and wanted to operate GSM service) and Tata Teleservices (similar to Reliance) which has been given licences
Corporate giant Tatas on Tuesday asked the government to seek surrender of excess spectrum lying with GSM operators, a line being aggressively pursued by Reliance Communications chief Anil Ambani. With this, the top two CDMA players have joined forces against GSM operators like Bharti and Vodafone to seek return of spectrum beyond the contractual amount of 6.2 Mhz.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications on Saturday reacted sharply to rival Bharti Airtel's statement that others have equal opportunity to succeed, saying "if Bharti honestly believes in competition, it should welcome entry of RCom and other new players in GSM" segment.
Virtually bringing the entire industry into the picture, telecom tribunal TDSAT on Monday directed Reliance Communications, HFCL, Shyam Telelinks, BSNL and MTNL to become a party to a petition challenging changes to spectrum allocation norms among others.
The operators say that the move to have an India-specific standard will raise the costs not only of telecom networks but of chipsets for mobile devices because they will have to be made for the local market and, as such, will not enjoy global economies of scale.
Tensions between private telecom players and the government ratcheted up a notch after it was discovered that state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was given additional spectrum of up to 10 MHz for GSM technology services in over 16 circles even as private competitors have been waiting to be allotted spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications since December 2006.
Delhi HC has refused to stay the process of spectrum allotment to RCom, giving a major setback to GSM operators.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications, which offers GSM and CDMA mobile services, said it added 1.62 million new mobile users in March.A company official said the net additions from January to March this year stood at 4.83 million. RCom, the country's largest CDMA operator, added 1.6 million mobile users each for the first two months.
Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Authority had on December 12 refused to stay the government's process of awarding new licences and allocating airwaves to mobile firms, a decision which existing GSM players say would hurt them Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular are the major GSM players in Cellular Operators Association of India, but it is learnt that there is no consensus within the lobby group over moving the high court.
In his third letter in the last one month to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani has lambasted GSM operators.
Communications Minister A Raja, who has been facing a lot of flak from GSM-based mobile firms on new spectrum allocation norms, received support from an unlikely quarter on Tuesday -- the former head of GSM lobby and fellow M P Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Once a strong advocate of auctioning spectrum, Chandrasekhar extended his support to the policy of allocating spectrum to all on equitable basis.
GSM operators lobby COAI has already challenged the norms announced by Department of Telecom on October 19, which include allowing dual technology for mobile services and enhanced subscriber-linked criteria for spectrum allocation. In view of protests by GSM operators, the Centre had asked Telecom Engineering Centre, the technical wing of DoT, to study the norms as suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
Reliance Telecom and Bharti Airtel have entered the second round of qualifying process for a GSM-based mobile license in Qatar that the Gulf country plans to award by October this year.
Bharti Airtel on Monday announced a tie-up with US-based Apple Inc to bring the popular GSM-based iPhone in the country.
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