The investment limit for news and current affairs TV channels has been retained at 26 per cent.
Odisha had 9,940 villages without mobile services, while 6,117 villages in Maharashtra and 5,558 villages in Madhya Pradesh did not have mobile services, the data showed.
The country added a whopping 52.21 million mobile users during the quarter ended September 30, 2010, taking the wireless subscriber base to 687.71 million.
With the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) directive for operators offering digital television services to allow consumers to select and pay subscription for channels they choose to watch, instead of offering only bundled packages, direct-to-home (DTH) service companies have begun rolling out the services.
Identifies spectrum for 4G services; eight companies to be accommodated; discussion paper to be out by August and recommendations by October.
A department of telecommunication official said the regulator has already put questions relating to uniform licence fee to the stakeholder in its consultation paper 'Overall Spectrum Management and Review of License Terms and Conditions'.
Telecom minister A Raja on Tuesday said he followed the same procedures as his predecessors in awarding licences and allotting spectrum and decisions were taken in conformity with the opinion of the top law officer.
A former chairman of TRAI on Friday told the JPC probing the 2G spectrum scam that the then NDA government did not seek the opinion of the telecom regulator on the issue of allocating "excess spectrum" to some private companies in 2002.
Trai on Monday put forward a consultation paper seeking views from the industry and experts on issues like permitting the internet service providers to have interconnection with landline and mobile telephones to provide internet telephony within the country. According to the existing licensing provisions, there is no restriction on international PC-to-PC calls through internet telephony.
With already around 500 television channels on air, the ministry is now concerned about streamlining the process of allowing the opening of new channels.
The trio has been voicing their criticism of Trai's recommendations and have asked the government to dump the report, which according to them are 'retrograde' and 'absurd'.
VAS operators constantly complain that as they provide features, content and a wide range of services like ringer tunes to mobile operators for their customers in the absence of a proper regulatory structure, they don't get adequate financial returns from telcos.
Even as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is being criticised for the steep reserve price it has set for 2G spectrum auctions in the 1,800 MHz band, the government may be able to garner only Rs 18,000-20,000 crore (Rs 180-200 billion) in 2012-13, just about half the target of Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion).
The Department of Telecommunications has mooted a proposal for increasing additional spectrum charges and has also suggested slashing of one-time fixed spectrum charges.
As per the service licence, three types of charges, including Per Port Transaction charge, which means the charge payable by the Recipient Operator (the operator, where the subscriber is willing to port his number) to the MNP service provider for processing the request, are applicable in case of MNP. The second charge is porting charge -- the charge payable by the subscriber for porting his number -- and the third is dipping charge.
In an interim order on Monday, the Supreme Court directed that Direct-to-Home (DTH) operators may charge no more than 42 per cent of the rates paid by cable operators for TV channels.
In a definite signal that mobile phone service providers are not going to lose their licences even after the scheduled end of their validity, the Department of Telecommunications has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to recommend terms and conditions for extending the licence periods forever.
Mobile phone companies wish to curtail toll-free calls from customers. According to a proposal being evaluated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), calls made by customers to the phone company, other than complaints, will have to be charged.
Besides Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel) and Anil Ambani (Reliance Communications), Sarma has written to Sanjeev Aga of Idea, Anil Sardana of TTSL, Marten Pieters of Vodafone, Kuldip Singh of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and Kuldeep Goyal of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited.
Trai's pre-consultation paper comes at a time when the government is yet to fix a deadline for auctioning spectrum for the third generation mobile services.
The fourth generation or 4G technology offers download at faster speed known as ultra-broadband and high definition video on demand among other such services.
According to data released by the telecom regulator, the wireless subscriber base increased from 635.51 million in June to 652.42 million by the end of July, 2010, registering a growth of 2.66 per cent.
At present, there is no such system to know if the customer's complaint has been addressed or not, if not why, once a user lodges complaint with a service provider on any issues ranging from billing to quality of service. It is left to the telcos to look at complaints and act on it and sometimes there are long-pending complaints which go unadressed for a long time or not looked into at all and the customers become helpless and stop pursuing the solution.
The telecommunications industry in India is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. The booming telecom industry has been attracting large amount of investments in the country.
While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has approved the access of TV on mobiles, service providers still cannot stream live TV channels on to the handset due to spectrum allocation from the Ministry of Information and Broadcast. However, since the regulations do not allow a direct transmission of TV channels, service providers as well as content providers have started using a technology called Unicast which provides content to end-user on a one-on-one basis.
In its recommendations to the government, Trai said the provision of calling cards would allow consumer to exercise choice of long distance operator for the national and international calls. The authority has, therefore, recommended amendment of NLD/ILD operators licence conditions to allow them to access customers directly for national and international long distance calls, respectively.
The telecom regulator in the second ultimatum to GSM operators, including Bharti, Vodafone and BSNL, has given August 21 as the deadline to give interconnections to the RCom GSM network. Trai has cited it as a licencing condition to provide interconnection among the service provider implying if a mobile operator does not give interconnection to another based on mutual commercial agreement, it is a violation of license condition attracting penalty.
As per the Trai recommendations, the STD service providers would be connected to ISPs through public internet for the purpose and the two service providers would have mutual agreement for the same. The move will permit calls from personal computers to fixed line and mobile phones. Currently, a voice call can travel between two computers but not from a mobile or a fixed phone.
In a development that has huge financial implications for existing as well as new operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended fixing the price for 6.2 Mhz of pan-India start-up 2G spectrum at Rs 10,972.45 crore (Rs 109.724 billion), more than six times the present cost of Rs 1,658 crore (Rs 16.58 billion).
According to the data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, wireless subscriber base (GSM, CDMA and fixed wireless phones) rose to 635.51 million by the end of June from 617.53 million in May, registering a growth of 2.91 per cent.
Mobile telephone subscribers would have to wait a little longer to change their service provider without changing their numbers.
Telecom minister A Raja had said that mobile tariffs should come down to 10 paise for local calls and for 25 paise STD calls per minute.
Demanding a level playing field for the old operators, Bharti group chief Sunil Mittal told PTI: 'our view is that the spectrum given to us and other operators from time to time is under a policy and there is no question of any additional payment for this.'
The books of these companies had come under a cloud after it was alleged that many of them had not been paying the goverment's share of revenue by showing the revenue earned under other categories. Under a suggestion of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, a special audit of all the integrated telecom companies will be undertaken once in 3-5 years.
According to data released by the telecom regulator, the wireless subscriber base increased from 601.22 million in April to 617.53 million by the end of May 2010, registering a growth of 2.71 per cent.
SMS messages can be easily wiretapped from outside the network operator's environment using equipment available in the black market.
The decision had been communicated to the department of telecommunications, a senior official of the department told Business Standard.
Trai has fixed a minimum 'contention ratio number' of users who can share the same bandwidth. Earlier, there was no such restriction on operators and they were offering the service at a contention ratio of 1:80 to 1:100 (which means the same bandwidth would be used by 80 to 100 customers). Under the new guidelines, the contention ratio for broadband at home has been fixed at 1:50 and for business at 1:30.
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday sent notices to former telecom minister A Raja and corporate lobbyist Niira Radia asking them to appear before the agency for questioning while grilling former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chief Pradip Baijal in connection with the 2G spectrum scam.
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