Airtel offers $1 mn sponsorship for CWG 2010

In a boost to the crisis-ridden Commonwealth Games (CWG), telecom major Airtel is understood to have offered sponsorship of USD 1 million (about Rs 4.5 crore) to the organisers.

According to sources in the know of the development, talks were held between the firm and the Organising Committee (OC) of the CWG, which will be held here from October 3-14.

When contacted, a company spokesperson declined to comment.

Airtel's sponsorship offer is a much needed relief to the organising committee, which has been struggling to rope in sponsors for the event, with most of the corporate houses shying away from the games.

Coca Cola, Reebok and Hero Honda are among the few private firms that have come forward. The OC is eyeing Rs 390 crore revenue from sponsorships.

According to OC officials, a total of 10 sponsors and partners of the CWG have committed to giving Rs 390 crore despite the Railways, the lead partner, yet to give its promised Rs 100 crore. Other sponsors have also delayed their contributions.

Besides Railways, other PSUs who have committed sponsorship money are Air India (Rs 35 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs 50 crore) and NTPC (Rs 50 crore). All sponsorship money will not necessarily be in cash as some will be in kind also.

Telenor targets 8% market share, committed to India investments

Uninor, a telecom operator, has said its foreign partner Telenor was committed to its investment in the joint venture with Unitech. Norwegian telecom firm Telenor has 67.25% stake in Uninor (a joint-venture between Telenor and Unitech) and was awarded Unified Access Service (UAS) licence along with start-up spectrum for nation-wide mobile services in 2008. It's target is to secure 8% market share by 2018.

Nine months after its debut in the Indian mobile-phone market, Telenor has accumulated about $ 556 million in operating losses. Uninor has stated that its ambition is to focus on being best on three things. In other Asian markets where Telenor operates, it is best-positioned on distribution and it wants to replicate that in India too.

Uninor is offering services in various circles and has accumulated a subscriber base of over 90 lakh at the end of August this year and has claimed to grown at 32% over the previous month.

Delhi to host India Telecom 2010 from Dec 9

The fifth edition of India Telecom will be held here from December 9-11. The event holds a theme 'Broadband for All' and provides the best platform for service providers, manufacturers, content providers and others.

Communications and Information Technology Minister A Raja said India had become the second largest telecom network in the world with a total subscriber base of more than 670 million at the end of July this year. According to him, in the last five years, urban teledensity had risen from 26 per cent to more than 125 per cent while rural density had gone up from just 1.73 per cent to more than 27 per cent.

The event was launched in December 2006. Last year, it had attracted more than 250 exhibitors from 28 countrie

Airtel gets RBI nod to start virtual wallet service

Bharti Airtel, a telecom player, has got the approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to collect a maximum of Rs 5,000 from customers, which can be converted to virtual money stored on mobile phones, and can be used at outlets that have a tie-up with Airtel.

All leading mobile phone companies are also slated to get the ‘semi-closed wallet’ licence over the next couple of months. Currently, the country has more than 650 million mobile users and all telecom companies are looking at offering a range of financial services, including the electronic version of the leather wallet, which can be used to make secure payments across a wide spectrum of goods and services covering all sectors, Such concepts are already operational in Japan, South Korea, parts of China and certain markets in Europe.

Earlier this year, RBI in its annual monetary policy said that it was looking to use mobile phones as a medium for taking banking facilities to the remote and far-flung areas. According to the RBI guidelines, the pre-paid value that is being loaded will be distinct from talktime. In other words, the telecom operator will not be able to create money. For the consumer, this implies, they will not be able to exchange this money for talktime.

Uninor gets 2.2 mn new users in August

Uninor, a new telecom operator, has announced that it added 2.2 million new subscribers in August, taking its total user base to nearly 9.1 million. According to a statement issue d by the company, “This is the highest net add in a month since we launched services last December. The August numbers place us as the third highest GSM operator pan-India in terms of net-adds.

Uninor, in which Norway's Telenor has 67.25 per cent stake with the rest being held by Unitech, was one of the eight new operators who were awarded telecom licences in January 2008. Uninor operates only in 13 out of 22 telecom circles nationwide.

Recently, it introduced the concept of 'dynamic pricing' which offers up to 60% discount on calls, reportedly making Uninor the best value for money proposition in the market. Uninor has said that it is eyeing a 8% market share of the GSM mobile segment, which has over 481 million subscribers.It has managed to capture 1.89% market share in the first nine months of its operations.

India's GSM subscriber base rises by 2.89% in Aug

India's GSM mobile subscribers base has gone up 2.89% in August with the addition of over 13.51 subscribers. According to a data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the total number of subscribers in the country crossed 481 million in August as against 468 million the previous month.

Bharti Airtel added over 2.03 million subscribers in August, a growth of 1.46 percent over the previous month, to have a total of 141.25 million subscribers. It was followed by Vodafone Essar, which added over 2.3 million subscribers, a growth of 2.7 percent, taking its total numbers to 113.78 million.

Idea Cellular signed over 1.99 million subscribers, a growth of 2.81 percent, taking the total number of its subscribers to 72.74 million. The company now has a market share of 15.10 percent. State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, with 14.61 percent market share, added over 2.29 million subscribers, a growth of 3.37 percent, taking its total subscriber base to 70.36 million.

Bharti India's mobile handset business

Bharti has announced that its entry in the country's booming mobile handset business as Beetel, the group firm, unveiled eight models in the Rs 1,750-Rs 7,000 price range. Bharti Airtel is a mobile service provider and it has more than 140 million subscribers. A few days back,m it also bought Zain Telecom in Africa with the aim to expand.

Mr Vinod Sawhny, executive director and CEO, Beetel Teletech said, “The market is huge and there is a room for Indian players... Phones in the range of Rs 2,000-Rs 6,000 are witnessing 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of feature-rich phones at affordable prices.”

Currently, India's mobile handset market is growing with shipments of about 130 million mobile devices.

Idea's new plan in Rajasthan to make calling affordable

Idea Cellular, a mobile operator, has unveiled a 'Idea candy voucher' in Rajasthan. This voucher will allow the Idea customers to make calls to any mobile or landline network in Rajasthan at inexpensive rates.

This voucher can be used per minute and per second billing plans. The pre-paid customers can make calls to mobile and landline numbers at 30 paise per min on the per minute billing plan, and 1 paisa for 2 seconds on the per second plan.

The mobile operator is expecting that nearly 25 lakh customers will avail this voucher for Rs 10. Mr Sunil Kataria, circle head, Rajasthan, IDEA Cellular, said, “We believe that this product will drive growth for Idea in the largely under-penetrated market of Rajasthan.”

New packs Idea Delhi

IDEA Cellular, has announced the launch of pocket friendly instant daily packs for its nearly 30 lakh subscribers in Delhi & NCR region. The new and affordable daily packs come with huge benefits for prepaid customers who can now choose from an array of services such as Idea to Idea night calling, Free Local/STD minutes and SMS & GPRS offerings at extremely attractive rates.

Idea has launched three new Daily Packs which offer 11 minutes of free calling (Local & STD); Free 60 minutes of local Idea night calling (11 pm to 8 am); and a pack which allows the young users to send free 125 SMS’ nationally or locally everyday. Each of the 3 offerings on Idea Daily Packs will be charged at just Rs. 5 per day.

UN Reports India has more mobile phones than Toilets

That India is the booming market for cell phones cannot be denied any longer with the latest UN reports that finds that there are more mobile phones than toilets in the country. Working on the sanitation level and improvements globally, the UN agency found that Indian mobile subscribers hit nearly 563.73 million that is quite big for the population of 1.2 billion population.

But only 336 million people have proper access to proper sanitation and toilets. The study published this shocking news at the United Nations University. Zafar Adeel a professor of UN University said that it is tragic and irony for a country likeIndia which is showing growth and development progress in the fields of technology but has had no enough access to toilets. They can talk overmobile phones but cannot experience the proper sanitation.
Now that proves why mobile makers always target India for quick launch of new products and models of mobile phones. You find every brand – Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and now the local ones too competing to get bigger market share

TRAI Reports that 17 million mobile users were added in July

The Telecom Regulatory Authority in India has recently reported that in the month of July this year, 17 million new mobile phone users were added. With this big figure of 17 million, now the total number of mobile subscribers in India has reached 652.42 million as per the TRAI reports. The recent figures clearly indicates that mobile phone market in India is growing at a fast pace and large number of subscribers are added every month.
In June this year, the total telephone subscribers in the country including mobile phone as well as landline were 671.69 million and this figure rose to 688.38 by July end.  With the addition of large number of subscribers in July, the teledensity which is the figure showing telephones per 100 people has reached 58.17%.
Bharti Airtel grabbed the first position showing the growth in the wireless category as it made an addition of 2.6 million subscribers. Next comes the Reliance Communications with new 2.5 million subscribers. Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Aircel and Tata Teleservices respectively added 2.4 million, 1.8 million, 1.6 million and 2.3 million new subscribers in the month of July.

Idea will not be selling its stake to Etisalat

There was news some days back that Etisalat has intentions of buying the stake in the 2 telecom service providers of India called Reliance and Idea. While Reliance Communications has already denied that they are not selling their stakes to Etisalat and now Idea has also denied the news.
The official spokesperson of Idea Cellular, Rajat Mukherjee stated that their company has no plans of selling any stakes to Etisalat and he also stated that moreover they have not been approached by Etisalat for any such deal. He said that these news are purely speculations.
The CEO of International Investments at Etisalat, Jamal Al Jarwan was earlier reported to be saying that “There are many options in India, and we are not excluding Idea Cellular.”
The Etisalat DB Telecom Pvt Ltd is a joint venture between the DB Group of India and Etisalat and in this JV, 45% of the shares are owned by Etisalat. The services of Etisalat DB Telecom Pvt Ltd are offered under the Cheers Mobile Brand.

BSNL:Ready with infrastructure for Mobile Number Portability

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has recently stated that they are ready with all the needed infrastructure to support the mobile number portability which is scheduled to get into operation from 31^st of October this year. The officiating chairman and the director of BSNL, Gopal Das stated that “We are ready with the infrastructure and will meet this deadline.”
The service of mobile number portability (MNP) will allow the mobile phone users to change their mobile operators without changing their mobile phone numbers. The deadline of MNP has been delayed various times. Initially the MNP was supposed to be implemented on 31^st of December, 2009 but this deadline was then extended till 31^st March, 2010 and then further the deadline was extended to 30^th June, 2010. And again when operators were not ready with the infrastructure the new deadline for the implementation was given at 31^st October 2010.
But now it seems that the latest deadline of 31^st October will also not be met as it has been reported that the US based Telcordia Technologies could move to the court in order to protect its business ambition of MNP in JV with MNP Interconnection.

Mobile Phone connectivity will now be available in Amarnath Cave

There is another reason for all the pilgrims of Amarnath Yatra to be happy as now they will be able to keep themselves connected to their loved ones through their mobile phone as the shrine of Amarnath will connected with the mobile through BSNL network from now.
The mobile connectivity in this area of South Kashmir will enable the pilgrims to use their handsets even in the areas of high altitudes like Chandanwari, Baltal and the cave shrine which is located at 3880 m of height.
Sachin Pilot who is the Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology made the first call from the Amarnath cave to the Governor N.N. Vohra and thus launched the service.
More than 4 lakh people visit the holy shrine of Amarnath every year and the BSNL mobile connectivity will surely help them to stay in touch with their family members during 2 months of their pilgrimage period.

Airtel Bill Payment now possible through Netbanking

If you wanted to pay your Airtel Bill for your Broadband or Mobile phone , you had to use a Credit card or Debit card till now. If you are one of those people who prefer to use Netbanking to pay your bills then good news for Airtel users. They have added the Netbanking option under payments and very have included the list of supported banks below.

Allahabad Bank
AXIS Bank
Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait
Bank of Baroda – Corporate NetBanking
Bank of Baroda – Retail NetBanking
Bank of Maharashtra
Bank Of India
Central Bank of India
Centurion Bank of Punjab
Citibank Debit Card
City Union Bank
Corporation Bank
Deutsche Bank
Dhanlaxmi Bank
Federal Bank
ICICI
IDBI
Indian Bank
Indian Overseas Bank
IndusInd Bank
Jammu And Kashmir Bank
Karnataka Bank
Karur Vyasa Bank
Kotak Mahindra Bank
Lakshmi Vilas Bank
Oriental Bank of Commerce
PNB
Punjab National Bank Corporate NetBanking
SBI
Shamrao Vitthal Co-operative Bank
South Indian Bank
State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur
State Bank of India Debit Card
State Bank of Indore
State Bank of Patiala
State Bank of Travancore
Tamilnad Mercantile Bank
The Royal Bank of Scotland N.V.
Union Bank of India Debit Card
Union Bank Of India
YES Bank

Bad news for HDFC account holders as net banking is not available for this facility. But some users are reporting that HDFC does work.
This might not be breaking news but we hope its useful to you guys !

GTL acquires 17,500 towers from Aircel!!

GTL Infrastructure has recently stated that they are done with the work of acquiring 17,500 towers from Aircel for an amount of Rs.8026 crore. In the January this year, it was agreed by GTL that they will buy the towers of telecom operator Aircel with its 21,000 tenants for an amount of Rs.8400 crore but later on the price was reduced after the diligence process of the assets of the towers were performed.
This acquisition will make the GTL Infra to become the largest neutral and independent tower company in the world with 32,500 towers in 23 of the telecom circles. This deal will also help GTL to get additional revenue of Rs.720 crore with increase of 3% every year for the next 15 years. The deal will also help to increase the Average Revenue Per User in the class A cities and metros and will enable them to attract the 2G and 3G BWA operators. GTL infrastructure is a part of the Manoj Tirodkar- owned Global group and is the only tower company in the country which is not owned by a telecom operator.