In response to the consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday, direct-to-home operators said the proposed interoperability of set-top boxes faced serious limitations.
After the failure of the Do-not-call registry, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India now plans to try out Do-call registry to curb unnecessary telemarketing calls.
The minister said that as committed earlier, the 3G spectrum would be distributed to all successful bidders on September 1 for launching services on commercial basis.
The MNP service was introduced on a pilot basis in Haryana on November 25, 2010 and later rolled out pan-India from January 20 this year.
The Union Cabinet has approved the modalities for holding 5G spectrum auctions, and 72097.85 MHz of radio waves will be put on the block by July-end, an official release said on Wednesday.
Even as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has started investigating into the complaints of predatory pricing offered by some of the new operators, experts are divided over whether the current scenario actually resembles predatory pricing.
Identifies spectrum for 4G services; eight companies to be accommodated; discussion paper to be out by August and recommendations by October.
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.
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.
In a reversal of its recommendations made in April 2008, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India whittled the increase it had suggested then in the foreign direct investment cap for companies set up to uplink television news channels, as well as in FM radio.
The investment limit for news and current affairs TV channels has been retained at 26 per cent.
As the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India deliberates on spectrum and licensing after the hearings ending December 2, some important points are worth highlighting.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has bluntly told the government there is no reason for its members to roll out 5G networks as they will be unviable if 'captive private wireless networks' are allowed to be run by enterprises. The COAI, which has Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as its key members, has written to Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying there is 'no business case for the roll out of 5G networks'. Permitting such captive networks will 'diminish the revenue so much that there will be no viable business case left for the telecom service providers and there will not remain any need for 5G network roll out by telecom service providers (TSPs)'.
The government may relax the Telecom Engineering Centre's recently finalised spectrum allocation criterion, the minimum subscriber limits that entitle mobile service operators to additional spectrum, radio frequencies that enable mobile communications.
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 government is set to participate in the business of television ratings that is primarily meant to guide the broadcasters, the media agencies and the advertisers, to determine their programme scheduling, advertising spends and the placement of the advertisements.
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'.
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.
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'.
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.
With already around 500 television channels on air, the ministry is now concerned about streamlining the process of allowing the opening of new channels.
It emerges that Vi has probably offered good data quality despite being short on spectrum and infrastructure due to its stretched finances. Did the two companies that merged face the heat due to price wars? Probably. Did the government's tough stance in demanding its "due" share of telecom revenues hurt the company? Certainly!
The telecom ministry will set up an intelligence unit and a consumer protection system as part of continuing efforts to tackle the menace of pesky calls as well as to take strict action against financial frauds perpetrated using telecom resources.
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.
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.
Apex telecom industry body COAI has asserted that spectrum pricing should be kept conducive to market conditions as 5G entails upfront capital investments with monetisation spread over a long-haul, and pricing radiowaves high will only push the players up against the wall. The stage is set for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to come out with its recommendations on 5G spectrum pricing and other modalities for upcoming auctions, and the announcement from the sector watchdog is expected anytime now. Norms will also be worked out for new frequencies such as 526-698 MHz and millimetre band, that is 24.25 - 28.5 GHz, in addition to bands such as 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz, 3300-3670 MHz.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The regulator on Thursday asked the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio to withdraw the three-month 'complimentary' offer of unlimited data usage and free calls on payment of a minimum Rs 303.
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.
The Department of Telecommunications has mooted a proposal for increasing additional spectrum charges and has also suggested slashing of one-time fixed spectrum charges.
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).
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.
