Roundup of all the Telecom providers and Operators
The battle’s finally over ? Atleast IBN Live says so.
The long battle amongst the Telecom biggies for the aquisition of Hutch India might be over.
Vodafone has won the bid for $19 Billion.Essar is happy about the deal and the price. Vodafone is said to have even offered Essar to become a partner firm.
Hutch is expected to announce an official statement tomorrow
via [ibnlive]
Spice Mobile Phones which is being promoted by the Spice Telecom Group has come up with a rather interesting phone the S1000
Features
Specifications
| Network | GSM 850/900/1800/1900 |
| Connectivity | Wi-fi, Bluetooth ,IrDA |
| Memory | RAM 128 MBROM 64 MB
Expansion : Mini SD (512 MB in package) Up to 2GB |
| Display | 240×320 pixels ,65k TFT Touch screen with Handwriting Recognition |
| Camera | 1600×1200 pixels, flash,zoom,video recording |
| Tones | Polyphonic,MP3 |
| Battery | Talk time : upto 5 Hours Standby : 6 Days |
| Messaging | SMS,MMS, Email |
| Operating System | Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 5.0 Pocket PC Edition |
| Software | Word, Excel, PowerPoint Viewer, Java Enabled |
PriceThe handset is Priced at Rs.34999
The rumors have started again. Reports suggest that the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa group is believed to be considering a sale of its telecom business. The sale might include Hutchison Essar as well. Hutch has postponed its IPO in India so many times.
Vodafone has shown interest in taking over Hutchison Essar. Its willing to offer upto 13.5 Billion Dollars for the deal. Reliance is reported to have teamed up with Blackstone Ventures and is willing to offer upto 15 Billion Dollars.
Its interesting to note that Vodafone has an 10% stake in Bharti Airtel which is valued at close to 1.4 Billion pounds. But there is a no compete attached to this deal.
We still need to wait and see the turn of events.
Press Release
Nokia and Bharti Airtel sign USD 400 million network expansion, managed services contract
Reliance has launched mobile blogging for its customers. RCL has partnered with the Hyderabad-based mobile content solutions company IMI Mobile for moblogging. The service is priced at Rs 5 per MMS/SMS for posting a blog. The blogs are hosted on www.relianceinfo.com/mblog. In any case, it will take a while for moblogging to become a mass application.
via contentsutra and The Economic Times
BSNL aims to capture the low price market by launching handsets priced at Rs.1000 and below.
It is in talks with Taiwanese and Chinese handset manufacturers for rolling out the sub-Rs 1,000 handset, which will be offered on the GSM platform.
The telco will sell the mobiles under the ‘BSNL phones’ banner.Sources say that the mobiles will be based on single-chip technology. The SIM card will be non-removable and the mobile will remain on the BSNL network only. BSNL is not targeting the top-end market very aggressively. BSNL sees a low-cost handset a key to increase the market share.
It even expects a reasonable return of 12-14%.
Currently, the cheapest handset in India is monophonic and monochromic (black and white). It is on the GSM platform and is priced at Rs 1700. It offers only basic features. The cheapest CDMA handset is available for Rs 1,999.
via [ET]
Finnish mobile handset manufacturer Nokia and Reliance Communications Ltd have joined hands to market the Nokia 1255 mobile handset in India at a price of Rs 1,999.
thehindubusinessline reports
This is Nokia’s maiden offer of a CDMA handset in the sub Rs 2,000 range and is aimed at first time mobile users. There are, however, cheaper CDMA handsets from other manufacturers being offered by operators in the country.
Nokia 1255 is an entry level black and white handset and has features such as a two-way hands-free speakerphone, voice recorder and a calendar with an alarm clock among others.
The value-priced Nokia 1255 phone packs an extra-large feature set into an extra-small package. The 80-gram phone offers productivity tools such as a two-way handsfree speakerphone, voice recorder and a calendar with an alarm clock. Other fun features include two built-in games, 20 ringtones and a selection of user-selectable screen savers. In recognition of the need to stay in touch while minimizing downtime, the Nokia 1225 phone delivers up to four hours of talk time and up to 10 days of standby time. A partial list of additional features includes:The Government has alloted low power 3G spectrum to MTNL, BSNL, Hutch and Bharti for testing.TRAI will finalize pricing and allocation details by end of this month.Sources say that 3G spectrum allocation will be made available for less than a month. Strength of spectrum allocation will be 1,000 times less than the actual 3G spectrum.
TATA Teleservices had sought 3G trial spectrum but was not considered.Reliance had sought the 1900 MHz Band which did not conform to the International CDMA 3G trial norms.
But if Reliance sought the 800 Mhz band for Testing EVDO , it might be considered
The government’s spectrum allocation to telcos is mainly for equipment testing and
interference measurement.
via [ibn-live]
Online Social Networking is the latest buzz create by sites such as Orkut, MySpace etc.
The buzz which is now restricted to the PC may soon be seen on your mobile phone.
It can be called Mobile Communites as ET points out .
There are nearly 3 million users of GPRS in India. Operators and Service Providers see this
new buzz as a Money game to tap this elite crowd.
Mobile2win, Indiagames and Onmobile are in talks with Airtel and Reliance to launch theme
based communities across operators. Mumbai-based Indiagames is launching tadkalive , a
gaming-based community across mobile and internet.
Airtel and Reliance accept that there is a huge potential in these mobile communities are
about to unveil big plans around it.
I would like to take you through the various plans available from Airtel for GPRS.
Airtel does not advertise supporting EDGE through their Mobile Office service but you
cansee a noticeable difference in the latency if your handset supports EDGE like my Nokia
6630. Airtel has a Data Card service which competes with Reliance CDMA Data Card and
Tata Indicom CDMA Data Card.
Here are the plans for Airtel Postpaid User
Plan 1
Rs.399 per month
100 MB Free Usage
Rs.5 per extra MB
Plan 2
Rs.599 per month
1GB Free Usage
Rs.3 per extra MB
Plan 3
Rs. 799 per month
1.5 GB Free Usage
Rs.3 per extra MB
The tarrifs are taken from Airtel’s site
The above plans not only allow you to connect to the internet from your mobile phone but also allow you to use your Laptop or PC . Its can be be a life saver in a place where you dont have internet access otherwise and cannot find a cyber cafe.
Airtel and Hutch are coming up with Zero Rental GPRS service as pointed out by Mobile Pundit.
Airtel Chennai offers a zero-rental GPRS service for its post-paid customers at pay-per-use rate of Re 1 per 100 kilobytes. Which works out to Rs 10 per 1MB.
Hutch is also planning to bring out something similar.
Its great news for those people who wish to try the service but not willing to shell out a monthly rental.
Bharti Airtel president Manoj Kohli announced that Microsoft Windows
Mobile 5.0 will be available to Airtel customers on the latest HP I-Paq
and I-Mate handsets. He added that this tieup puts Bharti Airtel among
115 mobile operators, who offer the Windows mobile solutions worldwide.
Indian Telecom giant Bharti Airtel has announced a tie up with Microsoft, which will enable Airtel users to access various MS Office applications and other multimedia products on their handsets. Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 will target an estimated four million small and medium enterprise potential users with access to MS Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer), multi media functionalities like camera, MP3 and video recording.
via [money control]
Technorati Tags: Airtel, Bharti+Airtel, Microsoft, MS Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, HP I-Paq, I-Mate, Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0
Aircel Cellular, one of India’s leading mobile service providers, has launched Phone Book, a unique and useful external phone book service which offers subscribers unlimited memory to store their contacts’ addresses. This service will be useful for all subscribers who have lots of addresses to store but the memory in their handsets is a limiting factor, and/or those who tend to lose their cell phones.
Aircel’s Pbook:
Aircel subscribers can register for this service by messaging Pbook to 2222. Unlimited phone contacts can be stored in Aircel’s Phone Book. The security of individual phone books is taken care of through the individual user’s password given at the time of registering for the service. The service is available at a nominal fee of Rs 25 per month.
Airtel -cellular telephony operator, on Thursday announced a 100-million dollar deal with software major IBM to deliver a suit of new product services and applications under a single delivery platform.
“Bharti has partnered with IBM to deliver India’s first “service delivery platform” to enable it to deliver a suit of new range of services to its over 25 million customers,” Manoj Kohli, Bharti-Airtel President, said. The cellular operator is also investing over 100 million dollars in this delivery platform, he added.
IBM, which has been managing the telecom network operations of Bharti-Airtel for a while, will develop, manage and operate the service delivery platform for Airtel.
The platform will enable Bharti to have an integrated environment that will incorporate all of Airtel’s content and application services under one platform, Kohli went on to say.
RIM’s Anil Ambani is now eyeing the GSM Market in India. He plans to invest over Rs.1600 cr for the same.Reliance Telecom Limited, an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company, which operates GSM service in eight circles mainly in east and north-eastern states, has worked out expansion plans to increase coverage to about 4,300 towns from the existing 330 towns, according to sources.
RTL operates GSM services in Kolkata, West Bengal, Assam, the north-east, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh circles.
The expansion plans for Anil Ambani’s company comes in the wake of reports that the GSM-based mobile service has shown phenomenal growth in India where out of the 100 million mobile subscriber base, the GSM-based mobile user base is 80 million.
A company official confirmed the development, but declined to give further details.
