ravi_patent

i have been trying to open the the draft guidelines since morning without success.. the error "The page cannot be found" is being shown ..did any body succed in opening the same?if so pl post here

GUIDELINES FOR MNP ISSUED http://www.trai.gov.in/PressReleases_content.asp ... http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/N...how/4722335.cms NEW DELHI: Telecom regulator Trai on Tuesday unveiled draft regulations for the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP), a facility that will allow consumers to change their telecom operator, but retain their phone number. The government had earlier said it would kick off MNP in metros and some states on September 20. Trai has proposed that new mobile users be permitted to change their operators only after 90 days of signing up with their first service provider. It has also recommended that after changing their operator, consumers need to stay with the new telco for a minimum of 90 days. It has suggested that customers give a written undertaking to their existing service provider for switching to a new operator, which will then have to mandatorily carry out all checks, including identity verification, before the process can be completed. Trai has said the process must be completed within five days. The regulator has also said customers, who wish to change their operators, will be charged a fee, which would be specified later after consultations with both the industry and consumer bodies. But several executives at telcos said the fee was likely to range anywhere between Rs 250 and Rs 400. The Department of Telecom (DoT) has already appointed two companies — Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnect — to be the MNP service provider, manage day-to-day management and implementation, and also maintain the database of all numbers. While MNP will kick off in metros and category A circles such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat on September 20, the rest of the country will have access to this facility from March 20, 2010. Trai will finalise the MNP regulations after feedback on the draft rules from the industry and consumer organisations. The draft rules also state that the operators must telephonically inform the customer of the exact date and time the porting will happen. Post-paid customers will provide proof that there are no outstanding payments before they can change their operator, Trai added. The regulator has also clarified that the new operator that takes on the ported customers is not bound to repay any deposits made by the customer to his original service provider. The regulator has also made it clear that customers may have to face a ‘no service period’ that can extend for up to a few hours, during which they will not be able to receive and make calls, as they are moved to a new operator. But in a bid to address concerns, Trai has said the new operator must provide the customer with a list of missed calls and messages sent during the ‘no service period’. Market surveys have shown that 25-50% of mobile users in India are unhappy with their operator, and are willing to switch to another service provider, if allowed to retain their number.

In search of a USP http://www.business-standard.com/india/new...cha-usp/362425/ Tata Teleservices’ GSM innings is likely to be a tough one despite its innovative offerings and tie-up with the Japanese market leader, NTT DOCOMO. There is a simple rule of business which says that if you have too many rivals in the market place, differentiate your product to keep your head above water. It improves your brand recall and breaks the clutter. Easy advice, difficult to implement, especially if the market happens to be mobile telecom services in India. Though it is the fastest-growing market in the world, there are about half a dozen service operators in each of the 22 telecom circles and more are ready to join the bandwagon. Out-of-the-box thinking could burst at its seams here. Tata Teleservices, after a lacklustre performance in the CDMA space, has launched GSM services in Chennai and Tamil Nadu with a bunch of new promises — pay only for the time you speak and not for 30- or 60-second pulses, pay for SMSs according to their length and enjoy next-generation Internet experience right now. It is still early days to say if the strategy will pay off. But what is certain is that Tata Teleservices plans an aggressive push in the market armed with these tools. After Chennai and Tamil Nadu, it plans to cover all the southern states in the next two weeks as well as Orissa and become a pan-India operator (it has not received spectrum in Delhi so far) by October. The bill for the roll out will be Rs 9,600 crore ($2 billion). Though Tata Teleservices Managing Director Anil Sardana does not want to divulge his market share targets, he says that he wants his brand and service to be amongst the top three under consideration by potential consumers in the circles in which Tata Teleservices will operate within the next two years. Vying for space This is a tough challenge. As a CDMA player, Tata Teleservices did not really set the market on fire. With around 37 million customers, it is way below rivals like Bharti Airtel (100 million customers), Reliance Communications (80 million), Vodafone Essar (74 million), Idea Cellular (45.4 million) and state-owned BSNL (48 million). Though the market is projected to expand at a fast clip from 400 million now to 700 million by 2012, the top three players in GSM command over 60 per cent market share at present. Also, Tata Teleservices’ earlier attempts at innovation hardly invoke confidence. It had launched Virgin Mobile — a niche service targeted at the youth — some time ago, but has managed to get only three or four lakh subscribers, a high-decibel advertising campaign notwithstanding. On the positive side, the average revenue from these customers is very high. But Sardana and his men are confident that this time they have got the right mantra for success. On offer is a pre-paid connection pack for Rs 49 and customers have to fork out just one paisa for every second of usage for a call across the country. That is dramatically different from rivals who charge according to the pulse rates — for instance, you pay for the full pulse of 60 seconds even if your call lasts only 30 seconds. The company will use the same model for value-added services too. Thus, SMSs will be charged according to their size and the time taken to reach the recipient. Sardana explains the logic behind the pay-for-usage model which was pioneered many years ago by Orange in France. He says that 18 per cent of what the subscribers pay in their monthly bill is for services which they have not used and which they don’t realise. For instance, apart from the extra pulse time, a subscriber may be unknowingly paying Rs 30 for caller tunes every month, though he might not have changed his tune for six months! Rivals, as expected, are not too enthused by the plan. “Reliance Communications offered an entry-level pack which was half that price and most pre-paid packs are available at the same price. So, the Rs-49 offer is not cheap. Also one paisa per second translates into 60 paisa a minute and there are existing offers much below that. We don’t see a customer churn because of the offer,” says an executive of a leading GSM service operator. Analysts, on the other hand, are impressed. “The tariff structure ensures that customers do not pay for call drops which have become a serious issue. Regulators across the globe are trying to move towards this direction. I think that it is a big plus,” says telecom analyst Mahesh Uppal. Interestingly, Tata Teleservices had attempted to introduce a pay-for-usage plan for its CDMA service two years ago — a customer could pay five paisa per second of usage or Rs 1.80 for a minute. “This worked out a tariff of Rs 3 for a one-minute call. Since we also offered Rs 1.80 for a minute, so anybody who spoke for more than 36 seconds on every call preferred it. We realised it won’t work,” says a senior executive of the company. As a result, the plan was withdrawn. The DOCOMO edge Apart from the pay-for-usage model, Sardana has the NTT DOCOMO connection to flaunt — the Japanese company had last year bought 26 per cent of Tata Teleservices for $2.7 billion (Rs 13,120 crore). Compression technology provided by NTT DOCOMO (turnover: $45.28 billion, customers: 54 million) will help subscribers to download at speeds comparable to a 3G network — a next generation network for which spectrum has not yet been allocated to private service operators. In fact, Tata Teleservices has kept a dedicated data channel (spectrum) for this. Services like i-Mode for Internet mobile and wallet services to use the mobile phone as a credit card will be introduced. There will be customised value-added services on offer. For instance, the subscriber can choose what kind of news, from which newspapers he wants on the ticker. Through timed SMS services, he can affix the time and date when he wants the message to reach its destination. To begin with, Tata Teleservices will open 600 retail stores in the South which will, apart from other things, give customers the NTT DOCOMO technology experience. On Sardana’s target clearly are middle- and high-level customers who look for add-ons. In fact, Sardana admits that he will not chase mass-market subscribers. “We are aware that the market is already cluttered. But our surveys show that over 70 per cent of the customers are not satisfied with their existing service providers. So there is a large scope for us to get in,” says he. Industry estimates suggest that though tariffs in the country are the lowest anywhere in the world, subscriber churn is as high as 50 to 60 per cent per annum. In other words, more than half the customers change their service operator every year. And this despite the Rs 3,000-crore mobile service operators spent on advertising last year. (The number is expected to be much higher this year with the entry of new players.) Tata Teleservices reckons that price is not the key reason why a subscriber opts out of a service — it is the quality of the service. No less than 53 per cent said in a survey carried out by the company that the network is the biggest factor that drives the churn. Customer call Thus, Tata Teleservices will focus on those 50 per cent of the existing customers who are in search of a better network, or a market size of around 250 million subscribers by the end of this year when the total subscriber base is expected to swell to 500 million. Not for it the ten million new customers that are added every month. The company also has on its crosshairs that customer who is unsatisfied but has decided to hang on to the existing operator because he doesn’t want to give up his mobile number. Till mobile number portability kicks in, Sardana says he will offer this customer a similar number (same last five digits, for instance) and alerts to all contacts stored on his phone about the change in the number. According to Sardana, 14 to 20 per cent of post-paid subscribers in the metros fall in this category. In the final analysis, will the GSM foray attract customers to Tata Teleservices? Competitors say that it will only eat into the company’s base of CDMA subscribers. The argument is based on the fact that CDMA services are more data-centric. “CDMA is a data-friendly technology. But by wooing customers on the value-added data platform through NTT DOCOMO’s Internet services, it is talking to the same customers,” says an executive of a rival GSM operator. Sardana is not convinced. He says these are two different markets — CDMA is targeted at the mass market where the entry barrier is low, while the GSM offering is for high-value customers. “A customer has to pay Rs 999 to become a CDMA subscriber with a bundled phone. GSM, where you have to buy the phone, is more expensive. In GSM we will sell a range of value-added services. So, it is different,” says he. The market just got more interesting.

http://www.telecomtiger.com/Wireless_fulls...mp;section=S216 “Decision to foray into CDMA space is with an eye on data services” says Sistema Shyam’s CEO SSTL President and CEO Mr.Vsevolod Rozanov shares the company’s vision in an interaction with TelecomTiger Of all the new entrants, Sistem Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) is the only one which has set the ball rolling and is aggressively expanding its footprint across the country. SSTL President and CEO Mr.Vsevolod Rozanov shares the company’s vision in an interaction with TelecomTiger Q1) Your decision to offer mobile services on CDMA platform surprises most of the people. How do you address these concerns especially considering the fact that even incumbent CDMA operators are migrating to the GSM platform? Ans: We do not believe there is that much of a difference between GSM (global system for mobile communications) and CDMA (code division multiple access). Customers using CDMA technology are approximately one quarter of all. Given the size of the Indian market, this is quite a good percentage of the population. Another important consideration for choosing CDMA was the fact that the demand for data services is the expected to grow meteorically, for which CDMA is better suited. We have plans to foray into this segment and garner significant market share. Being a Greenfield player, our go-to-market strategy, for the India foray was to break the price barrier while maintaining quality standard and connectivity. CDMA has tremendous potential and we will continue to develop its market with pan-India coverage of our service brand MTS. Q2) Subscribers often complain of lack of wider options while choosing CDMA handset terminals. What are your plans to offer subscribers with a wider bouquet of options? Ans: I think is more of a problem of perception. CDMA handsets are no longer the bulky and aesthetically less-appealing devices that we saw early on in the market. As a result of continued innovations in designing and manufacturing, the CDMA handsets today look sleeker, and are equipped with advanced features that have the capability to support data-rich applications and next generation networks- which were otherwise perceived to be only GSM’s strong point. We have partnered with ZTE, Samsung, and Huawei to offer attractive range of handsets compatible with the MTS network. We have a range of 16 handsets for customers to choose from, starting from Rs 999-16,999. We are offering connection with and without handsets, giving customers the choice of either using our SIM on any CDMA handset available in the market or alternatively buying one from our range. Q3) Do you intend to offer mobile services on GSM platform as well in future since you have necessary licenses? Ans: While we have UASL (Unified Access Service License), which enables us to operate in both CDMA and GSM technologies, we have no immediate plans to announce or launch anything in GSM, as we see tremendous potential in the CDMA market. Q4) What are the major challenges you foresee in the Indian market? Ans: Low tariff, declining average revenues per user (ARPU), urban markets inching towards saturation, and scarcity of spectrum are some of the current challenges for operators. However, we do see a silver lining. In spite of the declining ARPU and tariff, companies in India have been successful in achieving good profit margins by mitigating their operational costs. The issue of scarcity of spectrum, looming large on all operators, is also expected to get resolved with the Department of Telecom proposing a complete revamp of the existing spectrum management policies and processes. Q5) You say your focus is on rural market. But enterprises also form a significant segment in India. How do you intend to address the demands of this market apart from the traditional voice services? Ans: Yes, with the tele-density in rural India still being very low, we will focus on tapping the market. As MTS is fully a prepaid, we are currently focused to serve customers in the individuals segment. We have received very good response from the corporate segment as well in Rajasthan and Chennai. Q6) What are your network rollout plans. Are you on the look out for infrastructure sharing as well? Ans: We have obtained the license for all 22 circles and we plan to cover nation-wide service by Q2-Q3 of 2010. We have already launched our services in five circles – Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and West Bengal, Kolkata and will be launching the 6th circle by the end of this week. We significantly expanded our operations in the last few months, and will be launching services in Delhi, Karnataka, Haryana and Maharashtra circles by the end of this calendar year. Yes, to bring fore better efficiency, we’re tying up with all major operators and tower companies for network sharing and for passive infrastructure needs. In the long-term our strategy is to restrict the owned towers to less than 20%. Q7) Telecom professionals in India are a bit apprehensive in joining new entrants for career opportunities. What are your offerings and proposition to professionals who join your organization? Ans: First of all, telecom is an exciting career to be in; with India being one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world, and there is high demand for telecom professionals. India is an important market and we have already invested $1.5 billion in the country. Amongst the new entrants, we are the only company that has the license to provide services in all 22 telecom circles across the country. We have already launched our operations in 6 circles. At MTS, we offer a blend of best practices from our global promoter Sistema and Indian counterpart Shyam. We are focused on building a transparent, performance oriented culture. We are steadily moving towards being amongst the best employers in India. The training budgets at MTS are significantly higher than the available benchmarks. The employees undergo extensive training on both functional & behavioral competencies. The training programs not only ensure that all of our employees are equipped with the requisite role competencies, but also focus on developing new competencies to facilitate their overall career growth and personality development. We believe that, in addition to hiring the best talent; the diversity of perspectives, ideas, and cultures leads to the creation of better products and services. This diversity of our employees and shareholders serves as the foundation for us to better serve our customers and stakeholders all over India. The employees will be the greatest asset in our journey to be one of the leading telecom players in the country, and we are totally committed to their development.

i agree with vinayak pai..the launch was probably to evade penalty they would have to incur otherwise

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articl...7.cms?prtpage=1 Virgin Mobile India, a 50:50 joint-venture between UK’s Virgin Group and Tata Teleservices (TTSL), is soon planning to foray into the GSM mobile services space. It is going to bank on the soon-to-be-launched GSM network of TTSL for its GSM services. Virgin Mobile positions itself as India’s first youth-centric mobile service. At present, Virgin mobile services are offered under the CDMA technology platform by TTSL through a brand franchisee arrangement. The company facilitates TTSL in designing, marketing and servicing of the services and there is a revenue sharing arrangement between both the companies. "Our agreement with TTSL is technology neutral. At present, our services are restricted to CDMA. Once TTSL unveils its GSM network, we will extend the Virgin services into GSM as well. TTSL is our preferred partner for the GSM brand extension in India," Virgin Mobile India CEO M.A. Madhusudan told ET. Virgin Group chief Richard Branson had last year expressed his intention to enter the GSM mobile services space in India. The company was then waiting for freeing up of additional GSM spectrum. Virgin Mobile is now gearing up to launch its GSM service as soon as TTSL does. TTSL has announced plans to join the GSM bandwagon this year itself. "Nearly 73% of the Indian mobile market is controlled by GSM operators. An entry into GSM will help us to expand our addressable market and also increase our average revenue per user (ARPU). Currently, our ARPU is nearly 30% higher than the industry average," said Mr Madhusudan. Virgin currently offers innovative tariff plans such as ten paise credit for every minute of incoming call and STD at 50 paise at no extra charges. "We plan to offer similar innovative tariff plans for our GSM services. There will be a lot of handset bundling deals as well," said Virgin Mobile India chief marketing officer Prasad Narasimhan. In a bid to expand its portfolio, Virgin is also keen to enter the business phone segment. "We are in talks with multiple handset vendors, including Research in Motion (makers of BlackBerry handsets). Our business services will be tailormade for someone who is in his early days of job. There are also plans to launch data cards," Mr Madhusudan said.

here in chennai the sims were avalbl by yday late evening with a small but influential retailer....but not avlbl till now wt other retailers..in Central chennai definetly MTS executed better than DOCOMO ... reg tariffs; any rate cutters for onnet std calls?

^ This scheme is a cash cow for reliance whose balance sheet is desperate for cashflow

@bhargav MTS sims were avlbl in crntral chennai right next to the day of launch TATA GSM seems to be slow comparatively Moreover their website is not offering any tariff details as of now

here in chennai too avlbl till june 30

http://www.business-standard.com/india/new...p-talks/361752/ Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications (RCom) has started preliminary talks with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile company, for a strategic alliance and possible equity participation of 5 to 6 per cent. In February, Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile’s chairman and CEO, told Business Standard at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that the company was keen to expand to India. China Mobile has over 450 million subscribers. RCom, which offers CDMA mobile telecom services and started GSM services a few months ago, has over 70 million customers. An RCom spokesperson declined to comment and an email query to China Mobile was unanswered. The Chinese telecom company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has operations in Pakistan, where it acquired Paktel for $460 million in 2007 and renamed the company CMPak. It also operates mobile services in Hong Kong and recently bought a stake in Far East Tone Communications which operates mobile services in Taiwan. RCom is expected to require cash to bid for licences for third-generation (3G) services, auctions for which are expected later this year. The reserve price for the auction has been set at a steep Rs 4,040 crore. The company recently announced that it would like to issue equity shares to qualified institutional buyers to finance its 3G bid, expand its broadband business and bolster its financials. With a net worth of over Rs 63,000 crore, the company has cash flows of over Rs 12,000 crore. Chinese companies, however, have been subject to security controversies, especially those with Pakistani operations. The government, however, recently cleared a deal between Swedish company Telenor and realtor Unitech’s telecom venture, though the former has operations in Pakistan. The government also cleared another Chinese company, Huawei Technologies, which won a contract to supply GSM equipment to state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd in south India. Many Indian telecom companies have been looking stakes and strategic alliances with international companies. For instance, Bharti Airtel, India’s largest private telecom service provider, recently signed an agreement to explore a global alliance with South Africa’s MTN ahead of an eventual merger. Tata Teleservices recently sold 26 per cent to Japan’s NTT DoCoMo which is playing a key role in its launch of GSM services. Last year, new entrant Swan Telecom sold 45 per cent to UAE-based Etisalat for close to $900 million and Unitech Wireless, with 22 circles, sold 60 per cent to Telenor for Rs 6,120 crore.

thanks for the info saket

^ u r right kumaar,bcoz it was airtel and voda the report doesnt divulge the names..

Dear Bhargav I am simply amazed by the attachment you have towrds TATA GSM ..

well said ramesh ...btw the teasers from TATA are up..reads like 'why relive in the past"... DO as it appears in the docomo is readable

in this country where human life itself has no value who cares about sparrows ...

http://www.business-standard.com/india/new...chennai/355149/ The city is far ahead of the other metros. Chennai, often an afterthought in the list of metropolitan cities, has emerged at the top in a study of mobile phone penetration by the Cellular Operators Association of India, or COAI. The number of mobile phone subscribers as a percentage of the city’s population is the highest here, at 111 per cent, which means a fair number has more than one mobile phone. Mumbai is a distant number two with 90 per cent, followed by Delhi at 83 per cent. The fourth metro, Kolkata, is way behind with 67 per cent. The four metros account for 16 per cent of the country’s mobile subscriber base, but 25 per cent of the total revenue. That means their residents use their phones more and pay fatter bills than subscribers elsewhere in the country. This is the user profile that rings a bell for mobile phone marketers. The data will also provide the handful of service providers that are joining the fray in several cities more food for thought. The data is based on overall mobile subscriber figure for February and includes both GSM as well as CDMA users. Operators say that in Bangalore (separate data on subscriber numbers is not available for the city as it is part of the Karnataka circle) would be around 80 per cent. “Chennai had started as a very conservative city, with consumers reluctant to have a mobile. But it has changed dramatically in the last few years, which is reflected in the fact that there are a lot of people who have more than one mobile phone,” says T V Ramachandran, COAI’s secretary-general. He adds that the churn, the migration of subscribers from one service provider to another, has been even. Telecom companies say that the numbers reflect new challenges, especially for the new operators that are launching services in these cities. They have only two choices, either to wean away customers from other operators or ensure that consumers get hooked on to a second phone. Says a senior executive of a leading telecom company: “New operators face a tough challenge to get new consumers, especially with three to four new players coming in these cities. The problem has become bigger because the churn rate in the country is actually coming down or is stable (it is at 3.4 per cent currently).” Add to that rock-bottom tariffs and there is very little scope left. For incumbents, too, there are new challenges-how to push up average revenue per user which has been falling in the metros. Because with the market already saturated the best way to increase revenue is to ensure that customers spend more.

^ afterall they have realized that you are also mobile guru besides rim guru

@Kumaar all the best

saket u can add 2 more, videocon(read recently, though i am skecptical) and telenor (http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSDEL00010420090616) to start service in the later part of the year.both will start here as Raja ,communication minister hails from tamilnadu.

thanks for good info senthil,may the newer developments in batterys be helpfull for the cdma users

^^ idea fearing its former mate's(TATA) entry into chennai and hurrying to launch http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/N...how/4663799.cms

check this one http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_p...l_737_crash.htm

implications of MNP Number portability may port away telcos' profits: Study http://www.business-standard.com/india/new...s-study/360868/ With mobile number portability (MNP) expected to be operational by the end of this year, telecom service providers may have something to worry about if a study on the facility is to be believed. Two US-based companies, Telcordia and Syniverse, were earlier selected to provide solutions for MNP, which would permit mobile users to retain their existing numbers while changing their service from one operator to another. According to a study by analyst firm Angel Broking, once the MNP facility is operational, mobile operators' Average Revenues Per User (ARPUs), the benchmark of a telecom operator's financial strength, would get adversely impacted by around 5 per cent. Telecom companies' margins would also drop by 100-150 basis points and even earnings per share (EPS) estimates would be pruned by 9-21 per cent. In addition, telecom companies’ financials would be under stress, as churn rates (a customer moving from one operator to another) are likely to increase. At present, the industry has a 4-5 per cent churn rate for pre-paid subscribers. An increase in subscriber acquisition and retention costs, higher capital expenditure to improve service quality and a likely drop in rates are also expected to exert pressure on margins and earnings growth, it said. According to Meridian Telecom (makers of 'Fly' brand handsets) CEO Prem Kumar, even though MNP would be good for customers, this would pull down ARPUs. At present, the ARPU of GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) users is Rs 220 and that of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) players at Rs 111 per month. The ARPUs were as high as Rs 400 in 2005. "There would be a lot of churn, from CDMA to GSM and vice-versa, with discarding entry-level handsets — that are network-locked — and graduate to higher levels. Subscriber retention would become a costly affair for mobile operators and this is likely to put pressure on their financials," he opined. Bharti Airtel CEO (Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa) Manu Talwar, however, is optimistic. "MNP would be detrimental only to operators without robust networks and customer service programmes. At least for the industry leaders, the churn would be in their favour as they have already invested a lot in infrastructure upgradation," he said. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone-Essar and state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) are the three leading operators in the country. However, MNP has been never a success in foreign countries, like in the US, where it was implemented first.

Dear ramesh "a full solar charge is 10 to 14 hours for this phone" ...as compared to normal chrage using electric power is 2-3 hours. by now it might be clear to you abt the difference among the two