Indian Telecom Folder

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Suraj
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

Nearly a quarter of new mobile subscribers worldwide added in the first quarter of 2014 were in India:
India adds highest number of mobile subscribers in Q1 2014
Registering the highest growth globally in addition of mobile subscribers, India accounted for over 23 per cent of total mobile users added in January-March this year, a report by telecom equipment giant Ericsson said today.

"The top 5 countries by net additions accounted for more than 50 per cent of new mobile subscriptions in Q1 2014," the report said.

Code: Select all

Country    Additions(million)
India       28
China       19
Indonesia   7
Thailand    6
Bangladesh  4
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by kmkraoind »

Reliance Jio plans 14 data centres for high-speed cloud services

It seems RIL is creating one huge network for its services.
The data centres planned by Reliance Jio will cover a total space of 700,000 sq. ft, or 50,000 sq.ft each—almost three-fourths the size of a standard football ground, said one of the three executives, all of whom asked not to be named.
..........
These data centres will enable the company to offer its planned services like “direct-to-home (DTH) television with a bouquet of almost 2,000 channels to choose from, video-on-demand, mailing and messaging services and voice over Internet telephony (VoIP)”,
..........
The data centres, the executive explained, will feed into the national-level fibre optic network, which is currently being laid by the company, and “pass through state highways, major cities and rural areas, within which, we will have a concentric circle service system (CSS) connecting an intra-city wired fibre optic connection that will finally lead to the fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) line”.
The CSS ring will be supported by hundreds of monopoles unlike the regular rooftop mounted telecom towers typically used by telecom service providers, he added.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by neel »

Suraj wrote:Nearly a quarter of new mobile subscribers worldwide added in the first quarter of 2014 were in India:
India adds highest number of mobile subscribers in Q1 2014
Registering the highest growth globally in addition of mobile subscribers, India accounted for over 23 per cent of total mobile users added in January-March this year, a report by telecom equipment giant Ericsson said today.

"The top 5 countries by net additions accounted for more than 50 per cent of new mobile subscriptions in Q1 2014," the report said.

Code: Select all

Country    Additions(million)
India       28
China       19
Indonesia   7
Thailand    6
Bangladesh  4
It is worth noting that those 28 million came in addition to 886.3 million (71.69 per 100 population) mobile subscriptions already existing at the end of 2013.

http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PIRRep ... c-2013.pdf
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vipul »

L&T wins Rs2,442 crore order from BSNL.

Larsen & Toubro (L&T), India's largest engineering and construction company, has won a contract worth Rs2,442 crore from state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) for setting up an optical fibre network. On completion, the network will be owned and operated by the defence services.

The contract was awarded to L&T Construction's power transmission and distribution business by BSNL, the project implementation agency for the ministry of defence, L&T said in a release.

''We are well-placed with a complete range of offerings, a nationwide presence and the relevant track record to execute this project to the complete satisfaction of our client. We are also very privileged to play a significant role in strengthening and modernising the network of our defence forces,'' SN Subrahmanyan, senior executive vice president (infrastructure and construction) at L&T, said.

The contract is for supply, trenching, laying, installation, testing and commissioning of optical fibre cable network that will establish optical national long distance backbone and optical access routes for the defence network. The network will be deployed with optic technology, which will form the backbone optical highway infrastructure and serve as a communication media for the defence sector.

The scope largely covers OFC routes in central and southern India. The project will be handled on a turnkey basis, and is scheduled to be completed within 18 months.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vipul »

Sterlite Technologies wins telecom contracts from BSNL.

Sterlite Technologies, a manufacturer of optical fibres, telecommunication cables and power transmission conductors, has won contracts totalling Rs2,450 crore from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for setting up an optical fibre cable network.Under the first contract, valued at Rs1,950 crore, the Vedanta Group company, will supply, deploy and maintain a part of Network for Spectrum (NFS) project in Jammu & Kashmir. The Pune-based company has also secured contracts to supply OFC to other parts of the country, it said in a statement.

The regions other than Jammu & Kashmir are Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Northeast among others.

As part of the contract, to be executed by 2016, the Pune-based company will also build a new communication network - a highly-resilient OFC-based nationwide optical backbone for Defence sites and access networks - for the Armed Forces. Sterlite will design, plan and implement this country-wide secure, multi-protocol converged network, which is based on dedicated tri-services optical transport backbone.The network will help Armed Forces migrate all their communications to this alternate system, thereby freeing spectrum for commercial use.

Sterlite also won an additional seven-year maintenance contract for OFC network in J&K, valued at Rs 500 crore. The company's current order book stands at about Rs4,500-5,000 crore.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by sooraj »

sooraj
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by sooraj »

BSNL Introduces Broadband TOP UPs for High Speed Internet after FUP in Unlimited Plans
http://www.bsnlteleservices.com/2014/09 ... speed.html
Broadband TOP UP Data Charges Extra Usage Offered
Rs. 100 2 GB
Rs. 200 5 GB
Rs. 300 10 GB
Rs. 500 20 GB
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by krishnan »

another 1 year and BSNL would be probably dead in my area, an prvt ISP just moved in , dunno how good they are. Have to wait and see
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by member_28108 »

sooraj wrote:BSNL Introduces Broadband TOP UPs for High Speed Internet after FUP in Unlimited Plans
http://www.bsnlteleservices.com/2014/09 ... speed.html
Broadband TOP UP Data Charges Extra Usage Offered
Rs. 100 2 GB
Rs. 200 5 GB
Rs. 300 10 GB
Rs. 500 20 GB
This is useful. I topped up once this month.Be careful and note that the Rs 500 Top up is much better than the rest.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Prem »

How Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra plans to conquer India
http://qz.com/293722/how-xiaomis-hugo-b ... uer-india/
We are essentially building a company from scratch here. It’s not Xiaomi, it’s not Xiaomi India, it’s Mi India. That is the brand.But it is a 100% subsidiary of Xiaomi.
Of course. But I do think of it as building another company and that is an important distinction. It’s not like we are just building a sales office. That is why it was important to spend time finding the right people to run the business here.
Already we have a significant operation here. It involves getting our products from the plants to here and to Flipkart’s warehouses. That in itself is getting fairly complicated. In October, we had [an] entire plane full of products flying down from Hong Kong.This means we need people here who are paying attention to delivery. We have a customer support operation that is well trained. And we have to focus on building an after-sales network. People from more and more remote areas in India are buying Mi phones now and right now people are having to travel long distances to get to a service centre. Now may be we have a 100 service centres but that is of course nearly not enough to cover the whole country.
Then of course there is the big piece, which is building our own e-commerce business here.
You are going to build your own platform here?
We are China’s third largest e-commerce company. We sell our own products from our own website.
We are here not to sell phones and dominate. We are here for the long run, and we want to brand ourselves into the fabric of this country. We need to start small, we need to listen, iterate. We probably could sell 10 lakh (1 million) phones at one go—I’m not sure, but we probably could. But just imagine the burden that comes with supporting that many phones all at once. What if there is a problem?
The third part is getting the whole R&D machinery to build and layer all the India-specific services into the Mi experience. There is a lot that we want to do and for that we have to build an R&D team
here.We will, for sure, write software here. We certainly are also considering the possibility of manufacturing through partners. We don’t make products ourselves.
We use Foxconn and others to do the manufacturing for us. We are here for the long run and it might make a lot of sense to be able to make [devices] here.Flipkart is our partner for life. We will work with them a very long time. Flipkart is one of the world’s foremost e-commerce companies. I put them right up there with Amazon and I put them ahead of most other e-commerce companies anywhere in the world.
Since you moved here, what has been your assessment of India’s tech ecosystem?
I think India is right in the middle of a tech renaissance, where it is definitely transitioning from being an IT outsourcing, business process automation, back-end type of work to a source of innovation.
Where our office is in Bangalore, we are right next to InMobi and a bunch of other exciting companies. It feels like Silicon Valley. Bangalore feels like Silicon Valley in many ways already. India today has the same number of Internet users as China had, say, in 2007-08.
You see that as sort of an inflection point?
Yes, except that India is going to go through that inflection point at a much faster rate. If you compare what the internet and startup scene was in China seven or eight years ago, it doesn’t even begin to compare with how thriving it is in India right now.
In many ways I feel privileged and honoured to be here at this point in time. Because I know that five years down the line, I’ll be able to say, I was there, in 2014!
The amazing thing about India is that India has scale, both as a consumer market and as a source of talent. You have amazing engineering schools. We also have an influx of people coming back. One of my friends from Google is coming back. Flipkart is in fact hiring most of them. It is on a mission to hire from around the world all the Indian engineers who wants to come back and they are very successful at it.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vamsee »

A few years ago, we used to track this number obsessively every month :twisted:

India telecom subscriber base reaches all-time high at 970 million
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by rsingh »

Multiply that with average mobile cost and and average phone bill and we can easily buy Saudi Barberia.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vipul »

National optical fibre network renamed as BharatNet.

The government has digitally connected 20,000 village panchayats across the country under the Digital India programme and has decided to overhaul the national broadband project programme, renaming it BharatNet.

The news comes a day after a committee set up by the PMO to analyse the structure of the national optical fibre network ( NOFN), now BharatNet, which was initiated by the previous UPA regime, submitted its recommendations to the telecom and minister IT Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Under BharatNet, the committee expects retail broadband services should be available at prices below Rs 150 a month in poorer states and around Rs 250 per month in more economically advanced state, with speeds ranging between 2 Mbps and 20 Mbps for all households. It has further recommended on demand capacity to all institutions.

Interestingly, the government had previously envisaged broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps. It will subsume all the ongoing and proposed broadband network projects taking the BharatNet project outlay to about Rs 72,000 crore.
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TRAI's Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services

Post by member_28978 »

Are TSPs trying to screw the internet ? If this really happens will it be beneficial for us ? Is it necessary at all ?
http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/Co ... 032015.pdf

My personal opinion is:
1. Internet has not reach many parts of India (I am not talking about shitty 2g internet that provides 10/20 kbps max). If this really happen most people will stop using internet before realizing the real value of internet.
2. Why people will pay data carriers ? Do we pay postman for delivering the letter ? The pizza delivery person is paid by the pizza company not the customer. Why not TSPs ask the companies who really generates the data. We are already paying for the data carrier why we should pay for the free data?
3. In India many of the data carriers already charges a lot of money for shitty quality of internet. Take tata photon for example. Even you pay for 3g speed, ask any user they will surely complain about their service.
4. TSPs are not able to make the data, users are using the internet for the OTTs and websites and several free and paid services. If TSPs really wanna get paid why don't they create some cool app ?
5. Even if they try to make things working like that, simply a tor network will avoid the regulation system. They why they want to make people suffer unnecessarily ?
6. I personally think GOVT. should stop caring about company interests and start thinking about public interest.

*As I was unable to find any discussion on this particular topic on BRF, I am creating this thread. Please be easy on me if I made any mistake.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by kmkraoind »

BSNL landline offers free pan-India calls from 9pm to 7am

Really a bold and innovative step, but if they need to increase their share in market, they need to improve their customer care services a lot.

Eons ago, when needed a BB connection, went to BSNL, the filing of application for land line, again for BB connection, had to beg to give a port, then beg/bribe the linemen to do work and all these took more than 3 months. Late when BSNL connectivity become erratic, I decided to take Airtel as backup. I had called up local Airtel guy for BB connection, voila, within half a day, they came and installed everything and connection is also great.

Many people had bad experiences with BSN, many will hesitate to try them.
New Delhi: To boost landline business, the state-run BSNL on Thursday announced unlimited free calling scheme during night hours from its fixed line phones to any operator including mobile phones anywhere in the country from 1 May.
The scheme would be operational between 9pm to 7am and would cover all type of connections, BSNL said in a statement. “BSNL has introduced unlimited free calling during night hours from its landline phones to all landline phones and mobile phones of all service provider’s network on all India basis from 1st May,” BSNL said.
Under the scheme, all major landline general plans of rural and urban areas, landline special plans as well as all major combo (landline with broadband) plans are covered. As per latest Trai data, BSNL which dominates landline market was the biggest loser of fixed-line customers in February while Airtel emerged as top gainer.
The company had over 16.6 million landlines at the end of February. Even after losing 162,556 landline customers in February, the company dominated the market with 62.26% share.
Suraj
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

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India crosses a billion telephone numbers in April
The number of telephone connections in India crossed one billion at the end of April. India is behind China, which had 1.28 billion mobile subscribers and 246.94 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of February.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the telephone subscriber base was 996.49 million at the end of March, with 969.89 million wireless subscribers. In April, there was an addition of five million GSM users, according to sources. Along with other services like CDMA and broadband, the telephone subscriber base has crossed one billion.

Fixed-line subscribers with state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam have been declining every month to reach 26.59 million in March.

The wireless subscriber base first doubled in 2005 to 75.1 million from 47.6 million in 2004, when incoming calls were made free. In 2007, the wireless subscriber base reached 228.9 million from 146.7 million a year ago as the government increased foreign direct investment in the telecom sector to 74 per cent from 49 per cent.
Image
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Theo_Fidel »

IIRC between them MTNL & BSNL lose a cool Rs 12,000 Crore annually which GOI then bails them out with tax money. Considering the entire population of India is 120 crore+/- this means every Indian gives them a Rs100 note every year just as a free gift. A family of 5 gives the twins a annual hafta of Rs 500. Just so they can turn around and abuse you when you ask for the service you paid for.... :( trully a gift that keeps on giving...

http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 225666.ece
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

Reliance Jio 4G LTE services are due to go online this winter. Big man Ambani sure has invested a lot into it:
Mukesh Ambani’s big telecom launch is coming this December
After months of speculation, the launch of Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture—perhaps India’s most ambitious—has finally been announced.

Reliance Jio will start full commercial operations by December this year, Ambani told shareholders during Reliance Industries’ (RIL) annual general meeting (AGM) on June 12.

But India’s richest man didn’t stop at that. “I am confident that Jio will play a significant role in lifting India from its current 142nd rank on internet penetration to amongst the top 10 nations in the world,” he said as the crowd cheered, while his wife, Neeta, applauded from the stage.

RIL has already spent some Rs70,000 crore ($11 billion) on setting up the infrastructure for the 4G services, including a network of around 25,000 kilometer-long fibre optic cable network. It now plans to double this network over the next three years, covering the entire country.

This isn’t Ambani’s first foray into the telecom business. In the undivided Reliance group—the group split between the brothers in 2005—he had spearheaded the group’s telecom business, then called Reliance Infocomm. The company had launched services in 2002 with free mobile handsets and low call rates.

By December 2015, Jio will roll out 4G LTE smartphones priced under Rs4,000 ($62.4), with a subscription plan that’ll cost between Rs300 and Rs500 a month.
Billionaire Ambani’s Jio to Start Phone Services December
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jio phone service will begin commercial operations in India around December, posing a challenge to incumbents Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Group Plc.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.’s network is currently being tested, with a “beta launch” due over the next few months followed by commercial operations towards the end of the year, Ambani said at the annual general meeting on Friday.

The roll out will mark Ambani’s much-awaited return to the telecommunications sector after Reliance Communications Ltd. was handed to younger sibling Anil Ambani in the wake of a family feud in 2005. Reliance is stepping beyond its traditional oil and gas operations to tap growing voice and data demand in the world’s second-largest wireless market.

Ambani, India’s richest man, said Jio’s first full year of commercial operations will be the 12 months starting April 1, 2016.

The Mumbai-based company has invested more than 1 trillion rupees ($16 billion) on its network. It says Jio can help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India push to bring rural areas online. Almost 1.1 billion Indians remain offline, McKinsey & Co. estimates.

“Our plan is to provide the same power of computing, communication and information to every individual, whether in towns or rural areas, that the U.S. president had 10 to 15 years ago,” Ambani said. “All this at about rupees 300 to rupees 500 per month.”

Reliance’s entry into the mobile services market comes at a time when India’s wireless operators are paying a record 1.1 trillion rupees to keep their networks running. Ambani’s unit said in March it would pay 100.8 billion rupees for spectrum it acquired at an auction of airwaves that month.

“The impact on the rest of the industry from Rjio’s launch can be quite significant,” Sunil Tirumalai and Chunky Shah, analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG, wrote in a May 19 report. “We retain a cautious stance on the sector.”

Ambani is seeking to offer higher speeds for Internet browsing and data downloads on his fourth-generation network. Lower-priced smartphones are spurring mobile Web access in Asia’s third-largest economy.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

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BDesh new min. speed of Broadband to be 2mbps
The government has decided to redefine 'broadband' services for the fourth time and fix the minimum broadband speed at 2Mbps. Both decisions will be effective shortly.

The changes came yesterday at a meeting chaired by Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the ICT adviser to the prime minister.

Joy directed the telecom regulator to be more active in ensuring better services for users by upgrading the internet speed and amending its definition. He directed the regulator to induct the new definition into the telecom policy, meeting attendants said.

The plan is to improve broadband speed to 5Mbps, which is necessary to successfully build a Digital Bangladesh, a senior official of the telecom division said on condition of anonymity.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission or BTRC fixed the minimum speed for broadband at 128Kbps in 2008.

The government then upgraded the minimum broadband speed to 512Mbps and later to 1Mbps in 2013.

Joy also asked Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd or BSCCL to bring the bandwidth price down to Tk 200-Tk 300 per Mbps if possible.

BSCCL decided to cut wholesale bandwidth prices to Tk 560 from the current effective price of Tk 920 per Mbps two weeks ago. The reduced price will be effective in August.

“We have been asked to further reduce the bandwidth prices,” Md Monwar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, told The Daily Star after the meeting.

Expressing dissatisfaction over internet speed and quality, Joy said the government would soon move to provide 1Mbps internet connections at union levels across Bangladesh.

He also advised Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd to expedite the fibre-laying process at union levels to complete it within the current government's tenure.

The market is already saturated for mobile operators in terms of accessibility as there are some 12.6 crore active SIMs, leaving a narrow growth margin for Teletalk, he said.

The state-run mobile operator also needs a proper market survey before launching any new initiative, he added.

“If possible, partnerships with top operators should be looked into,” Joy told Teletalk officials.

Md Faizur Rahman Chowdhury, telecom secretary and chairman of all five state-owned telecom companies, also attended the meeting along with other senior officials of the Prime Minister's Office.
http://www.thedailystar.net/business/br ... net-118180

jumla of 'no achchhe din for Broadband users in India' already started.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

Theo_Fidel wrote:IIRC between them MTNL & BSNL lose a cool Rs 12,000 Crore annually which GOI then bails them out with tax money. Considering the entire population of India is 120 crore+/- this means every Indian gives them a Rs100 note every year just as a free gift. A family of 5 gives the twins a annual hafta of Rs 500. Just so they can turn around and abuse you when you ask for the service you paid for.... :( trully a gift that keeps on giving...

http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 225666.ece
The other players pay off BSNL and MTNL staff, senior and junior, to purposely degrade services so that dissatisfied customers have little option but to change. Equipment replacement and augmentation has taken a huge hit because of this.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by member_29064 »

chetak wrote:
Theo_Fidel wrote:IIRC between them MTNL & BSNL lose a cool Rs 12,000 Crore annually which GOI then bails them out with tax money. Considering the entire population of India is 120 crore+/- this means every Indian gives them a Rs100 note every year just as a free gift. A family of 5 gives the twins a annual hafta of Rs 500. Just so they can turn around and abuse you when you ask for the service you paid for.... :( trully a gift that keeps on giving...

http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 225666.ece
The other players pay off BSNL and MTNL staff, senior and junior, to purposely degrade services so that dissatisfied customers have little option but to change. Equipment replacement and augmentation has taken a huge hit because of this.
although have been using MTNL since past 7 years without major issues and coming out very satisfied with their service (Thane), of late i have seen that they have drastically altered the plans (triband), lessening them in number, introducing worthless and expensive ones. i was wondering why did they do it. have got a pvt. cable-net connection recently but afraid to let go of MTNL connection, because in case if something goes awry with the pvt. connection and i don't have MTNL then and decide to change back to MTNL, i will have to choose from one of those crap plans (while am still on a good old plan which has been phased out, but not for old users, as happens with MTNL).
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by member_28541 »

Airtel to launch pan India 4G services :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech ... 373122.cms
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by A_Gupta »

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28 ... mushrooms/
Mobile data usage is exploding. In an update to its Mobility Report, Ericsson said mobile broadband subscriptions had passed three billion in Q2 2015, and the year-on-year traffic growth for the same period is 55 per cent.

The startling figures bring the number of mobile subscriptions to 7.2 billion, but the report points out that this equates to 4.9 billion subscribers, since many have multiple subscriptions.

There is still good growth, with the number of subscriptions increasing by five per cent, with India being the strongest market in terms of net additions for the quarter (+12 million), followed by Myanmar (+5 million), Nigeria (+4 million), USA (+4 million) and Bangladesh (+3 million).

Erm, China doesn’t figure in the the figures, because the Chinese operators cleaned up their numbers for inactive and multiple SIM cards.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

Total telephone subscriber base rises 5 mn in June to 1.007 billion
The total telephone subscriber base in the country rose marginally to reach 1.007 billion at the end of June, sectoral regulator said on Tuesday.

The subscriber base stood at 1.002 billion at the end of May, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said. The wireless base (GSM and CDMA) rose 0.5 per cent to 981 million at the end of June from 976 million in May.

“As on June 30, 2015, the private access service providers held 91.7 per cent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two public sector undertakings access service providers, held only 8.2 per cent share,” Trai said.

The wireless tele-density increased to 77.9 per cent from 77.6 per centat the end of May.

Wireless subscription in urban areas increased to 563 million at the end of June from 559 million last month and wireless subscription in rural areas increased from 417 million to 418 million during the same period. West Bengal service area recorded the highest growth rate in wireless subscribers during the reported period whereas Uttar Pradesh (East), Jammu & Kashmir and Tamil Nadu (including Chennai) service areas showed decline in subscriber base during the month.

In June, a total of 3680,000 subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability.

At the end of June, the wireless base of Airtel stood at 231 million, Vodafone at 185 million, Idea at 162 million, Reliance at 110 million, Tata at 61 million, Aircel at 83 million, Uninor at 48 million, Sistema Shyam Teleservices at 8700,000 and Videocon at 7610,000.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vamsee »

We are now worlds second largest nation in terms of Internet users. We may easily double in next 3-5 years.
Mobile phone was truly transformative for India

===============================
India’s total internet user base stands at 352 million users; over 60% mobile web users
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Rishirishi »

Vamsee wrote:We are now worlds second largest nation in terms of Internet users. We may easily double in next 3-5 years.
Mobile phone was truly transformative for India

===============================
India’s total internet user base stands at 352 million users; over 60% mobile web users

The number does not mean much. Bandwidth is the name of the game. people using facebook and Whats app can hardly be called internet users.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

How much you can do online, is more meaningful than how much bandwidth you have. There are plenty of functional tasks, like handling utilities, payments, shopping etc that are not bandwidth intensive, but can be accomplished online with a pipe that's capable of feeding facebook. India has a mature satellite television/DTV system, and lack of bandwidth for streamed video is not really a concern to most.

Broadband connections continue to grow anyway, from 5m in 2008, to 27m in 2012, to over 100m connections now.
From May 2015: India’s broadband user count crosses 100 million
Older history:
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Considering the graph and current numbers (350m+ internet subscribers, 100m+ broadband users), there's been exponential growth in the last 3 years.
Nitesh
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Nitesh »

After recent decision of BSNL making 2mbps bw minimum for all users, what will happen after a user crosses FUP limit (75 GB). Will the speed remain at 2mbps or will it curtail down further?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

When figures like 100 million broadband users are displayed, that does refer to actual individual subscribers, people who have an account with an internet service provider, correct?

Not just an estimate of anyone surfing at any time, anywhere, including at cyber-stations?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

It states broadband subscribers, not users.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Vayutuvan »

Theo_Fidel: That is ridiculous. If there are some valuable assets with BSNL (which belong to the tax paying Indian citizenry) why should that be given away for naya paisa on the rUpayi? Shares need to be priced right. If there are buyers at higher price sell to them (as long as there are no internal security issues). I will put it to you respectfully that yours is a counsel of despair. Every last "chilli gavva" (in olden days small coins used to have a hole in the middle so they can be carried on a rope - this is the telugu word for those and beads) should be recovered for the humble tax payer.
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 27 Sep 2015 04:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Theo_Fidel »

That is function of the market. Shares are only worth what the company is worth. Right now its debts exceed Rs 8,000 crore, and future liabilities are Rs 40,000 per one report and it has Rs 15,000 crore and rising annual wage bill. Should the tax payer be on the hook for that as well?

No, our thinking has to change. Tax payer should not be owning and running phone company, profit or loss. Get rid of it now when you can get something for it, focus on what government must do. Take it as lesson learned and move on. If you make a bad investment decision you get what you can out of it, not freak out about what you paid 20 years ago....

There was a time when we could have sold Air India for a nice chunk of change, but GOI balked... Several companies were willing to make offers. But now the entire net worth is eroded and is a heavy millstone generating bigger and bigger hole to fill every year. Same with HPF, should have sold it off years ago, now it is zero value.... ..one can go on and on...
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chaanakya »

There used to be VSNL. In those days VSNL was the monopoly.That is history now. Nobody remembers it. Almost everybody , who has a mobile /landline connection , has data connection. BSNL will be history in no time. It should certainly be privatised. No useful purpose is served by it as Govt service provider.

Incidentally VSNL was divested by NDA-1.Arun Shourie IIRC. One of the first PSUs to get divested.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Supratik »

When NDA1 tried to sell PSUs all the leftists both within the INC and outside went wild with allegations of selling "family silver". So selling PSUs has political consequences. Since then strategy has shifted to selling 5-10% of shares to bring govt holding to 51%. After that you have to sell at an opportune time. But remember Modi is not a compulsive privatizer. First let them at least list AI and BSNL in the stock market so their correct value is known.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Yagnasri »

I personally know Air India finances and their plans for revival as I am involved. True that they are in mess. But their condition is no difference from that of other air liners. What you need in Air India is serious reforms organizationally to which there will be serious opposition from labour force. Further work culture and customer facilities which are more and costly (like free food etc) than other airlines are to be cut. They have to stop going to non-remunerative destinations like NE which is not politically possible.

In respect of the assets, most of them are not owned by them. At least in places like Mumbai they are all leasehold properties. I know as I have checked documents of some of the properties. May be in other places they own huge properties. I am not sure and do not remember immediately. Converting or selling them therefore is difficult. But possible.

Privatization is not the answer for everything just like nationalization is not answer to everything. Off loading some shares and GOI acting as an investor instead of the owner ( the solution proposed for banks) may be one of the answers. But there is no question that it needs serious organisational reforms.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chetak »

Theo_Fidel wrote:Nandakumar,

No, take BSNL shares and sell them in open market. Divested. Take what ever measly amount market gives you. It is now a private company. The government does not concern itself beyond the minimal administration issues like it had for Kingfisher. No more fresh money and let it fend for itself in the open market place....
BSNL and MTNL are good companies. They were systematically gutted by the congis and even the BJP earlier to help prop up the other shitty private cell phone companies. Massive money was taken to hobble their infrastructure and disrupt their services to force their customers to move away from PSU to private companies. Senior PSU management was suborned and many were lured away . Much later the PSU junior staff was also pulled into the same dirty game. Their centrally located cell towers were moved to accommodate private players by simply letting the leases "expire"

These PSU's own massive amounts of land in the commercial heart of important cities and towns worth tens of lakhs of crores. No sane person would advocating selling such family silver.

Their tower assets and undersea cable access are also very substantial as is their spectrum coverage.

Anti national b@s#$%^ have willfully and maliciously damaged such companies for a few pieces of silver. A pox on them, their families and all their future generations to come.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Singha »

BSNL does own land in premium locations. for example their koramangala exchange and colony in 4th block sits across the road from the mansions of uber rich revered founder types. the land value alone would be a few 100 crores. a clever buyer would shift or rationalize out the exchange and build 10 cr lake facing apartments with big sky verandah balconies.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chaanakya »

Almost every PSU owns land in premium locations ( back in those days when they started it might not have been so) . People have nothing against PSUs if they are able to provide service required of them rather than acting as a sinkhole for public money to prop inefficient work force.These are the products of an era gone by. Land and other assets can be valued and factored in while making case for their listing on stock exchange and divest as much as possible. Cede management control to other promoters. Results are there for all to compare. IGAI Vs Chennai Airport.

true NaMo is not a compulsive privatizer. He has been instrumental in turning around several state PSUs, GSPC, GPCL , Power distribution companies. I think there has been some classification of PSU into three categories: which will be run by state, privatised and to be closed. Hindustan Photofilms comes to mind featuring in third list.I think MTNL and BSL comes under second list. Coal India, Steel Authority , NTPC ,PGCIL etc comes under first list. There is no bar in divesting con controlling shares in these PSUs.

Upshot of it all is there is no one fix for all and I hope NDA-2 ( or is it NDA-3) takes forward these reforms faster.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chaanakya »

BSNL and MTNL owns towers in more number of locations. As part of restructuring and as a first step they could hive off these tower assets into a separate company and allow all cell phone companies to lease space on them so as to provide better coverage and get revenue out of inefficiently utilised infra.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chetak »

Singha wrote:BSNL does own land in premium locations. for example their koramangala exchange and colony in 4th block sits across the road from the mansions of uber rich revered founder types. the land value alone would be a few 100 crores. a clever buyer would shift or rationalize out the exchange and build 10 cr lake facing apartments with big sky verandah balconies.
In Bombay, in flora fountain, they own a very large plot where they have an exchange and offices. I can't even begin to imagine the value of such a plot of land. I am sure that there are tens of "middle men" and other ministerial/baboon folks in the govt who must be having wet dreams and fervently hoping that Modi moves away and more flexible folks inhabit the high offices.
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