Indian Telecom Folder

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Gyan
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Gyan »

Sicanta wrote:No catch. You will get 4 gb data everyday and free calls till 31st December. But ever since it has been opened for public, it is a task getting hold of the sim and then comes a 7-8 day activation period if you are unlucky.

And just to be on safe side, airtel and vodafone are not giving enough interconnection points to jio, so calls to their network will be an issue.
Recently a meeting was held with industry representatives on this issue at PMO. Ambani has already said till this issue is not resolved, they will not commercially charge their customers which may happen after January or so if need be. So the plans you mentioned which will come to effect on 1st jan may not do so at that time.
Does Jio offer iPad compatible SIM card?
prasannasimha
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by prasannasimha »

By past precedence Reliance telecom will attract with big offers and then there will be pain. I shifted from the original reliance to airtel and BSNL and it was such a pain during the shift. I still prefer BSNL for their mobile data whatever gimmicky offers the others say - they simply do not walk the talk howvever much you try to blame BSNL.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Sicanta »

Gyan wrote:
Sicanta wrote:No catch. You will get 4 gb data everyday and free calls till 31st December. But ever since it has been opened for public, it is a task getting hold of the sim and then comes a 7-8 day activation period if you are unlucky.

And just to be on safe side, airtel and vodafone are not giving enough interconnection points to jio, so calls to their network will be an issue.
Recently a meeting was held with industry representatives on this issue at PMO. Ambani has already said till this issue is not resolved, they will not commercially charge their customers which may happen after January or so if need be. So the plans you mentioned which will come to effect on 1st jan may not do so at that time.
Does Jio offer iPad compatible SIM card?
Data will work but not calls. They have not released any app for it yet.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by arun »

India pips US in smartphone connections
According to figures provided by global telecom body GSMA, smartphone connections in India at the end of the first half of this year (ending June 2016) stood at 275 million, higher than 259 million connections in the US. China, however, leads by a huge margin with overall smartphone connections at 910 million.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vikas »

What purpose does it serve to have 2 different govt telecom entities BSNL and MTNL.
Why should MTNL be merged with BSNL and be made a single entity. Current dispensation hinders MTNL from expanding its footprint outside Delhi and Mumbai while preventing BSNL from venturing into these 2 markets.
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Post by arun »

Telephony wars hot up. Reliance Jio complains about actions of incumbent players in the telephony business to the Competition Commission of India (CCI):
Reliance Jio Knocks On Competition Regulator’s Door Against Vodafone, Airtel, And Idea

by Arpan Chaturvedi, Payaswini Upadhyay
November 28, 2016, 1:57 pm

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. has filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) against Vodafone India Ltd., Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Idea Cellular Ltd. alleging abuse of dominance and cartelisation, a person familiar with the development told BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity.

Reliance Jio filed the complaint on the basis of a letter that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) wrote to the Department of Telecom (DoT) last month, the person added. .................................

In its complaint, Reliance Jio has stated that the relevant geographic market to assess anti-competitive behaviour should be the market for call termination in each circle that Vodafone, Airtel, and Idea operate in.

In terms of the product market, Reliance Jio has stated that for abuse of dominance charge it should be the wholesale market for call termination, and for cartelisation it should be the market for mobile telephony. Most mobile number portability (MNP) applications made to Vodafone, Airtel, and Idea have been rejected by them and the MNP registry data will show that, the person quoted above pointed out, while explaining an additional ground for the cartelisation allegation.
See here:

Bloomberg Quint
sooraj
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by sooraj »

BSNL Reportedly Introduced STV 498 Plan with Unlimited Data Usage for Prepaid Users with no speed cap
The new scheme is dubbed as ‘STV 498’, which by recharging gives unlimited 3G data with no data limit. However, according to the sources, this new plan will only be valid for 14 days from the day of recharging.

And, this offer will be available as a promotional offer till January 7, 2017. Both the existing users and new users of BSNL are eligible for this offer. Do make a note that this offer doesn’t even come with data speed limit. So, users whoever recharges with this pack can enjoy unlimited high-speed data of BSNL 3G network.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Karthik S »

IIT scientists present India's first 5G patent before global body

NEW DELHI: With India gearing up for the commercial roll out of 5G (high speed fifth generation of wireless networks) by 2020, scientists at IIT Hyderabad and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT), an R&D society under IIT Madras, have tabled the country's first 5G patent before an international body that defines the global cellular radio standards for different generations of wireless network.
Once this global body of seven countries - called Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) - gives its nod to the technological specification, Indian manufacturers would be able to use it in their equipment and save huge amounts of money in royalty and licensing fees.
India had joined the international body, which is making standards for 5G, two years ago. US, China, Japan and South Korea are other member countries of this body.
The scientists - Kiran Kuchi, associate professor of IIT Hyderabad (principle inventor of the indigenously-developed waveform technology that forms the backbone feature in the up-link of 5G networks) and co-inventor J Klutto Milleth, chief technologist at CEWiT - have developed the technology under a research support project of the Union ministry of electronics and IT.
Recommended By Colombia
Though a research team, commissioned by the government to work on 5G technology, has filed 100 odd patents simultaneously in India and the US so far, this is the first patent whose technological specification has been presented to the world body for examination. Finally, there may be a number of patents for 5G from different countries, depending on different technological specification.

India earlier did not own a single Standards Essential Patent (SEP) before the introduction of the waveform by IIT Hyderabad and the CEWiT. "With this patent and others in pipeline, India can save huge amounts of money in royalty/licensing fees when 5G is introduced in the country. Right now, for every mobile handset sold in India, the buyer pays a certain amount in royalty and licensing to a patent holder abroad", said Kiran Kuchi.

Explaining the significance of this step, he told TOI, "Standards Essential Patents (SEPs) are the ones that are written in the standards that every phone/base station manufacturer has to implement in the device. The SEPs are typically owned by large telecom companies. They derive patent royalties from their portfolio of patents".
He said, "The patent was presented at a conference held in Spokane in US on April 3 by 3GPP. It may take roughly a year or so to get the world body's nod. Once it is cleared, the telecom manufacturers will have to adhere to the specification".
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 183889.cms
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by prahaar »

Is one SEP making a headline in TOI? Without reducing the scientific contribution of those involved, for a country like India, persuading global majors to make an India specific standard, we are being asked to celebrate one SEP! Is the commercial R&D situation in such a bad shape? I am pretty sure patent application filings by MNCs operating out of India would be in 100s if not thousands in ICT alone.

Honestly, the above news makes me confused, whether to be sad or to be glad.
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Post by Mollick.R »

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal warned the government that only one or two non-state phone companies would stay in business if current levels of competition persisted with tariffs pegged well below cost, according to four people aware of discussions that took place between leading carriers and telecom minister Manoj Sinha on Thursday
“Earlier there were 12 operators. We’re already down to six-seven. An operator with a strong balance sheet is shaking the industry, and the way it is going, it would be down to around three-four, including (state-owned) BSNL and MTNL,” Mittal is learnt to have said.
“The government needs to help… It has to decide on the level of competition that there should be in the sector,” SBI’s Sriram was cited as saying.
India’s largest lender also asked for spectrum to be used as collateral, even as it backed telcos’ demands to defer spectrum payments with a moratorium of three to five years and an increase in the number of instalments.
The meeting with Sinha took place within a week of an interministerial group (IMG) — set up to look into the financial stress in the sector — meeting all carriers in the background of the sector reeling under massive debt. Banks put the total debt of the sector at around Rs 8 lakh crore, including loans from Indian banks, overseas borrowings and annual installments for spectrum bought in auctions over the past few years, and have raised concerns about defaults.
Idea Cellular said the government should consider setting a floor price for tariffs, or a regime where the cost of the network is higher than the interconnect charge of 14 paise a minute, which at the moment is below that level.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tec ... 272271.cms
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Post by VinodTK »

India passes US to become second largest smartphone market
The US is now the third largest smartphone market in the world, according to a new report by global technology market analyst firm Canalys. The number of smartphone shipments to India grew 23 percent in the third quarter of this year, reaching just over 40 million units shipped. That makes India the second largest smartphone market, just behind number one China. Sorry, US, but you're in third place now.

The brands selling the most in India? Samsung and Xiaomi, which sent 9.4 million and 9.2 million smartphones to India, respectively, account for almost half of the entire Indian smartphone market in the country. "This growth comes as a relief to the smartphone industry. Doubts about India's market potential are clearly dispelled by this result," said Canalys' Ishan Dutt. "There are close to 100 mobile device brands sold in India, with more vendors arriving every quarter. In addition, India has one of the most complex channel landscapes, but with low barriers to entry. Growth will continue. Low smartphone penetration and the explosion of LTE are the main drivers."

The top five vendors in India, including Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Lenovo, account for 75 percent of the total shipments in India, according to the report. While Samsung is a top seller, Canalys Analyst Rushabh Doshi believes that inexpensive smartphone maker Xiaomi will soon over take the Korean company "within a couple of quarters." Still, it's not just low-end phones making inroads in the country. Apple only started local production in India this year, and iPhone shipments have more than doubled to 900,000 units in the third quarter.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Bob V »

It seems that the Reliance 2G & 4G networks are down, across several cities. There was no prior intimation & the service disruption was abrupt. Anybody knows the reason behind this ? I heard that they were planning to phase out 2G services, due to stiff competition, by Nov 30 (inspite of this, their customers were not even notified & it was the other service providers who stepped in & poached the subscribers) But no such issues were reported for the 4G network. Absolutely pathetic service & lack of accountability to the end user! Now my question is - with a non-working SIM, how do I port my Reliance number over to other service providers ?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Manish_P »

UIDAI suspends Airtel, Airtel Payments Bank's e-KYC licence over Aadhaar misuse
In its strongest action yet, the UIDAI has temporarily barred Bharti Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank from conducting Aadhaar-based SIM verification of mobile customers using eKYC process as well as e-KYC of payments bank clients.

The action follows allegations of Bharti Airtel using the Aadhaar-eKYC based SIM verification process to open payments bank accounts of its subscribers without their 'informed consent'.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hanumadu »

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bus ... 997776.cms
Under the new policy, the government aims to enable fixed line broadband access to 50 per cent of households and start landline portability services.
50% land line connectivity would probably imply 50% urbanization or more because not every household in urban areas would be able to afford or want broad band.
The policy suggests providing universal broadband coverage at 50 mbps to every citizen and providing 1 gbps (gigabit per second) connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022.
Is this even possible? Most countries do not have that kind of bandwidth. How can only 50% have land line broadband and yet 100% have 50Mbps broadband?

Either way this govt is in a hurry and continues to throw curve balls. More power to them.
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Post by Prasad »

Isn't that what the Bharath-net all about? OFC to all villages.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

twitter
Reading statements of TelecomAssn- "is disappointed that no decision has been taken by Telecom Commission with respect to the allocation of E&V Bands as allocation of these bands at affordable prices can be a boon for the better customer exp...".Bloody guys want free spectrum

10:27 AM - 2 May 2018
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Bart S »

hanumadu wrote:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bus ... 997776.cms
Under the new policy, the government aims to enable fixed line broadband access to 50 per cent of households and start landline portability services.
50% land line connectivity would probably imply 50% urbanization or more because not every household in urban areas would be able to afford or want broad band.
The policy suggests providing universal broadband coverage at 50 mbps to every citizen and providing 1 gbps (gigabit per second) connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022.
Is this even possible? Most countries do not have that kind of bandwidth. How can only 50% have land line broadband and yet 100% have 50Mbps broadband?

Either way this govt is in a hurry and continues to throw curve balls. More power to them.
With GPON it is possible. Using older technologies and the typical BSNL exchange, certainly not possible without a huge capital outlay. This could be a good thing where we leapfrog/bypass several generations of older tech, like the move directly to cellular.

Landlines as a concept are dead. Only BSNL (and their typical fuddy-duddy loyal customers) are interested in those. The way forward is a broadband data circuit (likely over GPON which is fiber optic (FTTH) but quite cost effective) and you can chose to have a voice number as an option (this works over VoIP on the data circuit).
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hanumadu »

Prasad wrote:Isn't that what the Bharath-net all about? OFC to all villages.
Yes, OFC for all villages is easy, but to every house is not easy. And not affordable to the villagers. May be cheap wifi or wimax that can cover the entire village is possible.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hanumadu »

Bart S wrote:
hanumadu wrote:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bus ... 997776.cms



50% land line connectivity would probably imply 50% urbanization or more because not every household in urban areas would be able to afford or want broad band.



Is this even possible? Most countries do not have that kind of bandwidth. How can only 50% have land line broadband and yet 100% have 50Mbps broadband?

Either way this govt is in a hurry and continues to throw curve balls. More power to them.
With GPON it is possible. Using older technologies and the typical BSNL exchange, certainly not possible without a huge capital outlay. This could be a good thing where we leapfrog/bypass several generations of older tech, like the move directly to cellular.

Landlines as a concept are dead. Only BSNL (and their typical fuddy-duddy loyal customers) are interested in those. The way forward is a broadband data circuit (likely over GPON which is fiber optic (FTTH) but quite cost effective) and you can chose to have a voice number as an option (this works over VoIP on the data circuit).
But FTTH is a land line, its just not copper telephone wires. FTTH or cable broadband is definitely possible in dense urban settings.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by hanumadu »

hanumadu wrote:
Bart S wrote:
With GPON it is possible. Using older technologies and the typical BSNL exchange, certainly not possible without a huge capital outlay. This could be a good thing where we leapfrog/bypass several generations of older tech, like the move directly to cellular.

Landlines as a concept are dead. Only BSNL (and their typical fuddy-duddy loyal customers) are interested in those. The way forward is a broadband data circuit (likely over GPON which is fiber optic (FTTH) but quite cost effective) and you can chose to have a voice number as an option (this works over VoIP on the data circuit).
But FTTH is a land line, its just not copper telephone wires. FTTH or cable broadband is definitely possible in dense urban settings.
Reliance is eating everybody's lunch. The other telecom companies have to up their game.
https://telecom.economictimes.indiatime ... t/64037637
“The initial FTTH plan includes 100 gigabytes (GB) of free data at 100 mbps speed; once the data limited is exhausted, the customers can do top-up of 40 GB of free data 25 times in a month, effectively meaning 1,100 GB of free data a month,” a source told The Hindu.
The Jio router can be also used as a set-top box when the company launches internet protocol television (IPTV) services.
Jio will launch its FTTH service for both households and enterprise customers. In the residential segment, it is eyeing to capture 100 million television households across 30 cities in India.
Reliance has a debt of over 4 lakh crore now and cash equivalents of 2 lakh crore. It better get its telecom foray right. But last quarter Jio seems to have been profitable if reports (and Reliance) is to be believed. Its oil business is doing fine and RIL posted 8,000 crore net profit last quarter.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Bart S »

hanumadu wrote:
Bart S wrote:
With GPON it is possible. Using older technologies and the typical BSNL exchange, certainly not possible without a huge capital outlay. This could be a good thing where we leapfrog/bypass several generations of older tech, like the move directly to cellular.

Landlines as a concept are dead. Only BSNL (and their typical fuddy-duddy loyal customers) are interested in those. The way forward is a broadband data circuit (likely over GPON which is fiber optic (FTTH) but quite cost effective) and you can chose to have a voice number as an option (this works over VoIP on the data circuit).
But FTTH is a land line, its just not copper telephone wires. FTTH or cable broadband is definitely possible in dense urban settings.
Yes, but you are missing my point, and it's not just for dense urban settings (though that is where folks like Airtel etc are currently using it). You try to deploy a traditional landline that works via copper cabling, it is impossible at that scale and with that budget because you are relying on a bunch of legacy technologies like telecom switches + DSLAMs that are super expensive to buy, provision and maintain. You are trying to build a legacy TDM network and provision IP over it. Besides they can only ration tiny amounts of bandwidth.

The beauty of GPON (used for most FTTH) is the 'P' in the acronym that stands for Passive. You don't need active equipment except at the exchange, it can deploy for long distances and makes very efficient use of fiber by multiplexing different wavelengths (for each customer) over a single wire. Opens up a lot of possibilities for rural areas. And at the volumes that service providers operate at, fiber is actually cheaper than copper when all costs are considered. All you need is some IP network coming into a mini-exchange which can actually be a cellular base station etc (and can be whitebox equipment for 80% of the requirement) and then the GPON equipment at the head-end. Also, given the high bandwidth per customer (1Gbps), for many villages you can probably get by with pulling a single fiber to the village and using a local wireless network for the last mile (though given the cost of maintaining active equipment it is probably cheaper to just extend the PON to each home via splitters and minimal active equipment like a switch). With 5G (and even 3G/4G small-cell tech) you can even leverage that to provide cellular connectivity to the village. Plus it is fully IP end to end, no TDM, so huge improvement in bandwidth and huge reduction in costs.

So the overall point being, that if we commit to fully IP based GPON at a massive scale (similar to what Reliance did with an all-LTE, all-IP network) we can actually leapfrog the bottleneck of legacy landlines and have cutting edge and high speed wired connectivity provisioned economically, at a massive scale. And given that this would leapfrog the connectivity available in much of rural Europe/America currently, it has it's own implications for unleashing economic growth and productivity.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chaitanya »

This is welcome news:

Vietnamese handset brand Mobiistar makes India its global HQ; to launch phones this month
NEW DELHI: Vietnamese handset brand Mobiistar is set to enter the Indian smartphone market later this month to take on Chinese brands like Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, and has decided to make India its global headquarters to run operations in other countries.
"After looking at the number and size of the country and growth, I have decided to be based here. The idea is to run global operations by based out of here. I am here full time," he added.

The company has already tied-up with contract manufacturer V-Sun Technologies to locally assemble handsets. "Under this partnership, Vsun will provide the bandwidth that we want basis the demand, and will give priority to us. They can allocate production lines to us in a very fast manner. They have the unit in Haryana. The trial production has already begun," the top executive said.

Mobiistar is also mulling over setting up its SMT (Surface-mount technology) for printed circuit board or PCB assembling in the country.
The handset player is looking to launch products, specially made for the Indian market with local research and development. For R&D, it has formed partnerships with chipset vendors and design houses. The brand will have up to 850 service outlets from the day one of launch, which it will increase to 1000 outlets after three months.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by jaysimha »

http://dot.gov.in/sites/default/files/DraftNDCP2018.pdf
Ministry of communications, GoI

Inviting Public comments on Draft National Digital Communications Policy, 2018

Comments can be mailed to policyfeedback-dot@gov.in
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by JTull »

One of thing that bothers me about this race to the bottom in mobile subscription charges is how sustainable they are. With unlimited calling plans incl 1Gb data available for Rs150 per month, if every Indian (1.3bln) has one mobile sim, the total revenues are ~$35bln p.a. And they're only going to get lower. Comparing that to the cost of these 1.3bln phones, Bharti et al are in the wrong business.
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Post by JTull »

Very timely.

Indian telcos may well lose by winning
Image

Kotak Institutional Equities has an interesting report that draws parallels between the famous dollar auction game and the Indian telecom sector. The dollar auction game was used by economist Martin Shubik, a pioneer of game theory, to illustrate a concept known as “escalation of commitment”. Since the highest bidder wins the dollar, and the second highest bidder loses all that he/she has bid, those playing the game tend to keep bidding higher amounts to avoid losing what they have already bet.

Shubik says it is not uncommon for the person conducting the game to end up with $3-5 for every dollar that was auctioned. In such scenarios, the winning bidder would have ended up paying roughly between $1.5 and $2.5, with the losing bidder ending up losing a similar amount, give or take a few cents. Of course, the winning bidder’s losses will be lower when compared to the second highest bidder, since he gains the auctioned dollar, but both end up losing when bidding is competitive.

Could the fate of India’s largest telecom companies be the same? Every passing day, they increase their bids to gain a higher share of the market. They are doing this by increasing capital expenditure, and a willingness to fund large operating losses in the hope of a glorious future, where all of this will be recouped.

In the three-headed slugfest between Bharti Airtel Ltd, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and the Vodafone-Idea combine, each entity has already spent somewhere between ₹2 trillion and ₹3 trillion in gross capital investments.

But the sharp rise in investments, especially since the entry of Reliance Jio, has also led to a shrinking of the market size. As the chart above shows, industry revenues have fallen by about a third since Reliance Jio’s entry. And this is before the new entrant’s latest salvo that involved a sharp cut in post-paid tariffs and international calling rates. Who knows what lies next?

In this backdrop, even a sizeable 50% market share may not amount to much in terms of profit potential. “We have seen spectrum auction bids and commercial decisions add up to an ‘escalation of commitment’ and undesirable outcomes, as things stand today,” Kotak’s analysts write in the report.

“The game (between telecom firms) has the potential to reach a stage where aggressive bids are placed just to force another player to exit; such aggression again reduces the size of the prize but a player can still look at the trade-off between reduced size of the prize and potentially higher share of it as a net positive. Commitments escalate easily,” they add.

Such scenarios haven’t been restricted to dollar-auction games in the past; they have played out often in real-life scenarios as well. In a paper published in the Journal of Marketing, researchers Eyal Biyalogorsky, William Boulding and Richard Staelin say that the occurrence of “escalation of commitment” phenomenon is a well documented one. They cite the examples of “the Vietnam War and Desert Storm, the Apollo moon missions, the Campeau–Federated merger, the coffee wars between Philip Morris and Procter & Gamble, the National Basketball Association draft etc.”, adding that the tendency to escalate commitments can be disastrous for firms, especially in hyper-competitive markets.

Kotak’s analysts say, “It is possible for a net-positive win-win outcome to emerge when players realize that the size of the prize and the cost associated with getting to a particular share matter as much as the share itself.” But this will involve so-called de-escalation bids, such as increasing tariffs and similar sane decisions. Now, who wants to bet on that?
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Post by Vasu »

Vodafone-Idea complete merger, create India’s largest mobile operator
The merger of Idea Cellular and Vodafone India has been completed, creating India’s biggest telecom service provider with over 408 million subscribers, the two companies said today. A new board has been constituted for the merged entity “Vodafone Idea Ltd’ with 12 directors, including six independent directors, and Kumar Mangalam Birla as its Chairman. The board has appointed Balesh Sharma as the CEO, the companies said in a joint statement.

The combination will have an all-India revenue market share of 32% and take the top slot in nine telecom circles, it said adding that both the Vodafone and Idea brands will continue.

The combined entity will have a broadband network of 3.4 lakh sites and distribution network with 17 lakh retail outlets.

“The merger is expected to generate Rs 14,000 crore annual synergy, including opex synergies of Rs 8,400 crore, equivalent to a net present value of approximately Rs 70,000 crore,” the statement said. The net debt of the company stood at Rs 1,09,200 crore on June 30, 2018.

“The equity infusion of Rs 6,750 crore at Idea and Rs 8,600 crore at Vodafone, coupled with monetisation of standalone towers of both companies for an enterprise value of Rs 7,850 crore, provides the company a strong cash balance of over Rs 19,300 crore post payout of Rs 3,900 crore to the Department of Telecom (DoT),” the statement said.

Moreover, it added, the company has an option to monetise over 11% stake in Indus (the tower company), amounting to a cash consideration of Rs 5,100 crore.

The combination will have a wide spectrum portfolio of about 1,850 MHz, over 2 lakh mobile sites and about 2.35 lakh kms of fibre. This will allow it to offer “superior voice and broadband connectivity across the country, covering 92% of the population and reaching nearly 5,00,000 towns and villages,” it said.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Singha »

just when you think this govt is serious about national security, comes another faceplant

lightreading.com
===============

Huawei (Finally!) Gets 5G Invite From India
Gagandeep Kaur

Huawei has finally been invited by India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to participate in the country's 5G field trials, after authorities were previously said to have excluded the Chinese equipment maker from those trials. (See India Joins US & Australia to Give Huawei, ZTE 5G Cold Shoulder – Reports.)

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and smaller Chinese vendor ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) did not feature on the initial list of vendors the DoT invited to participate in 5G trials and develop India-specific 5G services in partnership with telcos. That vendor list included Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC) and NEC Corp. (Tokyo: 6701).

But media reports now say that Huawei will conduct 5G tests in two Indian cities, including New Delhi. It will also work with app developers and academic institutions on the development of India-specific 5G services, according to those reports.

Indian authorities were previously said to have restricted the role of Huawei and ZTE in the country's 5G market, with security concerns cited as a possible reason. ZTE does not yet appear to have received an invitation from the Indian government regarding the 5G initiative.


The initial invitation to the vendors was based on the recommendation of a high-level 5G panel set up by India's government. Heading that panel was Arogyaswami Paulraj, a professor of engineering at Stanford University. Approached by Light Reading, and asked why Huawei was excluded from the 5G project, Paulraj said in an emailed response: "The government of India decides which original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are invited and when so, for trials. I am not in the government and not involved in such matters." :((


India's government believes 5G could provide a huge boost to the country's economy. It is especially keen on developing services for agriculture, manufacturing and the social sector. For that reason, authorities are taking steps to ensure India will be in a position to roll out 5G commercially by 2020.

Globally, both Huawei and ZTE have been barred from participating in the 5G market in Australia. Major US service providers have been warned off using the Chinese vendors ever since they were labeled a security risk in a 2012 government report.

— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading
Singha
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Singha »

not satisfied with blocking huawei in US, the US senators have also written to canada asking them to ban.
Suraj
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

And yet...
India dials Cisco, Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, says no to Chinese Huawei, ZTE
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has excluded Huawei and ZTE from its list of companies asked to partner it for trials to develop 5G use cases for India, indicating that New Delhi may well follow the US and Australia in limiting involvement of Chinese telecom equipment makers in the roll-out of the next-gen technology.

“We have written to Cisco, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia, and telecom service providers to partner with us to start 5G technology-based trials, and have got positive response from them,” telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan told ETTelecom.

“We have excluded Huawei from these trials,” she said, when asked if Huawei has been eliminated from the trials for security reasons. The government is planning to show case India-specific 5G use cases by early 2019.

People familiar with the matter said besides Huawei, the government has also not reached out to ZTE for the 5G trials.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by sum »

^^ Sigh...if only we had our own behemoth in this sector ( maybe a C-DOT)!
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Singha »

Suraj i think my report is a few weeks newer
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

Yes I saw that but it’s the ‘new Huawei India CEO’ saying it and the report I posted is GoI talking . Dr Paulraj of APSOH fame has stated in that same article that policy decisions are GoIs preserve alone .
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Vips »

Why India Inc’s biggest play next year will be by Mukesh Ambani, from connectivity, conteent to commerce.

First, he spent $36 billion to get you connected and hooked. Then, he invaded your bedroom. Very soon it will be a grab for your wallet. Ambani’s retail plans, online and offline, for 2019 will be defining India Inc strategy next year. Tighter ecommerce rules that will apply on foreign giants from February 2019 will make this strategy more potent.

Mukesh Ambani gave us the world’s largest mobile data and all-4G network for free voice calls, and rock bottom internet rates to get drunk on
data. We can now talk forever, stream videos, and shop for great bargains, while villagers can avail government schemes and register for benefit payments, download textbooks, access healthcare and education and transfer money riding along the highway of 150,000 miles of hi-tech fibre optic cable that’s enough to circumnavigate Earth six times. In its first year itself, Jio transmitted more data than any carrier ever worldwide, catapulting India to cross the US in the number of apps downloaded from the Google Play store.

Monthly data traffic per user has jumped 570% since Jio’s launch in September 2016, according to Morgan Stanley, as 18,000 cities and 20,000 villages got connected to the network.

Yet, connectivity is just the first piece of his quadruple play of connectivity, carriage, content and commerce. Together, the 4Cs form the foundation of his career’s most ambitious corporate wager. He even bought two of the largest cable companies, Hathaway and Den Networks, to complement JioGigaFibre and take his telecom architecture indoors to grab 80% of data consumption that typically happens within

This completed Ambani’s carriage plans, allowing him to add services on top, such as bundling optical fibre-based broadband with smart home solutions, or enterprise Cloud offerings for businesses. Go binge. But along with ubiquity, you need great content. So Jio simultaneously started shopping, scooping up media companies, sports franchises, online music and video streaming service startups.

With consumers gorging on 240 crore gigabytes of content every month, the Jio juggernaut is steamrolling anything coming its way. But even then, the economics looks dire, as the average revenue per user is now down to sub-$2 a month. Even an ambitious 30% operating margin for a 1 billion-plus market translates to $8 billion gross earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).

Doubling its revenue market share to a high 40% would only lead to a $3 billion EBITDA pie for Jio, after deploying 12 times more in investments. Mukesh Ambani would need a silver bullet.

That’s where retail and financial services come in. Now that Jio has connected the masses — getting 250 million of them and counting firmly in its ecosystem — Ambani will start commerce on his platform to make money and recoup the massive investment, the largest the country has ever seen, to sell fashion and food, electronics and financial services, and even advertising. Once the freebie seduction ends, the highend broadband connections will also come at a price.

Don’t be surprised then, if Jio and Reliance Retail — also the largest organised player in India — blends into one, or dovetails its strategy to create an omni-channel experience by enabling seamless engagement between the online and offline worlds.

Reliance sees its hybrid commerce platform as one of its biggest engines for growth, pitting it against ecommerce giants like Amazon or retailers like Walmart. By integrating the physical and digital marketplaces, Ambani is dreaming of a ‘Bharat-India Jodo’ enterprise that will provide high-speed cabled internet all over India to connect the 3 crore small merchants and shopkeepers who provide the last-mile physical market connectivity.

Ambani, a late re-entrant in the telecom business, has opened up the market to global tech and retailing titans as diverse as Alphabet, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon. Now, he will be their biggest threat. The way he assailed voice telephony — Reliance Jio Infocomm upended the entire
telecom sector’s profitability within two years with its brutal price wars. He is now taking the battle straight to Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest individual and founder of Amazon.

Consider the opportunity and the eventual prize. Bain & Co says India’s internet penetration is only 28% versus 88% of the US. Its $33 billion ecommerce market has trebled in three years, but it’s still just 3% of the overall retail market. And with GoI’s ecommerce regulations announcement, India’s richest man will have a good start.

GoI has said these are not new rules but clarification and tightening of existing rules. Amazon and the Walmart-owned Flipkart Group won’t be able to sell products from companies in which they have an equity interest. These companies are also barred from entering into exclusive agreements with sellers, or from offering deep discounts and cashbacks.

Moreover, if a vendor gets a minimum 25% of its purchases from a marketplace, it will be deemed as inventory. Amazon, in any case, is already hamstrung with existing rules disallowing it to hold ecommerce inventory locally. This prevents the retail giant from leveraging its globally renowned logistics prowess. Instead, tightened rules, some of which has been dubbed by experts as anti-consumer, will make Amazon look for other ways to keep the sales clock ticking.

Reliance Retail can invest in supply chain and logistics, while fusing a growing online presence in tandem with siblings like Jio. In 2019, this can be the big play for Mukesh Ambani. Cheap data and growing penetration of smarter handsets have opened up a Pandora’s Box for commerce and
payments in a country poised to be a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025, as estimated by Mckinsey. Almost at the same time, Ambani has become vocal in the raging debate on data localisation. He clearly states that ‘data colonisation’ is as bad as one India had to suffer prior to 1947. He wants India’s data to be controlled and owned by Indians and Indians alone.

Remember, Aadhaar’s database helped Jio mop up a lion’s share of its users within such a short span of time. With GoI tightening rules for global e-tailers, all homegrown players in theory can make a better play for the digital commerce market. Ambani’s big moves, given his scale advantage, can be 2019’s defining corporate play.

Jio has become profitable. But the real upside will be only when commerce and payments ride seamlessly on the telecom platform. That’s when investors will get the real bang for their buck. Till then, the price war in telecom will continue to be a race to the bottom. Rivals will keep breaking their backs — or simply fold up like the Tatas, Telenor or Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications — till Mukesh Ambani corners half the sector’s EBITDA for himself. Growth will also largely be exponential, not linear. So for ‘India’s Verizon’, it only makes sense to become Verizon plus Amazon. The only problem will be a policy change. But such a scenario seems unlikely for the moment.

In his last AGM speech, Ambani had said he is determined to ‘connect everyone and everything, everywhere’. His new commerce platform, he added, will ‘promote shared prosperity’. 2019 is the year he will start working on that promise
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/in ... 843180.ece

Sounds good! But language lacks clarity, is this chip produced in India, or by Samsung. The word "also" confuses. It's certainly designed in India, that much is certain! Is it accurate, though, to claim that this is the first chipset to be designed and developed in India? India has designed chips before. So what precisely is the claim here?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

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Reliance Jio takes first big step into fintech, enters PoS business.

Fintech seems to be the next segment that Mukesh Ambani's Reliance is aiming to disrupt. Payments bank was just the start. After acquiring over 200 million subscriber base, Reliance Jio is now eyeing the merchant community by entering the point-of-sale (PoS) segment. If an industry source is to be believed then the company has already launched its PoS services is six cities — Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata — on a pilot basis.

Merchants and retail provision stores will have to 'deposit' Rs 3,000 to get Reliance's PoS device; and for all debit and credit card transactions up to Rs 2,000 in value, the merchant discount rate (MDR) would be zero. MDR is the cost paid by a merchant to a bank every time a debit/credit card is swiped for payments in their stores.

Currently, the PoS accepts Reliance's own wallet Jio Money and National Payments Corporation of India's BHIM and will add other wallets soon. The device comes with QR Code scanner feature. Merchants will also be able to access loan against card receivables.

For its PoS devices, Jio is partnering with Hindustan Unilever Limited for acquiring merchants. According to the person quoted above, “HUL distribution persons will be incentivized for every merchant lead.” Going through largest FMCG brand’s distribution network also indicates the ambitious reach Reliance is eyeing for its PoS devices.

Reliance’s PoS bet is in line with its big e-commerce foray, where the company plans to adopt online-to-offline approach — a model that Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has pioneered and been replicated by Paytm in India. At the company's 41st Annual General Meeting, Ambani said, “We shall create this [online-to-offline new commercial platform] by integrating and synergising the power of Reliance Retail's physical marketplace with the fabulous strengths of Jio's digital infrastructure and services.”

Competition
Jio will compete with not just fintech companies but top banks too. Currently, banks dominate the PoS market with about 70% share. The move is also expected to impact niche VC-funded PoS players such as MSwipe, Ezetap, Pine Labs, Innoviti and PhonePe.

Commenting on this development, one of the largest independent PoS company MSwipe’s founder and CEO Manish Patel said, “Yes, Jio has launched a PoS terminal. However, the key objective seems to be more around automation of supply chain for kiranas for now and with preferred transaction processing commercials for customers of Jio Payments Bank.”

“The way I look at this is finally it appears to have dawned that merchants need a PoS rather than just a phone with an app which has been our narrative from day one, so feel vindicated. MSwipe has been battling big banks with very large balance sheets since day one this [Reliance Jio] is one more which will help grow a largely under-penetrated market,” he added.

There are nearly 300 million smartphone users, while the card holders have crossed 1,000-million mark in the country. According to the Reserve Bank of India, India had 42.68 million credit cards and 998.61 million debit cards in October 2018 as compared to 37.48 million credit cards and 861 million debit cards in March 2018. The total number of PoS terminals in the country stands at 3.4 million as compared to 3 million in March 2018. In October, the total number of PoS transactions through credit and debit cards was 554.45 million, and the total amount transacted was Rs 110,476 crore.

India's market for PoS terminals is poised to surpass $3 billion by 2024, according to Global Market Insights, Inc. Given the growing use of credit and debit cards coupled with substantial growth in the e-commerce sector and the government’s digital payments push, the PoS terminals industry is all set to grow at over 10% CAGR over the forecast period.

“Reliance Jio could become a big player in financial services. Their first move has happened,” says a top official at a Mumbai-based private-sector bank on condition of anonymity.

As its first financial services bet, Jio launched its payments bank in partnership with India's largest bank, State Bank of India. Also, the Jio Money wallet — apart from gaining from huge subscriber base – is also expected to gain from RBI's wallet interoperability decision in 2019.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by arun »

TRAI’s Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st Jan 2019 was released yesterday i.e. March 20th.

Total Telephone Subscribers (Million) ………. 1203.77
Overall Tele-density*(%) …………………………… 91.82
Broadband Subscribers (Million) ………………. 540.84

From TRAI here:

Clicky
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

BSNL is going the way of the dodo??

Employees not paid regularly, they seem to be collecting yearly payments on future billings after giving a 25% discount.

employees are morose, more than usual, and openly admit to some impending disaster/crisis due to "unions".
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by jaysimha »

general information
http://itu-apt.org/
World radio communications conference
New Delhi 12th June
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by JTull »

Desi GPS on cellphones? Isro in talks with 2 big chipmakers

What's the current status of 5G trials? We shouldn't allow 5G handsets unless they come with NAVIC chips.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by prahaar »

JTull wrote:Desi GPS on cellphones? Isro in talks with 2 big chipmakers

What's the current status of 5G trials? We shouldn't allow 5G handsets unless they come with NAVIC chips.
Why tie it to 5G? NAVIC capability could be mandated in consultation with leading OEMs and chipset manufacturers, but independently of the 5G. There is no direct dependency between the two.
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