Himanshu Singh

: About 2,000 workers have struck work at Nokia’s Sriperumbudur plant on Wednesday, after 62 employees were placed under ‘suspension pending inquiry’. An employee union official said that production of nearly one lakh units of mobile handsets was disrupted following the strike. This is the second strike in the past six months. Workers alleged that the company had suspended 62 employees without assigning reason. However , Nokia officials said that the employees were suspended as they had contravened the company’s code of conduct besides disciplinary issues. M Shanmugam, president, Nokia India Pvt Ltd Employees Progressive Union (NIEPU), told TOI that the standoff was triggered after a worker was asked to report for a different shift which he refused to do. “There was some misunderstanding with the management over the issue and he was suspended. More workers joined to protest against the suspension and they were also suspended,” he said. Following this, nearly 2,000 workers have gone on strike. The deputy labour commissioner has advised both the management and the labour union to resolve the issue amicably. “The meeting went on till 4 pm. Management termed the strike illegal and asked the workers to call it off. But they wanted the suspension to be revoked . The deputy commissioner asked the union to call off the strike and advised the management to not precipitate the issue,” Shanmugam said. A meeting has been fixed with the deputy labour commissioner again on January 25 to resolve the issue of suspension. Shanmugam said that the labour minister has also assured a fair settlement of the suspension issue. Nokia said, “Nokia India’s Chennai factory initiated a suspension pending inquiry notice to some employees who are reported to have committed acts of serious misconduct.” S

Reliance Communications Asks Ministry To Reject Parakh Audit Report Reliance Communications (RCOM), India’s second-largest telecom company by subscribers, has asked the communications ministry to reject the special audit on it by Parakh & Co and alleged that the report ‘was issued for malafide purpose, based on uncorroborated facts and done without any discussions with it (RCOM)’. The telco has also told the Department of Telecom (DoT) that ‘the entire report was drafted for the purpose on sensationalising irrelevant matters’. In October 2009, Jaipur-based Parakh, the auditor appointed by the telecom ministry to examine the books of RCOM, said in a report that the telco had failed to show revenues of Rs 2,799.19 crore, causing losses of Rs 315 crore to the government in terms of licence and spectrum fees. Last month, based on the special auditor’s report, communications minister A Raja had informed Parliament that RCOM had caused losses of around Rs 250 crore to the exchequer by under-reporting revenues. In a 28-page communication to DoT dated January 13, a copy of which was viewed by ET, the telco had sought that stringent action be taken against the auditors for ‘misconduct in the preparation of the report and their failure to observe their undertaking of confidentiality’. The telco has also alleged that the special auditors had leaked the report to the media. When contacted, the RCOM spokesperson confirmed having written to DoT on the special auditor having ‘made selective leakages of the audit report to the media even before DoT opened the confidential envelope containing the report’ and said this ‘clearly reflects prejudiced, mischievous, biased and malafide intention and above all acting on behalf of our corporate rivals’. The spokesperson also reiterated RCOM’s stance on the auditors’ along the same lines as reflected in the company’s response to DoT. Further, the email reply from the company said there was ‘no irregularity or discrepancy whatsoever in the accounts of the company’. DoT had appointed the special auditor after the Cellular Operators’ Association of India had alleged under reporting of revenues by RCOM. The audit was later extended to RCOM’s rivals, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices. These audits are currently underway. The Mumbai-headquartered telco, in its reply has also said that it has furnished proof to show that the special audit has erroneous facts, erroneous conclusions on matters of law, one-sided computations and had incorporated irrelevant and unnecessary data resulting in disclosure of unnecessary details that caused damage and harm to RCOM. RCOM has also given a point-by-point rebuttal to each of the issues raised by Parakh.

Privacy is least of these telcos' concerns.

Ranchoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad is tearing away the record books once again, and suddenly it seems that Aal Eez Well . Well, Aamir Khan has just landed the biggest endorsement deal in Indian advertising history. He will promote new telecom entrant, UAE’s Etisalat, for Rs 30-35 crore for three years, kicking in some fresh energy into the Indian advertising segment that has been licking its wounds from the financial slowdown. ET

Reliance Communications, India's second-largest telecom company by subscribers, is fortifying its management structure to improve performance in a fiercely-competitive market by poaching scores of top executives from rivals. RCOM has roped in Venugopal Ramanathan from Wipro Technologies to head its Internet Data Center business and Alpana Doshi from Mahindra Satyam as chief information officer. Bharti Airtel's CEO for Maharashtra & Goa, Manu Talwar, is set to join RCOM soon, according to HR consultants. The latest additions follow other appointments such as those of Anuraj Prashar, who heads RCOM's customer services, and Naresh Gupta, president of Reliance Globalcom, the offshoot that serves international customers comprising over 1,200 enterprises and 200 carriers across 50 countries. RCOM had poached Mr Prashar recently from Airtel where he was national head of the fraud prevention unit and Mr Gupta from Vodafone Essar where he was serving as director and CTO till November. Clearly, RCOM is looking to put a more efficient team to run its mobile operations on both the CDMA and GSM platforms as it primes itself to face competition in a market where cut-throat tariffs are the order of the day. "Despite having a robust network, RCOM's revenues were not increasing," said BK Syngal, senior principal with Dua Consulting and former chairman of Reliance Telecom. "RCOM has realised it needs professional hands, who are experienced in running the business to improve its average revenue per user and also get higher-end customers on its networks." RCOM saw a 51% drop in quarterly profit in the September 2009 quarter. Indeed, the ongoing tariff war has sharply cut profits of all 13 cellular operators in India. With three more companies due to launch services by next year, the battle for the Indian wireless market, which has some 515 million subscribers, is expected to get fiercer. Given this backdrop, the new team at RCOM has its task cut out. "We are in the process of putting together a top-class leadership team from within and outside the organisation," said Syed Safawi, Wireless Business CEO, RCOM. The Mumbai-based telco had appointed Mr Safawi himself only in December after a three-year search, as reported first by ET. Mr Safawi was executive director at Bharti Airtel before that. RCOM's new structure will see Mr Safawi reporting to Reliance-ADAG group managing director Satish Seth. The hunt for a CEO became imperative after the former president for wireless operations, SP Shukla, was freed to head the telco's international operations. RCOM has also elevated six of its top executives to be part of the new leadership team that will report to Mr Safawi. Former RCOM president Mahesh Prasad who headed the company's data business and was in charge of Big TV - the DTH arm - will now oversee all marketing initiatives. The leadership team includes financial controller Manikantan Iyer, IT & BSS operations head Nihar Rao, HR vice-president Vinod Chaturvedi, customer service head Anuraj Prashar and business CTO Dipak Kumar Ghosh, people aware of the development told ET. An RCOM circular to employees said the rejig would lead to "better defined clarity in role, responsibility, accountability, performance orientation", adding that the new structure offered good growth prospects for individuals. RCOM's latest moves come as Bharti announced last week that it was moving CEO Manoj Kohli to the role of spearheading the global expansion. From April 1, Mr Kohli will head a newly-created international business division while current deputy CEO Sanjay Kapoor will be CEO for India and South Asia.

Buddy dont take RGSM. network is pathetic.

The less said about RGSM Delhi-NCR the better. I am proud of the fact that I have advised a lot of my friends against opting for RGSM here. I am not one to be a blind loyalist for any brand.

No not at all. You can change any plan anytime.

I had once said in this forum that I find the low budget cdma phones going the distance as compared to the high end ones. Simplicity does last long.

Let it do anything.It wont improve any further.It has to go downhill from here.Customer satisfaction is a distant dream.

Looks impressive.Prices?

I have lost hope on RGSM. It would be months before it may work smoothly.

Useless service.I wonder how many people would subscribe to it gievn the fact that handsets have reminder/alarms/note facility to remember something.

3G is turning out to the white elephant for indian telecom sector.

CDMA will be killed by the incumbent operators.Going by the way they are running themselves.

Nokia 1600 has sms timer.The handset sends the sms at the time decided by the user. How is it any different frm that?

Its a great offer. Aircel is going great with its offers. Serious competition to GSM telcos.

Certain Nokia handsets are pathetic in signal strength.Like Nokia 1600, Nokia 6080, Nokia 2626. At the same location with the same operator Samsung does better than these sets. Moral of the story-Pick your handset depending on its signal strength beside other things.

Airtel does not know what to do.

Mention your area frnd.

send 'DEACT NET20' to 12345.It should do the trick for you.

I am not sure if this piece of news has been talked about in this forum.Aircel is offering local/std calls while roaming@1paise per second in circles where it has its own network for a recharge of Rs.99 having 1 year validity.

Still expensive.Aircel would be cheaper I guess.

Gurdeep Singh is an intelligent yet brave man.I agree with him.

The lobby against number portability may be playing a losing game. A widget from China priced as low as Rs 50 is making the government's dithering on the issue for four years meaningless now. A chewing-gum sized device known as "dual SIM card holder" can be placed under the battery of your mobile phone and that has a provision to hold another SIM card, which can be activated whenever there is a need to call. This helps retain your number in use for many years and subscribe to a new operator who is giving away outgoing calls almost for free. It eliminates the strain of carrying two mobile phones, one to receive calls and the other to call, or paying a higher price for a mobile phone that has the facility to hold two SIM cards. The device can be used in most of the low-to-middle-end models of any handset maker. "The lack of institutional mechanisms to partake low price tariffs is motivating consumers to employ ingenious approaches to avail lower tariffs. Launch of mobile number portability (MNP) in the near future will hopefully address this unsatiated consumer demand," Ascentius Consulting principal analyst Alok Shende told ET. Where do you get this? Your local phone recharge outlet, for anywhere between Rs 50 to Rs 200, depending on the handset model. One such product, photographed, is called the Yutong Doublecard, which comes with "six months of guaranty" . "We source it from bulk dealers, who in turn procure it from Chinese manufacturers,"says a Kanpur-based online retailer, Gyan Chand who has sold thousands of units in the past few months. Payment can be made online , or by depositing money into any State Bank of India branch. Indian mobile phone customers are a pampered lot with probably the lowest tariff in the world as Japan's NTT Docomo and Norway's Telenor seek to establish themselves in the world's fastest growing market which has over 517 million subscribers. Established companies in the industry may not be comfortable with number portability as customers could switch to new service providers where tariff is low and the network is not congested, analysts say. "This is incrementally negative for the Indian telecom operators as they compete with each other on pricing to garner a higher share of MoU per subscriber using multiple SIMs," Macquarie Equities Research analyst Shubham Majumder said in a recent report. Mobile phone service providers such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications, the worst performers in the benchmark index last year, may see their profitability erode further as customers get savvy. Many analysts, including HSBC Securities and Capital Markets' Rajiv Sharma and Kotak Institutional Equities' Kawaljeet Saluja, have a sell rating on the sector. According to industry estimates, 20% of the existing mobile user base is using more than one SIM. These kinds of behaviour makes operators' estimates difficult. Dual SIMs distort operating metrics as operators are not able to distinguish between accounts and users. "Moreover, given the rising competitive intensity, the phenomenon will only gain momentum going forward ," HSBC's Sharma said in a report. The device offers up to 25% margin for retailers. "Our channel checks suggest that 40% of incremental industry SIM additions are due to multi SIM usage by subscribers," said Macquarie's Majumder. But the industry is not worried over it as they say "service" decides consumer choice. "We continue to be the sole or primary SIM for users. Consumer has choices and will exercise. In the markets we are strong in, we are less impacted by the dual SIM phenomenon ," said Idea Cellular CMO Pradeep Shrivastava.