Arun

Belated Birthday Wishes, Pankaj Verma !

Rediff.com Surajeet Das Gupta | November 16, 2005 Hold your breath, and look into the air. See something? A big display of network acrobatics is about to begin, and you need a ringside seat for it. Up for grabs: $10 billion in revenues over the next two years or so. It is the Indian market for mobile telephony equipment. No one wants to miss the action. Alcatel, Siemens, Ericsson, Nortel and Nokia have been around. But now come new entrants such as China's Huawei with the capacity to unsettle everyone else. Penetrate or perish Telecom equipment is in a peculiar phase. Globally, the first burst of business is over. Says Harish Gandhi, director, marketing and technology, Nokia: "While other markets are slowing down, India, Brazil and China are showing big growth. The market for mobile equipment in India will double in the next two years." In these markets, though, it's all about pushing the frontier: covering the yet uncovered. This means providing cheap telecom. On current projections, in two years, India will account for a tenth of the annual world mobile equipment market (placed at some $50 billion). The government expects the country to have 250 million phone lines, both fixed and mobile, by the end of 2007. Most additions will be mobile, with the base expected to hit the 200 million mark by then, up from 70 million now. Will it happen? After all, telecom projections have gone awry in the past. This time round, the state-owned phone operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is aiming to lead the thrust. It intends to get itself at least half of India's subscriber base by 2007-end. It is about to float a tender for equipment to handle as many as 60 million GSM lines -- with the option of going up to 90 million -- to be delivered over two years. This would be one of the world's largest ever phone contracts. That very ambition is enough to set private players scurrying to add on capacity. GSM operator Hutch has decided to order 30 million lines over two years, and all this will do is keep its market share intact. Its GSM archrival Bharti, which operates Airtel, is to put up 10,000 base stations by March 2006, virtually doubling its capacity across the country. Idea, the Tata-Birla venture, has aggressive plans too. Stretching forth The focus of attention is the BSNL business. India's Union Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran has made it clear that the BSNL tender will insist that all vendors set up some manufacturing facilities in the country as a precondition. Confirms a senior BSNL official: "Yes, there will be a clause and weightage for manufacturing in India." Says Ravi Sharma, president, Alcatel South Asia, "It is clear that the Government wants to develop an indigenous equipment industry. To give it a fillip, it has also changed the inverted duty structure regime in the Budget which used to make local manufacturing more expensive." But existing vendors argue that there is already enough competition (there are five vendors supplying BSNL), so there is no need for more players to get in. Says Nortel India's vice president, Rajan Mehta: "It's important to keep each vendor to one region, because every time you bring in a new vendor, it leads to huge operational challenges as you have to shift the old system (owned by another company) somewhere else. And that effects quality of service." New equipment makers who want to get in with BSNL dismiss that as self-serving logic. The tendering should be free for all, they say, to maximise overall benefits, especially since Chinese bids could be drastically lower. By the sound of things, this is the view that is likely to prevail. As says DK Ghosh, executive director, Siemens Public Communication Network: "I think the view is that all companies will be allowed to bid for the tender." While all that is under debate, contract hopefuls are not idle. They are already reworking their strategies. Nokia, for instance, is setting up a $150 million plant near Chennai that will make base station controllers. Others are looking for partnerships that could help meet the local-manufacture condition. Alcatel, for instance, plans to support a bid by the state-owned Indian Telephone Industry, to which it is a technology provider; ITI qualifies as a domestic manufacturer (it has a unit in Rae Barelli, among other locations). Siemens, meanwhile, is planning to roll out GSM equipment at its Kolkata plant. Ghosh says that given the sort of volumes sought, equipment can be made some 7-17 per cent cheaper than what imports would cost. Other advantages are claimed as well. "Manufacturing locally helps in many ways," says Mats Granryd, managing director, Ericsson India, which has just set up a plant in Jaipur to make base station controllers and switching systems, "You are close to the customers, so you have more flexibility. And turnaround time is reduced, so capital employed for customers comes down." Moreover, equipment needs to be adapted to local peculiarities. Cellular network towers need to be lighter on account of bad roads, for example, and other equipment needs to adapt to erratic power supply. Ericsson is in the game only tentatively. "We will never be price leaders," says P Balaji vice president marketing, Ericsson. While Huawei has applied for a license to make equipment (under consideration), Nortel is looking at outsourced equipment. Gasping for breath While a lot of acrobatics is likely to occur, there will be some casualties once competition gets tighter to crash costs. Yet, companies are eager for business. Nortel Inc, for instance, has booked losses of over $266 million on a contract it is executing for BSNL, which generated revenues of just $228 million. Does this make much business sense? According to Mehta, all it has done is challenge the company's R&D team to build products at much lower cost. Other players are gasping too. Industry insiders say that a bid price of even $70 per GSM line (the last rate that BSNL struck a deal at) makes it impossible to make money. Says a senior executive of a European telecom equipment major, "The cost price is about $80-85, so you can make money if your Government is subsidising you to keep you going, or you are ready to incur the losses to gain a foothold in what will be a key market you cannot ignore. Or of course you cut corners and quality suffers." So who is going to win? The big aggressors that everyone is looking at, askance, are the Chinese. They recently offered equipment for GSM lines at -- take a deep breath -- $4 in Nepal. If that's not dumping, nothing is -- say other players. Is Huawei going to dump lines in India? Western players are afraid of precisely that. Says Gandhi, "They have not been able to make inroads in US and Europe, but will try aggressively in India to prove that their products are acceptable." At the moment, Huawei is in a fight with BSNL. It has been shot a notice asking why it should not be banned from BSNL tenders for a failure to supply one million CDMA lines as per a contract it had won. Says a senior official of BSNL, "We have still not decided what action we should take against them, but non delivery has adversely impacted our plans." He admits, though, that the safety clauses in the deal against non-delivery were weak. Huawei, for its part, refuses to comment, but says it might consider putting a bid together. Everybody expects the bids to hit record lows, though nobody wants to guess just how low. "Indian prices are the lowest in the world already," says Sharma, "You cannot go on operating at a loss." Adds a senior executive of a European vendor: "I don't think the Chinese can afford to dramatically lower prices anymore. Their headquarters are saying they must make money." The other uncertainty is whether the Indian market can actually realize the fancy projections. Admits Nokia's Gandhi, "Considering the massive deployments being planned, I am sceptical whether those number of subscribers will really come." But then, Maran is going all out to reduce "barriers" in telecom, a clear signal of intent. Moreover, different players always place different bets on any fast-changing market. And winners are not always those that think alike.

That happens at times, probably due to problems at Reliance's server side. Try again later !

If you need a professional website, you need to register a domain name (Rs.300/year+ for .com TLD, etc.) and then get a hosting account (Rs.250/year+ depending on resources). For designing, you can download free templates from the net (search around in Google) and edit them in Dreaweaver/Frontpage, etc.

What we need is an approximate/rough usage time calculation time from the user, and yes, it is a bit difficult for an user to calculate his expected monthly usage time. But I guess there is no other way to recommend the best tariff for an user without getting an approximate usage from him/her.

Why you can't fathom your cellphone bill - Rediff.com November 15, 2005 Regulatory authorities have the crucial role of providing an effective regulatory framework and adequate safeguards to ensure fair competition and protection of consumer interests. The role of the regulatory authorities is much more significant during the reform process of any sector in a fast growing economy like India. Regulatory authorities have several key functions to play with the changing technology and invention in their respective sector. Nevertheless the primary objective for the existence of a regulatory body is to protect consumer interests. In order to protect consumer interests, regulatory authorities: Must be accessible to consumers in a variety of modes including e-mail, toll-free phone, mail, e-filing, fax, etc for lodging complaints. Must acknowledge any complaint received and provide a reference number for tracking the status. They should lay down a feasible timeframe for resolving any kind of complaint. Must maintain the complete database of complaints and thereby revise and enforce new regulations for the benefit of other consumers. The telecom sector in India has been opened up to private participants along with FDI (foreign direct investment) to some extent. The Government of India has established the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India as the regulatory authority for the telecom sector. TRAI has been vested with comprehensive powers and also has the responsibility of advising GOI on all policy matter pertaining to the telecom industry. 1. Accessibility: TRAI TRAI is accessible currently to consumers through a New Delhi number and e-mail. Consumers from any part of India other than Delhi have to use STD to reach TRAI. E-mails sent to TRAI are never acknowledged / responded and are simply ignored. TRAI service personnel, who pick up the phone sporadically, mention that complaints can be lodged only by visiting their Delhi office personally rather than by e-mail or on phone. 2. Cellular phone regulations: TRAI Cellphones can be described as a necessity in this new century based on acknowledgement of the fact that mobile phone connections have already bypassed fixed line connections in India. Consumers accept the terms and conditions of the cellular operators and take up the connection without getting in to the nitty-gritty of the billing details. Consumers start to panic as when their monthly bill goes way beyond their budget and get a feeling of being overcharged. Indian cellular consumers are deprived of some basic expectations from the cellular operators as they are not enforced by corresponding regulations by TRAI. Few of them are explained below: Itemised Billing Statement (IBS) Tariff charges for different call categories (local, WLL, STD, inter-circle, roaming charges, etc) vary with each cellular operator in India. IBS (Itemised Billing Statement) helps the consumer to find out any billing discrepancies with pinpoint accuracy. TRAI currently does not enforce this basic regulation on cellular operators to ensure all the post-paid consumers receive IBS by default as part of any plan chosen. Although IBS information is readily available with the cellular operators, currently it attracts a minimum charge starting from Rs 50 every month, except for a few privileged consumers. Bills sent by many operators do not have the required clarity which is mandatory and the consumer has every right to receive the billing information precisely. TRAI must impose strict regulations on the operators with regard to billing clarity. The need for billing clarity is not limited to cellular phones but to any kind of phone connection. It is ironic to note that there is no mention about IBS regulation in the white paper published by TRAI on billing issues in May 2005. Mobile Number Portability (MNP) Number portability allows subscribers to change their service provider while retaining their current number. MNP gives the freedom to the consumers to switch the operator without any concern about retaining their number. TRAI has produced an excellent white paper on number portability in July 2005. It is ironic to note a well-stated fact in the white paper that less developed countries like our neighbour Pakistan has already started implementing MNP programme when the cellular phone penetration is as low as approximately 7%. Ideally, TRAI should have started implementing MNP programme as the cellular phone connections have already surpassed fixed line connections in India. Rejection of MNP by our leading cellular operators like Reliance at this proposal stage is totally unacceptable. It should be noted that private operators do support FNP (fixed number portability) as it helps them break in to state-owned operator's territory and they are against MNP which actually benefits many consumers and is the need of the hour. Toll Free Numbers / Emergency Numbers Cellular operators simply do not route calls made to the toll free numbers set up on BSNL/ MTNL and other emergency numbers as there is no policy set-up or enforced by TRAI. This defeats the purpose and meaning of toll free numbers and also hinders many service-oriented companies in their respective sectors to provide this basic facility to their consumers. It should be noted that it is not expected to have this service completely free on cellular phones and the expectation is to have TRAI regulation and policy in place to handle the need. 3. Conclusion Reform process is intended to boost the economy and give the consumers a variety of options to choose from. However, when the corresponding regulatory authority fails, it does not serve the purpose which is the case with TRAI as it turned in to a complete fiasco. As a result of this, majority public who used to support the reform process now tend to incline towards the Leftist view. It should be noted the state-owned operator is safe without the reform process as it prevents the growth of unscrupulous operators who do not have any sense and commitment towards building of the nation. The government must restructure TRAI and closely review its performance. TRAI should first create awareness to the general public that it is available to listen to consumer issues and act as an arbitrator to resolve the issues between the operator and the consumer. TRAI should never ever succumb to lobbying by private Indian telecom giants.

I think that default plan in base on time, not based on Data. So Why u ask this que to BPP? 46596[/snapback] I was referring to the new time based plan, which is different from the default time based plan.

Well, even if you got it, it won't work anymore as the SMS portal is disabled now

Yes, I love PHP-MySQL combination too ! Though all depends on the availablility of a coder !

LOL Hit me ! Well, after someone's suggestion, I did try out a mod for IPB which sends a PM for those celebrating their birthday automatically. Since I couldn't test it much, I left it like that. Didn't know it was working in the background ! I'll try and see if I can put some name in the sender field

I've informed Ashokjp about it. He will be adding it along with other latest handsets.

Business Standard | November 14, 2005 With one stroke of the pen, as it were, Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran has changed the landscape of the long-distance telecom market in the country, and has come that much closer to his One India plan under which long-distance call rates will not be very different from local rates. While last week's decision to dramatically lower entry fees and revenue shares is a plus, the real advance is the decision to do away with onerous rollout obligations that long-distance players had to accept. Now, instead of having just a handful of players in the long-distance market, there will be a rush of new players, including perhaps MTNL and Hutch (probably through its partner Essar, since Hutch is a pure play mobile operator worldwide) and other MNCs that have been waiting to get into this lucrative market. Since access providers like Bharti, Hutch, Reliance and the Tatas have now been allowed to provide Internet telephony as well, the pressure on long-distance rates will be severe. Of course, the biggest competitive pressure will come from the fact that, by the end of the month, the telecom regulator will probably give effect to the carrier access code, which will allow users of one telecom service, say Airtel, to dial an access code and use Reliance's long-distance services, say, to carry a call from Mumbai to Delhi. So, over a period of time, tariffs should fall by a lot more than the 9 percentage points Mr Maran has mentioned. The minister calculated this by simply deducting the new revenue share licence fee of 6 per cent from the existing 15 per cent. Mr Maran's miracle, of course, is not without its share of problems. For, while most telcos have welcomed the announcement, any challenge before the TDSAT could cause problems since the regulator Trai's mandatory recommendations were not sought before coming up with a new policy. It is curious that, just a month ago, the same long-distance telcos had asked for a compensation of Rs 2,805 crore (Rs 28.05 billion) if the market was opened up! Also, for newcomers like Vonage and Skype (who have set the long-distance market afire internationally) to come to India with Internet telephony, they will not just have to apply for a long-distance licence (which will cost a mere Rs 2.5 crore now), they will also need what's called an "access licence", which is either a fixed line or a mobile service provider's licence. While a new mobile licence is not possible since there is no spectrum, even a fixed-line licence (through the unified access service licence) is expensive - an all-India one still costs around Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion). So Mr Maran needs to rationalise other licence fees as well. The decision to curb the future of standalone Internet service providers is inexplicable. And unless Mr Maran moves on reducing the access deficit charge on long-distance traffic (the minister is reluctant since this will hurt the public sector BSNL), One India will remain just that much further away.

Slim, feature rich LG-2340 @ Rs 2,500, preloaded with talk time worth Rs 2,500 Path-breaking festive bonanza for prepaid & post paid mobile users NAVI MUMBAI, November 13, 2005 Reliance Infocomm stormed the mobile market today with a 'Full Money Back' offer, bundling a new LG 2340 handset priced at Rs 2,500 with talk time value of an equivalent amount. Effectively, the new handset comes free of cost for the subscriber. The limited period offer is valid for prepaid as well as postpaid customers across the country on new connections only. Announcing the launch, S P Shukla, President - Wireless Products and Services, Reliance Infocomm, said: "This path-breaking offer is the result of consumer feedback. We found that a significant section of the mobile users who have a high need of making outgoing calls do not mind paying upfront for the benefit if they derive value for their money. This offer marks the continuation of festive celebrations for our customers." Prepaid subscribers can use the talk time value of Rs. 2,500 without recharging their account for 90 days from the date of activation of the handset. Unutilized talk time value, if any, can be carried forward by recharging the prepaid account with any of the existing regular recharge vouchers. For post paid customers, the free talk time value will be credited to their bills in six equated monthly installments. The free talk time value can be utilized for making local as well as STD calls to any network. It can also be used for sending SMS, downloading ring tones and accessing a host of exciting applications on R World such as cricket score updates, astrology, contests and news. LG-2340 is available across the Reliance Infocomm retail network of 1,600 WebWorld and WebWorld Express stores, apart from the one lakh-strong channel partner chain. Discuss this topic here Closing topic...

Is India's telecom regulator dead? Sunil Jain | November 14, 2005 15:07 IST - Rediff.com Given how Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran has cocked a snook at the telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, ignored its major recommendations for over a year, and not even bothered to go through the mandatory consultation process before completely overhauling the long-distance telephony rules, it appears obvious Trai has been dealt a body blow. More so since, when it comes to Trai's other powers, to insist that telecom firms allow others to interconnect with their subscribers on fair terms, these have been circumscribed by the telecom appellate tribunal, the TDSAT. While it just takes a simple instruction from Maran to say interconnection disputes are part of Trai's jurisdiction, the minister's in no hurry to do anything of the sort -- let Trai fight out the issue in the Supreme Court seems to be his view. Indeed, since Trai has cosseted the long-distance players for so long (its Universal Service Licence, USL, recommendations in effect extended their cartel-like profits for a few more years), and given how it went along with Arun Shourie to bypass the rules to allow Reliance a backdoor entry into the mobile phone market, it's hardly surprising that few are shedding tears over this. While formulating the USL in 2004, Trai's argument for extending the protection was that long-distance telcos like Reliance, Bharti and the Tatas (VSNL) had invested good money and so needed some time to recoup this -- an argument not used to give cellular firms more time during the WLL mobile days! It is, surely surprising, that while Maran has been talking of a cartel in the long-distance telecom market, Trai never paid attention to how the long distance-firms have nearly identical tariffs, to how this is the only segment of the industry where costs are way below the tariffs being charged, or to the fact that despite the access deficit charge payable on incoming international calls falling by over a rupee since February, the settlement rate with international carriers remains unchanged. But merely hailing Maran as the all-in-one minister-cum-regulator in preference to the in-your-face Pradip Baijal, never mind your differences with the latter, can hardly be good for the sector. For one, the evidence of each sector, from power onwards, has shown that wherever there have been politicians, the pace of reforms has slowed. In the telecom sector, Maran's predecessors, and later he, have been happy to protect the incumbent BSNL and VSNL in the days before it was privatised. The imposition of the access deficit charge, which drains out around Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) annually from customers to line BSNL's pockets, is just one example. Even today, BSNL refuses to provide leased line services to competitors for Internet services like VPN and the rules of the game were changed overnight to facilitate this -- VPN services, which were part of the internet licence, were suddenly reclassified as a new licence for which the entry fees was jacked up from one rupee to Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million). BSNL also refuses to allow its competitors to connect to its customers -- Trai has cited 918 such cases recently, of which 367 have been pending for more than a year. When Trai said, in line with the global practice, that BSNL would have to allow others access to its last-mile fibre going into consumers' homes, the ministry simply ignored this recommendation. The short point is that while Maran has done the right thing by increasing competition in the long-distance business, there is a fundamental conflict of interest. First, he's responsible for BSNL's profits. Second, as a politician, his interests cannot be the same as that of the industry. The ADC and VPN cases are examples of just this. But what if the regulator hasn't done a good job? After all, in the WLL mobile case and the long-distance cartel, Baijal's decisions were one-sided. So how do you prevent a regulator from being arbitrary? An arbitrary regulator, it is true, is a bad thing, but is any day preferable to an arbitrary politician. When a regulator gives a recommendation, he has to publicly consult all stakeholders, and then give a written explanation for the recommendation. If anyone finds the arguments flawed, he can go to the TDSAT, and later the Supreme Court. When Trai passed an order reducing tariffs for international leased lines, but didn't share the basis of its findings, VSNL went to the TDSAT, which struck down the Trai order twice, on different grounds each time! When politicians decide on things, on the other hand, the decisions are generally shrouded in mystery and the data are never made public. For instance, it is only now when Trai laid bare the whole process of how calls are to be accounted for that you know just how much extra you're being billed for by the long-distance players -- in the earlier days when politicians decided what long-distance tariffs were, you had a vague idea you were being fleeced, but had no clue about how much, and so were in no position to do anything about it. Many of Baijal's decisions may have been questionable, but to cripple the institution of Trai because of this is akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Happy Birthday Manoj (iiii_pretender_iiii(23)) and amod(22), fennb(49), sabya1411(25) !

Sorry but it isn't possible to change like that since username( display name) is case insensitive

Happy Birthday Rajan ! Have a blast !

FYI, HTML is not allowed in signatures, however, you can use BB Code in your signatures.

3 steps to boost broadband in India November 10, 2005 16:46 IST - Rediff.com In an obvious reference to the recent observation by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on the poor take-off of broadband services, IT and Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran on Thursday said the government was targeting a three-pronged solution to the issue including computer penetration, connectivity and good content. "There is a criticism that broadband penetration is low in the country. We are looking at a three-point solution – affordable PCs, good connectivity and good content. Content is key to the proliferation of broadband which we lack," Maran said at the launch of the national portal of India - India.gov.in. The problem is if people are going to use only Internet, a dial-up connection should be enough. One needs to be convinced of good quality content to use broadband. So instead of saying broadband has not taken off, the focus should be on encouraging content creation, he said. "If we are to boost the broadband penetration in the country we need content in English as well as in all other regional languages. After all only five per cent people speak English," he said. Maran's remarks come in the wake of TRAI's demand for opening up of last mile access of BSNL and MTNL on the ground that broadband penetration is likely to miss the set target due to poor take-off. The current broadband connection stands at about seven lakh. The official target was 30 lakh by December 2005. The government had already facilitated efforts of the private players to bring down the PC prices. PCs with 1.6 Ghz speed are available at Rs 10,000. We are solving the issue of connectivity and after the PCs, our focus now is to bring down the prices of notebook computers, the minister said. A broadband connection, which was as high as Rs 3,000-Rs 4000 last year for a 256 kbps connection, is much cheaper now. MTNL has broken the price barrier at Rs 199 for its broadband connection, while a BSNL connection at present is Rs 250 a month, Maran said. "Our Internet prices globally are the lowest," he claimed. At the end of 2005, broadband connections have crossed 6.9 lakh including both private and PSU players. The official target is 30 lakh by the end of this year since it was announced in October last year.

hmmm yeah, where did you find the others, Ashok ? LG RD 6230 should be launching by November end. I'll try to get hold of the product information note and will post it as soon as I get it before hand.

shan, did you receive any confirmation from Reliance about the switch to Freedom@Night plan ? If so, file a complaint at CC and you may get it waived. Moreover, confirm with them whether you are under the right plan now. @ BPP: The "Unbilled Data Usage" under Unbilled Usage is not available for the time based plans. Did you migrate from the data plan to the new time based plan or did you switch to the time based plan from the default plan ?

Dunno whats holding them up in rolling out the "Broadnet" services all over India, but the first quarter of 2006 is what I've heard last.

Belated Birthday wishes Ganesh ! Wish you a great year ahead !

April 13, 2005 Driven by its customer care commitment, Reliance Infocomm has achieved yet another feat - the company has conferred with ISO 9001 certification for its billing processes with the objective of making the billing experience for its over 1 crore customers almost zero error free. Thus, Reliance Infocomm has become the first Indian telecom operator to achieve this international process quality hallmark certification. What’s more, Reliance Infocomm bagged this certification in a period of less than four months beginning December 2004. Reliance Infocomm has also implemented six-sigma process which along with the ISO 9001 means that Reliance IndiaMobile customers will get their monthly telephone bills on schedule and they are charged the correct amount for their phone usage – all with the utmost levels of speed and efficiency Every telecom operator has had to live with the reality of teething problems with billing issues while scaling-up customer acquisitions, which is a cause of inconvenience to customers on issues pertaining to monthly billings. With its aggressive customer acquisition drive, Reliance Infocomm too was not an exception to this. But it has faced the issues head on and has risen splendidly to the challenging situation, speedily correcting the lacunae in its billing processes and systems. A senior official of the company said, “It was indeed an overwhelming experience last year when our marketing and distribution strategies resulted in huge customer acquisition. Although, the company has huge installed network capacity to meet such high traffic, nevertheless our customers unfortunately experienced some teething problems on the billing front.” “We established a core team of senior officials across the country to identify and rectify all possible lacunae in our billing processes and systems”, the official explained. To give the best possible service to our customers, we implemented six-sigma with one aim: “Zero defect and timely bill delivery to customer. The results are indeed encouraging.” Thus, the Indian CDMA telecom major has set bench marks for other telecom operators to follow suit.

Looks as though many users had the same problem. Should be clear when this month's bill arrives.