ravi_patent

karthik the fact that seldom used sim, videocon offered 20 local minutes free for 3 months is amazing.probably u can modify ur signature as "want free calls send port request"

yes the former.no idea abt the pros and cons of the later

pajat I suggest you samsung guru muzik (around 2500 and is OMH). performance is really good

OMH evdo is a matter of time.cdma operators are making hay while the sun shines.i dont think that bsnl 3g/evdo speeds are as consistent as private evdo operators speeds. imo evdo is much cheaper and consistent than 3g

sorry to see virtues of postpaid

dear kanagadeepan what evr u told holds good as long as long as spectrum charges are not revised. mr sibal (mama or uncle as you like to call him) wants more money for spectrum. and he says MNP will keep prices under control. If the input cost raises for all how come opeartors can keep prices at the same level.. my observation on MNP is based on the rimweb members posts ..from the port ins and port outs i felt that movement is from cdma to gsm..

and trends thus far indicate that mnp is not contributing to competition rather mnp is helping reduce competition

sibal should note that porting govts by way of elections every 5 years is not resulting in any good. allow voip legally for real tariff benefit to customers.. otherwise mnp will be of no use

fake activations by gsm operators will comedown.however unequal spectrum allotment for new operators seems biased.

as of now MTS cannot match reliance in coverage..

assured gift(/pen drivebluetooh headset / hitachi hard disk) above 1500 purchase from ebay is back.hurry before ebay withdraws as happened during diwali http://shopping.ebay.in/valentine2011/index.html?_qi=RTM837290

@ kesav i agree with you.. either paid news or blindness to reality by media

considering that Within 72 hours of launch, 1 lakh hook up for Airtel 3G (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2011/01/28/stories/2011012851721200.htm) and in view of the explanation below one should buy airtel stocks first "What this means is that unless you want to get a shocker of a bill at the end of the month, you should pick your plan very carefully according what you think your usage will be. Online reports are claiming that an Airtel 3.6Mbps card was offering download speeds of about 300KBps, so it will be quite easy for you to use up your data limits pretty quickly" http://www.pcworld.in/news/airtel-3g-tariff-plans-explained-44832011

kesav its been around for 3-4 months and costs 1300

may be uninor's style of attracting mnp waiting customers

i think http://bit.ly/hqGHFV is offering valuable info on deals

The general attitude with indian's thus far has been sticking to a brand irrespective of quality offerings from competitors.i wish the same should not happen here benefitting the cartel .

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2011/01/27/stories/2011012750410300.htm 2-3% of mobile users may shift operators, says Syniverse chief Syniverse is one of the two companies which were given the licence by the Government to set up the mobile number portability (MNP) system. Business Line spoke with Mr Sanjay Kasturia, CEO, Syniverse Technologies India Pvt Ltd, on how the company went about implementing the system and its expectations. How difficult was it to set up the entire system? From Syniverse perspective, the implementation of the entire system has not been difficult at all. Syniverse has deep experience with number portability and has played key roles in MNP implementations in a number of countries around the world, including in the UK, Finland, Singapore, the US and Canada. The transition in those locations to MNP has been nearly seamless for both the operators and the subscribers, and we are experiencing the same successful process in India. What percentage of subscribers do you think will churn due to MNP? As regards the porting percentage, we expect there would be an initial excitement on MNP but it is likely to stabilise to the levels we see across the world. We expect this percentage to be between 2-3 per cent over the next few years. Do you think India will go the way other markets where MNP was introduced in terms of overall impact? The success of MNP and its impact largely depends upon a) Customer awareness of the MNP services and its advantages by the operators, flawless roll-out of the MNP service, and c) proper monitoring of the MNP process by the “regulator,” such that the end customer experience is not compromised. In our opinion, MNP will have a very positive impact for the subscribers. Is the revenue share fixed by TRAI profitable for you? Syniverse will be paid a “Per-Port Transaction charge” as decided by the TRAI from time-to-time. How many people have you taken on ground for the MNP business? There are multiple teams managing different tasks to ensure the porting process is smooth for the end subscribers. We would not like to provide numbers here as a part of the work of managing the Data-centre operations has been outsourced to TCS.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/For-3G-operators-will-opt-for-sachet-approach-not-bucket-or-thali-plans/articleshow/6460158.cms Bharti has always maintained that 3G will not come cheap. What does this mean for the consumer ? In metros such as Delhi and Mumbai, you may have to move your existing high-value customers to 3G networks to ease the spectrum crunch. But, with just 5 MHz or units of third generation airwaves, is this sufficient for moving these additional customers and also proving high-end data services? When we say 3G will not be cheap, it means that customers here will not get those bundled unlimited plans that you see in the US and some other countries — such plans have completely clogged the networks of those service providers. When compared to unlimited packages that you get in other parts of the world, one may find 3G expensive here in relative terms. Even today, when you look at data, India is not as cheap as other countries, or these services are not as cheap as voice because of the spectrum constraints in India. 3G in India will continue to be around affordability and availability, but operators will opt for the sachet approach. Despite data being priced on the higher side on the current 2G platform, these services continue to sell. The same will happen for 3G, and customers who opt for specific options such as downloads, surfing in small packets will find the pricing very reasonable. What they won’t find is the bucket and thali plans that are common overseas . Again, if you compare our pricing to the thali plans overseas, then 3G in India will be expensive. The 3G spectrum per say is about three to four time more efficient than 2G spectrum. Loading voice calls of high-end customers on to 3G may not therefore lead to high consumption of these airwaves . Today, technology allows you to segregate voice and data.So you may have a situation, where a high-end customer is on the 2G network for his voice calls and on the 3G for data. Such flexibilities are possible. Are you worried that you may not get 3G spectrum in time (by September) as promised? If you get these airwaves next month, by when will you launch 3G? You bagged 3G in 13 circles , but will you enter into alliances to offer these services in other areas too? We are banking on that promise that it will happen by September and I believe that for any reason if it does not, then government will compensate us financially . By the end of the calendar year, one should see 3G services in at least some parts of the country, if the airwaves are handed out in time. We are working on our 3G alliances as our endeavour is to be a pan-Indian player in this space — but for competitive reasons , I cannot reveal details as of now. India continues to add record number of new cellular users every month, but the revenues for the sector combined continue to be lower than December 2008 levels. Will revenues for the sector continue to remain flat, going forward ? Does Bharti have a stronger balance sheet when compared to other listed competitors because the company refused to match discounts given by other telcos? We have to consider two factors here. First is activity level in the market, and second, if this translates into revenues. The minutes that are being added to the network due to increased usage and the growth that is happening in rural India indicate that the activity level continues to be high. Even if you discount the number of monthly additions by 50% because of the duplicity of SIMs, India is still the fastest growing telecom market in the world. This proves that activity level is buoyant. But, the issue arises when you translate activity in the market into revenues. In desperation to get numbers there are a lot of freebies and discounts that are being thrown into the market, which is causing a pain for the entire sector in terms of revenue growth. This can be explained by the fact that there are 14 players in the market, which means there are excess capacities at the moment. But, once consolidation kicks it — it already has — we will see a reprieve on this front. All incumbents, including Bharti Airtel, did respond to the tariffs that were being offered by some of the new players in Q3 of last year. The discounts were pretty steep at that time, and any dominant brand in the market could not be seen offering a lesser value to their customers no matter how strong their brand was. In that euphoria the prices did came down — so it would be wrong to say that we did not participate. But, we have always been watchful of where elasticity exists and where it doesn’t . We also keep a very keen eye on free and overly discounted minutes in the market. You said consolidation is already happening, in what sense? Consolidation begins in the mind, for both customers and operators. The very fact that some of the operators have not rolled out the networks even after getting spectrum, the reality is some of the operators are no longer as aggressive in their rollouts and also that companies have refrained from bidding for 3G airwaves are all signs of consolidation in the minds of companies. World over we have seen that when it comes to choice of technologies and sustenance , when there is a 3G and 2G environment, having only 2G in the long run has not worked. Again, when it comes to customers mind, the very fact of resurgence of traffic with larger operators is an indicator of consolidation in the customer’s minds. Even in a much crowded market, the very fact that 5-6 operators account for almost the entire revenue market share is another sign of consolidation — the customer recognizes the bigger and stronger brand when compared to the smaller players. But many analysts say the return or resurgence of minutes may not be the best indicator of incumbents striking back. They claim that minutes increase is linked to many packs floating around such as free night calls, reduced tariffs for weekend calls and so on. To some extent what you are saying has merit. That is why I will always look at the return of minutes in conjunction with sustenance of the rate per minute. If minutes were coming because of packs, freebies then the price per minute would have fallen . But, what has been encouraging over the last couple of quarters is that minutes have come back without the rate per minute going down further — or, the rate per minute’s decline has been minimal. For a company like Bharti, what are the key challenges going forward? You are adding almost the same number of customers every month, the market has stabilised; there is no price war now. How can you increase revenues and get back to the levels of growth as in say 2008? Participation in the market and being competitive in the market is a way of life. The leadership team is marked on market parameters and we are fairly aligned to what happens in the market. What we can’t control is the euphoria that sets is which is not determined by economics, discounting of prices and free minutes — we don’t have full control of that. When a company like Bharti moved from zero to 100 million and now from from 100 million to 200 million, most of systems and process that we pick up are designed and experimented by us because we don’t have similar models globally to choose from. Therefore, we end up designing a lot of redundancies , business continuity plans, systems and process based on our learning and that obviously is challenging for any leadership team. Next challenge is that we want to move from voice centric to lifestyle delivery centric company, this transition is unchartered as there are again not many examples available worldwide. We are building various new vertical streams into the business so that your future dependence on voice reduces. When you do that, whether it is entertainment, commerce, advertising, health — the knowledge of these domains does not exist internally, and the complexities that arise due to this is something that you have to learn to manage . So, the big challenge going forward is how do develop these complex ecosystems all within one company, how do you track people in these verticals , how do you grow and reward them and how does the knowledge transfer happen. Is it also a challenge that going forward, you will have to compete with existing partners for the same pie? For example, Nokia Siemens and Ericsson are now developing services — a space that belonged to mobile operators. Apps are now being developed by both telcos as well as handset makers. When you launch mobile money transfers, you may have to compete with Nokia Money. As the ecosystems begin to develop, I think all stakeholders will complement each other. For example , when we got into music, the traditional music companies feared that we would eat into their revenues. There was also this issue of piracy. Our entry ensured that we brought in new revenue streams into largely stagnant industry as telcos began to work with the existing players in this space. We grew, but they grew as much and even the exchequer began to gain from the growth. I believe that as telecos migrate to many of the newer revenue streams, one will see similar benefits to the society, ecosystem at large and also for the government. Customer additions appear to have slowed down. Has growth peaked in India? We have over 55% tele-density and 600 million SIMs — where does the industry go from here? I can’t forecast the future for simple reasons — in this industry, the reporting standards are not standardised . All companies use their own parameters to report their customer addition. All I can say is that we are probably going through the weakest period in terms of customer addition. But, if you look at the figures for the last three years, then Q2 has always been the weakest in terms of customer adds and therefore there is a seasonality to this. Many analysts in their outlook say that India say that India will have a billion SIMs. However, what got revealed in Barcelona in the last GS M conference was very interesting , when the CEO of Ericsson predicted that the world will have 50 billion SIMs by 2025. What he was drawing the attention to was the machine to machine (M2M) communications — if such numbers can be true, then Indian will have 6-7 billion SIMs in this period. Then we are far from reaching any sort of saturation. There are many experimentations and many live applications that are already available in the M2M space — for us, there are many of our enterprise solutions that we offer are not entirely M2M, but are headed in that direction. I can give other examples how even without the intervention of big players, developers are already moving into this space. If you go to buy a lock in a place like Gurgaon, they will offer you a SIM-based lock, where you get an SMS if anybody tries to tamper with it. So, image the potential when big players are enter this space.

^good info dear

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MTS offerings given in detail at MTS website http://bit.ly/f5pnVh as usual media gets carried away with out reading fineprint.. for example Innovative offers for Migrating CDMA Customers CDMA customers switching to MTS would be able to avail the ½ paisa per second tariff for all local calls valid for 3 months with an FRC of Rs. 13. The second recharge of Rs. 50 will provide customer with a talk time of Rs. 75 Additionally, with a recharge of Rs. 109 per month, customers would be able to avail full talk time, 109 free minutes for all local calls and all local calls at half paisa tariff with a validity of 30 days. MTS in poaching mode from RCOM and tata

more on mts mnp offers http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/mts-rolls-out-attractive-offers-for-mnp-customers_514943.html

@kapil the mnp page of mts says.. Customer will get benefits on RC 109 each month one time for next 12 months.. in case u know can u clarify that "one time recharge with 109 will give the benefits for 12 months?

whatever rajan said is absolutely correct but every crises is an opportunity to reform the reforms started in 90s were a response to foreign exchange crisis.. 2g mess is another example virtues of democracy (indian style)