Indian Telecom Folder

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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by kshirin »

There was a very brief discussion on the equipment manufacturing side, it is shocking that there is no indigenous company able to hold its own here. I used to think the telecom sector was one of the best in India, it is from the services angle but the hardware part has been completely neglected.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Sudip »

India May Delay Mobile Number Portability Again
The roll-out in India of mobile number portability (MNP) is likely to delay beyond a March 31 deadline, because operators have not yet upgraded their infrastructure, the country's minister of state for communications and IT, Gurudas Kamat, said on Thursday.

MNP will give mobile subscribers the option to retain their mobile numbers even if they change service providers. India had 545 million mobile subscribers at the end of January, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Under guidelines proposed by TRAI, mobile users will be allowed to use the same mobile number even if providers use different mobile technologies like CDMA (code division multiple access) or GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications).

This will be the second time that the roll-out of MNP has been delayed. The service was originally scheduled to be offered in December of last year, starting with four large cities and some key service areas.

Networks in the country have to be ready and tested before the MNP service is implemented, Kamat told the Rajya Sabha, the country's upper house of Parliament. After operators upgrade and test their networks, India's Department of Telecommunications has to carry out an acceptance test across all networks in all the service areas, he added.

All the networks in the country are not likely to be completely ready for MNP by March 31, Kamat said.

The introduction of MNP is expected to increase competition in the Indian mobile services market as new entrants try to attract customers from established players. However, after an initial churn, there will not be significant shifts by subscribers from one operator to another, analysts said.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Ameet »

Reliance Communications crosses 100 million subscribers mark

http://telecomyatra.afaqs.com/news/?sid ... ibers+mark

Reliance Communications has crossed a landmark 100 million wireless subscribers. The only other operator in India to have achieved this milestone is Bharti Airtel, which counted 100 million wireless subscribers in May 2009 and had a wireless subscriber base of more than 121 million at the end of January. During the same month, RCom had 96 million subscribers and Vodafone had 94 million.

RCom has reached the 100 million mark within seven years of first launching its pan India mobile services in 2003. This makes it the fourth operator in the world to serve over 100 million subscribers in a single country.

The operator expanded its customer base from 10 million to 100 million in less than five years and now aims to achieve the next 100 million subscribers within 3 years.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Prem »

http://www.business-bing.com/Thread/view/id-29670
Qualcomm hoarding scarce spectrum in India?
he WiMAX Forum has slammed the US-based chipmaker Qualcomm for attempting to hoard scarce spectrum in India and has accused the corporation of bidding for broadband access frequencies here for experimenting an untested technology. keywords:india scarce spectrum
Guru Longs, what does it mean ?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

The above can be read at

http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=the+wi ... d,8481ceda

How can one "hoard" something that one doesnt currently own? IMHO, a bit premature to make this call. Moreover, given the way spectrum auctions work in India, I doubt if Qualcomm which is a patent generator company and not an operator, will have the deep pockets required to pay off A. Raja, let alone win the auction! :P

As for TD-LTE vs FD-LTE, again too early to make a call... no large scale commercial deployments yet.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by AjayKK »

Taiwanese MediaTek helps desi handset makers push MNCs out of the emerging markets in India

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_de ... ut_1361794
“Of course, we owe a lot of our success to Mediatek,” says Vikas Jain, business director of Micromax, the most successful of the new breed of ‘Mediatek’ phone makers. Jain’s two-year-old Micromax has become theNo. 3 brand in India, pushing back global giants LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. The company hit 1 million unit sales in January this year, cornering nearly 10% of the market.

“There used to be a time when you would have had to get your chipsets from Infineon or Qualcomm. Now we have Mediatek and a large part of their success is because of the ease with which their basic designs can be altered. They give you about 60% of the design and you add another 40% of features, opening up the possibility of innovation at your level,” Jain says.

Today, there are anywhere between 20 and 50 Mediatek-based mobile brands in India, nearly all of them less than 18 months old. Within the desi bunch are two groups — the ones that have a hand in designing the phone and those who purchase handsets manufactured by Chinese companies in bulk.

Core sales come from the so-called ‘B’ and ‘C’ class cities of India. Desi brands couldn’t have timed it better either.

Teledensity in urban areas have neared saturation and in the last year or two, rampant growth has come from the hinterland for all operators.
Have any of you tried the various offerings of these brands, some of which include 2/3 SIMs, analog TV and such ?

Ex: Here is an Olive handset for Rs.4700/- http://www.olivetelecom.in/mobile-phone ... idescreen/

Any reviews ? TIA

While viewing the site , found an AAA battery enabled handset useul in places where power supply is erratic - http://www.olivetelecom.in/mobile-phone ... ry-mobile/
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Akshut »

Few new names are Maxx, Micromax, Karbonn.

Maxx and Karbonn have tied up with IPL, and doing good marketing. Nauseas of hearing "Karbonn Kamal Catch", and "Maxx Mobile Strategic Timeouts". Though I am not sure it will make an impact on the brand conscious youngsters, but the bigger untapped market is there to run after and innovation like AAA batteries, and some cell phone I remember having a whooping 30 day battery backup, will make sure, they get a big share in the market, and keep the profits in the country onlee.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by putnanja »

Security clearance must for foreign telecom equipment
In a bid to make the country's telecom network more secure, the Centre has directed all telecom service providers, both public and private, to get security clearance for procuring telecom equipment or software from foreign vendors.


...
...

Earlier only state-run telecom companies — BSNL and MTNL — had to get clearance, while private operators were doing their own due diligence while ordering equipment from vendors for expanding their network or rolling out services.
However, Indian intelligence agencies have urged the DoT to make security clearances mandatory even for private telecom companies for equipment purchased from foreign vendors.

Expressing concern over many Indian telecom companies procuring large-scale materials from Chinese companies, security agencies warned that it could bring threat to country's security as foreign companies can install spyware enabling other countries to snoop into Indian networks.
...
...
Equipment vendors must transfer technology to Indian manufacturers as it is one of the effective measures to reduce vulnerability in the long run. In case of non-compliance, both vendor and the service provider would be penalised. "Criminal proceedings would also be started in this case," said the direction.

The key directive is that service providers must ensure that their networks are entirely operated and maintained by Indian engineers, with minimal or nil dependence on foreign engineers, the official said.
...
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by arun »

February 2010 was an important month from the standpoint of reaching new landmarks 8) .

During the month teledensity crossed 50% while telephone connections crossed 600 Million.

At the end of February 2010 teledensity stood at 51.05% and telephone connections stood at 600.69 Million.

TRAI Press Release dated March 29, 2010:

Telecom Subscription Data as on 28th February 2010
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vipul »

This month there will be 2 new ones:
Total Wireless connections would cross the 600 Million figure and Vodafone would be the third Operator in India to cross the 100 Million subscribers mark.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Chinmayanand »

arun
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Post by arun »

Vipul wrote:This month there will be 2 new ones:

Total Wireless connections would cross the 600 Million figure and Vodafone would be the third Operator in India to cross the 100 Million subscribers mark.
As you had predicted Vodafone has crossed the 100 Million subscriber mark 8) :

Vodafone Essar crosses 100m users in India

Now to wait for data to shown the total wireless subscriber base alone has crossed 600 Million.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

Anyone have any tidbits on how much money is being bid on the 3G spectrum?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Akshut »

According to news reports, it's around Rs. 35,000 cr..
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Ameet »

3G auction off to cautious start

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/201 ... 070100.htm

India's giant step towards adopting third generation (3G) mobile services got off to a weak start as bidders adopted a ‘wait and wait' strategy on Day 1 of the auction.

After five rounds of bidding during the day, the price for pan India 3G spectrum moved up to Rs 3,913 crore which is 12 per cent higher than the initial base price of Rs 3,500 crore.

At this price, the Government is sure to get revenues of Rs 11, 739 crore from selling three slots of 3G air waves. The bidding will have to get more aggressive over the next few days if the Government wants to meet its target of Rs 35,000 crore.


Little interest in 6 circles

Six circles including West Bengal, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, North-East, and Jammu and Kashmir did not see any increase in base price indicating that the bidders did not show any interest for these regions. All slots in these circles are vacant.

Even in Delhi and Mumbai, the bidding was not as aggressive as was expected. Delhi, which started with a base value of Rs 320 crore, ended Day 1 with the highest bid of all the 22 circles with a price tag of Rs 373.29 crore.

Just 3 in Delhi

But there is zero excess demand from the bidders for Delhi at the end of round five. This means barring three players, all the other bidders in fray have dropped out for the city which was considered to be in demand.

Mumbai is slightly better off with four bidders remaining for three slots. The base price for Mumbai has gone up from Rs 320 crore to Rs 362.66 crore.

The auctioneer has increased the value for the Mumbai circle by one per cent for the sixth round which will start tomorrow.

In Tamil Nadu also, there are four bidders left in the fray. The value of spectrum in Tamil Nadu has gone up from Rs 320 crore to Rs 362.66 crore.

At this rate the final bid price for pan-India spectrum will not go beyond Rs 4,500 crore. This is because the guidelines prohibited entry of new and foreign players which has reduced the level of competition,” said Mr B. K. Syngal, former Chairman, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

In most circles, the number of bidders left in the fray is already equal to the number of slots available.

Re-entry possible

Officials in the Department of Telecom said the auction could pick up pace in the next few days as any bidder can re-enter the fray at any time.

The DoT had earlier expected that the auction will last for at least a week, but the first day's trend indicates that the bidding process may end sooner. “Most bidders could be adopting a ‘wait and watch' policy given that it's only the first day. We could see some activity going forward,” said an analyst. The sixth round will start on Saturday morning.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

At this price, the Government is sure to get revenues of Rs 11, 739 crore from selling three slots of 3G air waves. The bidding will have to get more aggressive over the next few days if the Government wants to meet its target of Rs 35,000 crore.
Actually the above is encouraging and a sign of level headedness. Witness the insane amounts that were spent in the 3G auctions in the UK and US markets. In an age when ARPU (Avg revenue per user, a metric that mobile telcos live and die for) are declining, it will take a lot of time before the telcos recover any money. Governments mint money in these auctions: they get money literally out of the air... It is good to see that the bidding is restrained....
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Abhijeet »

Apparently the current auction is only for "radio airwaves" 3G, and there will be a separate auction for Broadband Wireless Access 3G spectrum. Since 3G is mostly about data anyway, why this difference? Couldn't one of the winners of the radio airwaves auction offer 3G dongles for computers that would provide BWA?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/ ... m-scam.htm

Its a wonder that A. Raja is still a part of the telecom ministry.

Abhijeet:

Technically, 3G = UMTS and HSDPA/HSUPA is the data part of it. It shares the same spectrum as per specs as the "voice" UMTS. This is governed by 3GPP standards. I suspect what you are referring to as Broadband Wireless is really WiMax or 802.16 which can be a different spectrum. This is governed by an IEEE standard.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.16

I am not really clued in to the Indian spectrum scene, so could be mistaken.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Ameet »

India says could reap $10 bln from 3G auction

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... lqQEdVTUYw

India said Wednesday it is likely to earn up to 10 billion dollars from the auction of superfast third-generation (3G) spectrum for mobile phones and broadband services.

The government had budgeted to bring in around 8 billion dollars from the sell-off of 3G airwaves and a follow-on auction of broadband wireless access spectrum, which is now is underway.

More than 50 rounds have been completed in the bidding, in which leading domestic mobile operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications Ltd. and foreign-backed Vodafone Essar are taking part.

The winners will be awarded spectrum in September, which means rollout of 3G services will be possible only by the end of 2010 or early 2011.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

Guys,

So I was thinking on these lines: Given a rural backward village, how would I transform it using technology. Or to rephrase it, how can I make money at the bottom end of the pyramid using latest technology & also raise their living standards.

So, I looked up the internet usage patterns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... rnet_users

China has 28.7% whereas we have only 7%.

My theory is because of lack of English skills, the native language eco system evolved well in China. Since the urban folk are well fluent in English in India, the native language internet did not really take off. Besides we have so much diversity, thats a different matter. So if we are desperately tied to english, then our internet population can never exceed the english speaking population (ie) 150M = 12.5%. If that is the case, then we will be shaded along with the African countries for a long long time.

Image

Blij to discuss how we can overcome this impediment.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Rishirishi »

naren wrote:Guys,

So I was thinking on these lines: Given a rural backward village, how would I transform it using technology. Or to rephrase it, how can I make money at the bottom end of the pyramid using latest technology & also raise their living standards.

So, I looked up the internet usage patterns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... rnet_users

China has 28.7% whereas we have only 7%.

My theory is because of lack of English skills, the native language eco system evolved well in China. Since the urban folk are well fluent in English in India, the native language internet did not really take off. Besides we have so much diversity, thats a different matter. So if we are desperately tied to english, then our internet population can never exceed the english speaking population (ie) 150M = 12.5%. If that is the case, then we will be shaded along with the African countries for a long long time.

Image

Blij to discuss how we can overcome this impediment.
India has way maore English speakers, compared to 'china or japan.It all boils down to economics.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

Rishirishi wrote:India has way maore English speakers, compared to 'china or japan.It all boils down to economics.
True. But my question was how do we raise our %age of internet users to say ~30% like China or Brazil ? Native language internet did not take off in India unlike China, Brazil, Japan etc.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

On second thoughts, moi thinks Panda is cooking up numbers.

Check this:
Internet Users - animation

Internet users - line chart

Increase from 139M in 2006 to 298M in 2008 :eek:. Doesn't sound believable.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hshukla »

Tanaji wrote:The above can be read at

http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=the+wi ... d,8481ceda

How can one "hoard" something that one doesnt currently own?
I will make an attempt to explain.
Some history and context:
The BWA spectrum on auction in India is 2.3GHz spectrum. There are 2 competing technologies for the same [1] Wimax [2] TDD-LTE (2.3GHz is nor suitable for FDD LTE...its some Phy level funda which I donno the details of). Both Wimax and obviously TDD-LTE are TDD(Time Division Duplex) unlike FDD-LTE, where FDD=Frequency Division Duplex.
Now Wimax has been there for past 3-4 years and is commercially deployed in US,Japan,Malaysia,UAE,Saudi Arabia....to name a few [there are more than 56 countries]...btw I am posting using commercially deployed Wimax :) ...but I will try to be as unbiased as possible.

Now TDD-LTE came into play due to China's fetish for having their own technology for everything. When Wimax forum(pushed by Intel) approached China for deploying Wimax their..they asked for a share of patents. Intel being puritan refused since one of the important foundations of Wimax is Open Patent alliance and pull-away from patent grasps of companies like Qualcomm...so things didnt work out.

Next entered Qualcomm pushing for LTE in China. They agreed to China's demands for allowing patent share/owning(dont know the exact business funda) for LTE. But China has another fetish..they want everything TDD. China even tried 3G TDD and failed miserably.
So essentailly TDD LTE has its origins and patents mostly with Chinese companies and Qualcomm.

Now hoarding:
Current status of TDD LTE (unlike FDD LTE) is that vendors are trying to pass a suite of test cases provided by the 3Gpp specs body...forget about having a working device , IOT and commercialization. Qualcomm knows that India is a huge market and Wimax getting India will be a huge huge boost to the money power of Wimax companies...so they come up with a bogey that...we will use the current spectrum for TDD LTE. Now TDD LTE technology is not ready and if Qualcomm gets the spectrum..it will only result in denying any BWA technology from being deployed...thats hoarding of spectrum...being a very precious resource.

Btw now Wimax chips are at a maturity level that they consume lesser power than 3G and give 10times the data speeds.
Tanaji wrote: IMHO, a bit premature to make this call. Moreover, given the way spectrum auctions work in India, I doubt if Qualcomm which is a patent generator company and not an operator, will have the deep pockets required to pay off A. Raja, let alone win the auction! :P
U never know :) . What if bigger guys exhaust there coffers for 3G...then whatever is left for 4G..Qualcomm will be the master(Q is not bidding in 3G spectrum).

Tanaji wrote: As for TD-LTE vs FD-LTE, again too early to make a call... no large scale commercial deployments yet.
Roughly FDD gives lesser latency whereas TDD gives better spectral efficiency. However in Indian context its a moot point since 2.3GHz can only be used for TDD LTE.
FDD LTE could creep in from 3G spectrum re harvesting but I am not aware how much spectrum is available at that level (will be around 700MHz which is very costly and precious spectrum space) in India. FDD LTE will require around 30MHz spectrum for optimal deployment. [5DL 5 UL and 3 sectors each]...btw high datarates talked about FDD LTE are mostly assuming 10MHz DL and 10 MHz UL....so lot of marketing jargons floating around.

phew...one of my longest mails in BR.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hshukla »

naren wrote:Guys,

So I was thinking on these lines: Given a rural backward village, how would I transform it using technology. Or to rephrase it, how can I make money at the bottom end of the pyramid using latest technology & also raise their living standards.

So, I looked up the internet usage patterns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... rnet_users

China has 28.7% whereas we have only 7%.

My theory is because of lack of English skills, the native language eco system evolved well in China. Since the urban folk are well fluent in English in India, the native language internet did not really take off. Besides we have so much diversity, thats a different matter. So if we are desperately tied to english, then our internet population can never exceed the english speaking population (ie) 150M = 12.5%. If that is the case, then we will be shaded along with the African countries for a long long time.



Blij to discuss how we can overcome this impediment.
Just like telephone density in India shot up with the arrival of wireless telephones aka mobiles..same will be true for internet density.
4G technologies like Wimax/LTE are capable of providing broadband like datarates ...and installation/maintenance cost is much lower and cumbersome then laying down copper/optical wires.
Besides these wireless 4G techs get rid of the last mile issue....the final line gong from your neighborhood dubba to ur pc at home.

Connect one BS and it will be enough for village or more.

JMT
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by svinayak »

naren wrote:On second thoughts, moi thinks Panda is cooking up numbers.

Check this:
Internet Users - animation

Internet users - line chart

Increase from 139M in 2006 to 298M in 2008 :eek:. Doesn't sound believable.
Have you noticed that there is a systamatic way of projecting growth in PRC. For almost all indicators there is
sudden jump in certain period to show huge growth. In the 90s I was talking to one of my chinese classmate and what she said makes sense now. She said the govt was buying all the computer at that time to show huge demand and keeping the computers in storage without using it. She said most of the products are showing this kind of demand. I was not aware of the global implications of such a demand that time.
PRC got lot of investment and trade after min 90s. But the consumer data and energy data do not show that kind of growth for the last 15 years. This is part of the strategic plan using media and fake demand to increase the profile of PRC gdp.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

Hersh wrote:Just like telephone density in India shot up with the arrival of wireless telephones aka mobiles..same will be true for internet density.
The problem is learning curve. There's not much learning involved in using cell phones. Its totally a different story when it comes to internet.
Hersh wrote: 4G technologies like Wimax/LTE are capable of providing broadband like datarates ...and installation/maintenance cost is much lower and cumbersome then laying down copper/optical wires.
Besides these wireless 4G techs get rid of the last mile issue....the final line gong from your neighborhood dubba to ur pc at home.

Connect one BS and it will be enough for village or more.
No doubt about that. The problem is, given a totally english illiterate abdul, how would you make him use the internet ? Such abduls, if I'm not mistaken, make 1.05 billion (1.2-0.15 B ) of the population.
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Post by Katare »

chinese don't use english and literacy rates in china are close to 100% for a while.
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Post by naren »

Katare ji,

I was talking about our abduls :oops: :mrgreen:

My concern is, we are going to have easy hardware access to the internet in the near future, but no corresponding software access (including the typical internet services (search, social, news, mail, video etc.) in Indian languages). Thus we will still be lagging behind. Other non english speaking countries, like Japan, have their own non-english eco system evolved. We dont have one.

I'm not saying it is impossible. What I'm saying is that we have not started working in this direction. In the near future there will be an explosion of cheap devices (smartphones included) & 4G access. We will not be ready to make best use of it.

When we work in this direction, we can create tremendous job opportunities. Rural India will be connected to the world like never before. We can even think on the lines of outsourcing city work to villages (kinda like mini globalization). Once we evolve a successful model, we can sell it to other third world countries, just as it is happening in cell phone industry.
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Post by naren »

Giving a voice to India's villagers
In a remote corner of rural India, a new experiment using mobile phones is bringing people news made by local villagers. The BBC's Geeta Pandey travels to Rajnandgaon district in the central state of Chhattisgarh to see who is tuning in.
...
CGnet is an attempt to cater to people who are on the wrong side of the digital divide, says Shubhranshu Choudhary, a former BBC journalist-turned-activist and the brain behind CGnet Swara.

"We are providing a new platform which the villagers can use to talk to each other and the outside world about issues that are important to them," he says.

A few years ago, a Delhi-based media research agency, Charkha, did a survey and came up with the finding that only 2% of space in mainstream media was dedicated to covering the livelihood issues of India's largely poor and overlooked tribals.

Mobile connectivity

In this remote land, newspapers have not caught on as literacy rates are abysmal, there is no internet or private television and the only sources of news are the state-run TV channel Doordarshan and All India Radio.

"But we see that even in rural and tribal areas, mobile penetration is high and is continuously growing," Mr Choudhary says.

So he came up with the idea of news on mobile phones, to see if they could be used as a platform for information-sharing in poor and unconnected areas.

And the technology, developed by Microsoft Research India and Massachusetts Institute of Technology {no indigenous ? :cry: }, is simple.

"Reporters" call a Bangalore number to upload a news item and a text message goes out to all the phone numbers in the contact list and anyone who wants to hear the report calls in to the same number and the message is played out.
Now this is truly innovative. Kinda like "web 2.0" of mobile phones. We should focus more in such areas. India will be unstoppable once we bridge the rural urban divide.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by putnanja »

Documents relating to spectrum scam (8MB PDF)
Several documents relating to the spectrum scam, including letters written by Vineet Agarwal, former head of the Central Bureau of Investigation team that was investigating the scam, and Ashish Abrol, Joint Director of Income Tax, were released by AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on April 28, 2010. The documents included internal evaluation reports of the Director General of Income Tax, New Delhi, and notes marked ‘Top Secret’ and ‘Strictly Confidential’ that referred to information obtained from tapping of telephone lines of persons suspected to be involved in the spectrum scam.
The PDF file (8MB)
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by SaraLax »

Govt bans import of Chinese telecom equipment
Big blow for ZTE and Huawei; power gear too under scanner.
Thomas K. Thomas
New Delhi, April 28

The Government has officially told mobile operators not to import any equipment manufactured by Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE.

Though the Department of Telecom had been informally telling the operators to keep away from Chinese telecom equipment, this is the first time that it has sent an order banning Chinese gear.

The order was sent out by the DoT on Tuesday to some of the operators that were planning to buy equipment from Chinese manufacturers. The ban order follows concerns raised by the Home Ministry that telecom equipment from some countries could have spyware or malware that gives intelligence agencies across the border access to telecom networks in India.

The Government had earlier banned import of Chinese handsets without IMEI number. The DoT move is a huge blow to ZTE and Huawei that are betting big on the Indian market. ZTE had a record-breaking performance in the last fiscal in India by registering a 50 per cent increase in sales compared with the previous year. The ban also puts the new mobile operators in a quandary as most were banking on attractive financing schemes by Chinese vendors to purchase network equipment.

The biggest gainers from the move could be European and American vendors that have been losing market share to aggressive Chinese equipment-makers.
naren
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

India in 58th position in world on e-readiness ranking: Govt
NEW DELHI: India hold the 58th position in the world on e-readiness ranking - an important measure of a digital society, Minister of State for Information Technology Sachin Pilot informed the Rajya Sabha today.
...
"As per the Economist Intelligence Unit's e-readiness ranking for the year 2009, India ranks 58 among the countries of the world," he said.

IT sector provides direct employment to 2.5 million people and has created eight million indirect jobs, he said.

The Government, he said, had launched National Knowledge Network at an outlay of Rs 5,990 crore, to interconnect all universities, libraries, laboratories, hospitals and agricultural institutions to enable them to share data and resources over high speed information network.

He said the Government plans to connect all village panchayats through broadband internet connection in three years.

Under the National e-Governance Plan, the Department of Information Technology was establishing common, shared e-Infrastructure. Rs 1,623.20 crore has been approved for State Data Centres (SDC) Schemes besides Rs 1,649 crore for setting up 100,000 Common Services Centres.

"High mobile penetration (more than 550 million) and increasing internet penetration in the country is providing a conducive environment for moving towards a digital society," he added.
E-readiness rankings 2009

What he didn't mention was that India fell 4 places from 2008 :-?
naren
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by naren »

Not directly related to Indian telecom, but has major implications.

'Historic' day as first non-latin web addresses go live
Arab nations are leading a "historic" charge to make the world wide web live up to its name.

Net regulator Icann has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called "country codes" written in Arabic scripts.

The move is the first step to allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil.
Icann said it had received 21 requests for IDNs in 11 different languages, including Chinese, Russian, Tamil and Thai.
jamwal
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by jamwal »

How will the ban on Chinese telecom equipment affect telecom operators in India who have already installed or in process of installing these ?
Dileep
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Dileep »

About "Mediatek" mobile technology: Every chinese mobile uses that processor as the engine. I have a couple of them. The company will provide the reference design schematics, and a basic software suite. The OEM customizes both and make their product. So, there is a lot of similarities between the widely differing products.

The software is normally crappy, but with some amount of good testing and bug fixing, it can be brought up to standard. In fact I believe it should be possible to port any OS to that platform, since the specs are well known and available.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Prem »

Qualcomm,Vodafone to Join India Wireless Auction
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10753270 ... ction.html


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U.S.-listed companies Qualcomm (QCOM) and Vodafone(VOD) are participating in the 3G and BWA auction currently under way in India.
The auction for 93 licenses across the country to provide third-generation services to the 586 million mobile phone subscribers in India has already reached $11.6 billion, a level beyond the expectations of participants. Further investments to provide 3G services on a commercial basis from September 2010 will likely take the overall company expenditures to irrational levels.
In contrast, total investments to fund construction of third-generation networks in China for the 770 million mobile phone subscribers totaled $23 billion during the first year of operations, according to data release from China Mobile (CHL), China Unicorn (CHU) and China Telecom (CHA).
Qualcomm, a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications, has a history of getting involved in spectrum auctions that help the commercialization of its wireless technologies. Participation in India's Broadband Wireless Access auction will help the company in accelerating the use of TD-LTE. Unlike WiMAX, TD-LTE does not have a substantial market share for encouraging vendors to develop devices. India's 2.3 GHz spectrum band and rapidly growing demand for high broadband services is well suited for TD-LTE technology.
Vodafone is the second largest cellular service provider in India and has crossed the landmark of 100 million subscribers in the country in April. Vodafone owns 67% of Vodafone Essar, one of the nine participants for 3G auction, after buying out from Hutchison (HTX) in 2007.
A clear winner in all the circles is unlikely to emerge, as the current 3G prices have surpassed the estimates set by the participants. As smaller entities and new entrants are likely to concentrate on specific circles, an incumbent service provider will find it difficult to win the majority of the circles.
Bharti Airtel, India's telecom giant, is currently utilizing INR80 billion ($1.77 billion) reserves with additional funding plans. Meanwhile, other major industry participants such as Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular and Tata Communications (TCL) raised INR100 billion ($2.21 billion), INR95 billion ($2.10 billion) and INR85 billion($1.88 billion), respectively to finance the auctions.
Emergence of Bharti Airtel as a winner in the majority of the service areas will further strengthen its presence in the domestic market. The recent Zain deal has placed Bharati Airtel among the world's top 10 telecom companies. With a subscriber base of 163 million worldwide, the company ranks ahead of AT&T (T), Verizon(VZ), NTT DoCoMo (DCM) and T-mobile in the number of subscribers.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by svinayak »

jamwal wrote:How will the ban on Chinese telecom equipment affect telecom operators in India who have already installed or in process of installing these ?
Under national security all of those equipments can be removed even after the investment.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

Hersh

Thanks for the insightful post, much appreciated. I still think its more of political maneuvering between the two camps... Qualcomm doesnt have the financial muscle yet to hoard spectrum when push comes to shove...

On another note:

http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/ ... ocking.htm

No idea who is right here... Bharti is no angel and we all know A Raja and his ministry too.
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