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This tracker has been compiled from external sources and does not necessarily reflect the views of the company. Links provided will take you to the full articles appended at the end of the file.

© 2008 Zenith Optimedia.

 

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41. Every Second Indian Will Go Mobile By 2012

31 August, 2008

 

With India now adding 8-10 million mobile subscribers every month, up to half the nation's population-or one in every two citizens-will own a mobile phone in India by the middle of 2012.

 

According to Business Monitor International, a renowned London-based research firm, 612 million mobile subscribers by 2012 will help India clock a mobile teledensity of roughly 51% by 2012. This scorching pace of growth is unlikely to falter unless the sector faces unforeseen policy disasters or if India's operators fail to roll out their networks.

 

International Telecom Union's (ITU) projections are in the same range.India is already the world's second largest mobile market, behind China's 500 plus million mobile subscriber base.

 

Increasing incomes, changing lifestyles and lower cost of technology are allowing more and more Indians to ride the telecom wave. The new numbers overtake earlier estimates, including from UBS, Citigroup and Credit Suisse, predicting a mobile population of 400-450 million by March 2010. Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers have been more even conservative, betting on a base of just 400 million by 2010.

 

However, India will reach this milestone in 2009 itself. India's mobile revolution has been a huge social leveler, with the growing number of users tying a diverse nation in a manner rarely seen before.

 

Its youth are expected to contribute significantly to these surging numbers. Sir Richard Branson, founder, Virgin Group, which tied up with Tata Teleservices to launch branded services in India recently said, "An exciting market, with over 215 million Indians aged 14-25 years. Over the next three years we expect to be adding 50 million new youth subscribers.''

 

While companies like Virgin are currently focused on the urban market, it is clear that the next set of growth will come from B and C category cities as well as rural India. Mobile penetration of this magnitude has the ability to revolutionalize long distance learning and health care quickly reaching some of the most far flung and difficult terrains.

 

Where mobile content is concerned most analysts agree that, largely on the back of India's popular film industry, music services will grow very quickly, even if other content related revenue lags behind.

 

Given that a reasonable part of the population by 2010 will be children below 14 and senior citizens, it seems mobile access among the youth and working classes will be more in the range of 70-80%. In policy terms, government needs to quickly turn its focus on redirecting funds for rural mobile access, manage spectrum efficiently and invite multi-billion dollar investments at a pan-India level to fuel this already scorching telecom growth.

 

 

 

42. Mobile Growth Hits New Peak; 9.22 M Wireless Users In July

26 August, 2008

 

Mobile subscriber base in the country is growing at such a fast pace that operators are breaking the record for net additions almost every second month.

 

In July, mobile operators, both GSM (global system for mobile communications) and CDMA (code division multiple access) together, added 9.22 million subscribers, which is the highest ever additions in a single month till now. The previous best was 8.94 million in June.

 

Airtel tops
Bharti Airtel with 2.69 million new subscribers was the biggest gainer during the month. Vodafone Essar added 1.7 million new subscribers while Reliance Communication got 1.5 million new CDMA subscribers. Both Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices added just over a million wireless users in July.

 

GSM operators own 218.9 million subscribers while CDMA players have nearly 77 million users. Reliance Communications with 45 million subscribers leads the CDMA operator’s pack.

 

More operators
India along with China is now among the top two countries that add maximum number of wireless subscribers every month. The growth in the wireless segment is expected to cross the 10 million per month mark as new operators start rolling out their services. Videocon, Unitech, Reliance and Tata Telservices have announced plans to launch GSM mobile services by the end of the year.

 

This should assist the Government in achieving its target of 500 million subscribers by 2010. In the wire line segment, the subscriber base has decreased further to 38.76 million as against 38.92 million subscribers in June as subscribers prefer to take a mobile connection. State owned telecom company BSNL, which owns most of the fixed line subscribers had announced a slew of initiatives including lower STD tariffs in a bid to arrest the slide in fixed line telephone subscriber base.

 

No fixed line revival seen
However, there are no signs of a revival though industry experts reckon that introduction of services like broadband and IPTV could improve the business case for fixed line telephony. With this the total number of telephones in the country reached 334.84 million of which wireless subscribers base stood at 296.08 million. Overall tele-density is now 29.08 per cent. According to the numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Monday, the broadband subscriber base has reached 4.57 million with 19 lakh new subscribers in July. Broadband user base has almost doubled from 2.47 million in July 2007. Broadband usage is expected to get a major boost over the next year as operators start rolling out 3G and WiMax services. Introduction of Internet telephony is also expected to give a fillip to broadband growth in the country.

 

 

43. Bharti Airtel Crosses 75 Mn Subscriber Base

17 August, 2008

 

India's largest private telecom company Bharti Airtel said it has crossed the 75 million customer mark to become the fourth largest in-country mobile operator in the world.

 

Bharti Airtel is now behind China Mobile, China Unicom and American AT&T in terms of subscriber base, a company statement said.

 

The subscriber figure include customers from all business units of the company--mobile services, telemedia services and enterprises services-- the statement said. The mobile services devision has a customer base of 72.07 million as of July, 2008, it added.

 

The mobile business provides mobile and fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 23 telecom circles.  

 

Commenting on the landmark Bharti Airtel CEO and Joint Managing Director Manoj Kohli said, "We are happy to have achieved this milestone of being the largest integrated telco in the country, in customer terms. For us, the benchmark of real leadership is customer delight and would like to thank all our customers for placing their faith in us."

 

The company had crossed the 60 million customer mark in February 2008 and the 50 million mark in October 2007, thereby becoming one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the world, the statement added.

 

China Mobile with 414.5 million customers as on June 2008 is at the No 1 position followed by China Unicom with 170.7 million subscriber base.

 

AT&T is marginally ahead of Bharti with a subscriber base of 72.9 million in June this year.

 

 

44. BSNL To Provide Zero-Rent Telephones For Rural Areas

30 July, 2008

 

In a bid to tap the rural market, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on Wednesday said it would provide rent-free basic telephones to customers in villages.

 

This scheme would commence from August 1 and would be made applicable only for those rural telephone exchanges that have the capacity of 1,000 phone lines, BSNL General Manager Hari Shankar Sharma said in Kota.

 

For STD facility, the consumer would have to deposit Rs 500 as security money, which would be refunded when the consumer disconnects from the facility.

 

 

 

45. RCOM launches GSM service in Delhi

3 August, 2008

 

Mobile telephony consumers may soon have a wider choice of operators, with the soft launch of GSM service by Anil Ambani group's RCOM in Delhi to become the first company in India to offer both CDMA and GSM services.

 

RCOM has been offering CDMA-based mobile service throughout the country and has recently been allowed by the Government to start GSM service simultaneously. The company has chosen the national capital to start its services under the dual technology licence.  

 

To begin with, the company has offered over 1,000 connections to its employees as part of soft launch and after review RCOM would soon offer services on commercial basis, sources close to the development said.

 

Asked whether services would be offered in other parts of the country too simultaneously, sources said the company has been rolling out networks in all circles on a war footing and as soon as the network is ready the services would start but no deadline has been fixed for this.

 

In fact the company would hire passive infrastructure from another group company Reliance Infratel which owns the tower business of the CDMA company.

 

RCOM has said the rollout of GSM services would help it target the fast-growing subscriber additions of 7 million subscribers every month and address the telecom requirements of the existing 172.

 

 

46. Idea Dials Into Mumbai

20 August, 2008

 

Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla (left), Chairman, Aditya Birla Group, and Mr Sanjeev Aga, Managing Director, Idea Cellular, at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.

 

Armed with an investment plan of Rs 800 crore, Idea Cellular today became the fifth GSM operator to offer mobile telephony services in Mumbai. The Aditya Birla group company will offer mobile services on a cellular network that will have a capacity of handling up to 1.5 million subscribers.

 

As Mumbai is one of the country’s most lucrative telecom circles, Idea expects to garner 20 per cent of the new telecom subscribers here, Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said, at a news conference. “Our basic strategy in Mumbai will be to migrate dissatisfied customers of other networks to Idea. Which is why we are starting with one thousand cell sites, which is the largest ever in the world for a city launch,” said Mr Birla. The country’s sixth largest telco will manage to break even in Mumbai by four years, said Mr Birla.

 

Idea had got the DoT’s nod for starting services in Mumbai back in 2006. However, its plans kept getting delayed owing to the spectrum crunch in the country.

 

For its Mumbai operations alone, Idea is in the process of investing Rs 800 crore by the end of the current fiscal. It has already invested Rs 650 crore till date; this includes the Rs 203-crore payments towards licence fee, said Mr Himashu Kapania, Director-Operations, Idea Cellular.

 

Brand promotion
The company has also launched its data cards and GSM payphones in Mumbai. As part of its strategy to promote the Idea brand, it will roll out about 60 exclusive outlets in the city, according to its Chief Marketing Officer, Mr Pradeep Shrivastava.

 

The company will provide both pre-paid and post-paid mobile connections to its potential customers.

 

Idea will launch cellular services in Bihar, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Orissa in the next six months, said Mr Sanjeev Aga, Managing Director, Idea Cellular.

 

In Bihar, the company is expected to set up operations by coming November. Ericsson is the common network vendor for Idea Cellular in western India.

 

Reacting to the development, the Idea Cellular scrip hit an intra-day high of Rs 85.5, before settling at Rs 84.2, up 2.81 per cent on the BSE.

 

 

 

47. Shyam Tele Gets Spectrum For All-India Rollout

30 August, 2008

 

Mobile operator Shyam Telecom, in which Russian communications major Sistema holds a majority stake, has become the first of the new telecom players to get pan-India spectrum for launching mobile services. The company has been allotted radio frequencies on the CDMA technology platform. New GSM licensees such as Datacom, Unitech, Loop Telecom and Swan have been given start-up spectrum, but this has been largely restricted to the southern circles in the country.

 

ET has learnt that communications minister A Raja has already approved the allocation of spectrum to Shyam Telecom. Earlier this year, Shyam-Sistema had announced that the company would offer mobile services across India on the CDMA platform.

 

The company also bagged licences for 21 circles except Rajasthan, where it already offers services under the brand name Oasis. Shyam also becomes the third private pan-India player to offer services on the CDMA platform.

 

Sistema president Alexander Goncharuk recently told ET that the company would increase its stake in Shyam to 74 per cent over a period of time. Sistema has already invested about $500 million in India - it paid the Rs 1,651 crore licence fee for Shyam. Sistema also plans to finance its investments by utilising money under the Rupee-Rouble debt agreement between India and Russia.

 

 

 

48. Airtel Launches Virtual Campus

15 August, 2008

 

Telecom operator Airtel has announced the launch of ‘Airtel Mobile Campus’, a virtual place on the move. This feature helps converge Web, Wireless application protocol and SMS and gives a new dimension to mobile as a simple, convenient device for entertainment on the go.

 

Users will be able to upload and share photos and videos or blast an SMS to their circle of friends on Campus, express themselves through mini blogs, give shape to their aspirations with contests and applications or participate in discussions or forums on the campus. They also get night and weekend calls @ 25p, SMS @10p and earn rewards on the basis of the activities they engage in on Airtel Mobile Campus. The CEO, Bharti Airtel, Mobile Services, Andhra Pradesh, Mr T. Elango, in a statement said this innovative service give shape to aspirations of users through unique community engagement initiatives and communicate the way they want to, anytime anywhere. The venture promises to enable a segment of mobile users to stay in touch with their world at affordable cost.

 

 

49. Tata Indicom’s New Positioning Following An Emotional Approach

11 August, 2008

 

Tata Indicom has undergone a major repositioning exercise along with a new punchline ‘Suno Apne Dil Ki Awaaz (‘Listen to Your Heart’). As the company draws almost 85% of its market share from prepaid subscribers who reside in small towns, the repositioning has first addressed the core target group of prepaid users, the ambitious lot in smaller towns.

 

The advertisements starts with narrow lanes of a small town.”Ye narrow minded galiyan kahin to jaake khulengi.” Next shot of a girl waking up in the morning. Her room is full of her pictures with sports awards and medals.

 

She starts her run around the town passing farms and bridges on her way. Tries to outrun a train. “Ziddi armaanon ke koi speed limit nahi hoti.”

 

She receives a call on her Tata Indicom. Gets to know she's been selected for a game and has to go right away. “Tata Indicom.Taaki aap aur aapke sapno ke beech kuch bhi na aa sake aur aap sun sakein apne dil kee awaaz.”

 

The ad ends as she leaves for her journey. This ad will be followed by TVCs that will carry the budding sprinter’s success to city and making it big as an athlete, addressing the postpaid and VAS user concentrated in the metros.

 

The message delivered in this ad that Tata Indicom helps you listen to what the person on the other end is saying clearly, the emotional benefit is that it also allows for you to listen to your own inner voice.

 

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