Category: telecom

Impact of 1 Paise/ SMS on Other Operators

Reliance Communications has launched two add-on plans for SMS in both pre-paid and post-paid categories. One plan brings down the price of SMS (local/STD/roaming) to Rs0.01 per SMS for monthly rental of Rs11. The other plan allows unlimited SMS for Rs30/25 per month (Re 1 per day). RCOM derives less…

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Airtel Turbo Plan – Roaming Rates Slashed

Bharti Airtel appears to be under severe pressure to compete the new operators as well as the Mighty Reliance Mobile which is now being offered to customers on both GSM and CDMA Platform. Bharti Airtel has announced the launch of new plan called Airtel Turbo – Reduced Roaming Rates. Airtel…

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Tariff cuts spur subscriber adds + Multiple SIM ownership

GSM mobile subscribers net adds were 10.3Mn in Oct-09 vs. 8.6MM in Sep-09 (excluding RCOM, Tata DoCoMo), up 20% M/M. The net add numbers saw broad-based increase with ~50% increase in net adds for Vodafone and Aircel (except BSNL that declined ~50%). Vodafone India net adds increased 51% to 3Mn,…

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Consolidation is inevitable – No Business Case for new Operators

UBS hosted a 2 day event for the Executives of Indian Telecom Industry. Here are the key takeaways from the meet. The current tariff structure is likely to put pressure on revenue and profitability in the short term. Consolidation is likely to happen in the next 12-18 months New operators…

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Per Second Billing War – Chronology of Events

Tata DoCoMo and Aircel set on fire the Per Second Billing Tariff in July-09, which will go in History as one of them most disruptive Telecom Tariffs. Since then, operators were reducing tariffs halfheartedly. However, as consumers started to shift to Per Second Billing ditching incumbent services, the telecom tariff…

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Local Calls at 10 Paise + STD 25 Paise – A Raja’s Dream

A. Raja, Indian Telecom Minister met with the heads of 17 Telecom companies in New Delhi to get feeling of the sector ahead of 3G auction. A Raja has said that there may be a reduction in termination charges among operators, which would result in lowering of mobile tariffs. The…

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Idea Cellular – ARPU – MoU Down in Q2

Per Second Calling Tariff Plans by DoCoMo and Aircel has dent into the bottom line of most Telcos. Idea Cellular the flip flop story in Indian GSM Wireless Space reported earnings for Sept quarter. ARPU down QoQ from 232 to 209 MOU down from 399 to 375 The management has…

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TRAI Paper on – M&A + Licensing + Spectrum

TRAI has released a paper seeking industry’s views on the following issues, Licensing issues – Uniform license fee, extending license period to perpetuity, delinking license from spectrum, cap on number of operators per circle, cap on spectrum held by an operator Mergers & Acquisition – need to ease existing norms…

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