@ksh@T

BARCELONA: Forecasting a gloomy future for telecom sector aspirants, top mobile operator Bharti Airtel today said that all the new players will "collapse" within three years. "All new players will collapse within 36 months. These firms will take at least 12 months to build their network and 24 months after that they will struggle to survive in the market. I feel it does not make a viable position," Bharti Group Chairman and CEO Sunil Mittal told PTI at GSM Mobile Congress. Mittal's almost echoed the views of Vodafone, whose CEO Arun Sarin had yesterday said that only one or two new players would remain in the arena and consolidation process will start in the telecom sector. He also desired to buy spectrum from the market in case if it did not get the additional frequency from the government. "Who buys them or not, after 36 months is not clear... our position is that please don't give spectrum to anybody at the cost of our (existing players) growth path," Mittal said. Bharti Airtel has achieved 60 million subscriber base (both mobile and fixed) and one billion minutes of traffic is going through its network per day.

COIMBATORE: As part of its expansion plans in Tamil Nadu, Airtel has proposed to increase its rural coverage from the current 10,000 villages to 17,000 villages by March 2008, a senior company executive said on Wednesday. The cell site count, which was at 4000 in March last, would go up to over 6,700 by March '08 and in terms of urban areas almost 750 towns in the State, would be covered by that period Rajiv Rajgopal, CEO, TN, Mobiles Services, Bharti Airtel Ltd, told the media. Nearly 65 per cent of the rural population of Tamil Nadu would be covered in the present expansion, Rajiv said adding the company has plans to increase the coverage to 90 per cent in the next fiscal. In the seven districts of Western Region of the State,in and around Coimbatore, the cell sites have been doubled in '07-08, going from 1100 in Mar '07 to over 2,200 by Mar '08. On the expected increase in the customer base following the expansion, he said that in the last few months, about 2.5 lakh customers of the State have opted for Airtel every month, totalling to over 5.3 million, till now. Once rural connectivity is increased, the growth rate would be more, but not according to urban growth, he said. With over two million additions every month for the last few months, the overall customer base at National level has crossed 57 million, Rajiv said.

Defence may soon release spectrum: Telecom Secretary BARCELONA: The Communications Ministry is hopeful of soon hearing from the Ministry of Defence on release of spectrum for allocation to new operators, some of whom are waiting since December 2006. "We are in touch with the Ministry of Defence... as soon as adequate spectrum is vacated we shall simultaneously distribute to new players," Telecom Secretary Sidharth Behura said on the sidelines of GSM World Congress here. Asked how much spectrum was expected to be vacated by the Ministry of Defence and how many players would be accommodated, Behura said "we shall try to accommodate all of them. "...But one thing is very clear that we are not going to starve the defence from spectrum they are using, so whatever can be vacated without hurting their operations we will get," he said. He also indicated that if extra spectrum was available after meeting the demands of applicants till September 25, 2007, then firms who applied after September 25 would be considered. In all, nine firms that applied till September 25 have been alloted Letters of Intent (LoIs). The companies include Shyam Telelink, Unitech Developers, Datacom, Swan Telecom, along with Tata Teleservices under the clause of dual technology. About the project cost to meet Ministry of Defence's requirement to vacate spectrum, Behura said state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has been working very fast to complete the project. Already Rs 260 crore have been spent and in total about Rs 500 crore would be invested. This would take care of the Airforce segment, while army and navy are yet to firm up their plans, officials said, adding that as and when they convey their plans, BSNL would implement them at the earliest. Asked whether by month end the new players would be getting spectrum, Behura said a definitive reply can be given only after hearing from the Ministry of Defence.

i totally agree with kumaarshah, how cm then bsnl done it too earlier, . .am unable to understand it!

man go to vaishno devi . . they dont have a tower in that area but at peak u can talk @ zero signal! i have talked so i know na

classics and classics . . anil will surely launch them only . .kyonki power ka jhtka dheere se laaga

download total network ringtone here Total network

total_network_akshat.mp3 download ringtone of total network

launched in jaipur too, 2-3 weeks ago. they have changed the software or firmware of all wll phones dunno kow why?

this 94608 is frm raj . ..and search forum for a special excel file that will help you!

anil ambani go more with amar singh!

let the music play! wait for the dooms day!

MUMBAI: Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infratel proposes to offer price discount and staggered payment facility to retail investors bidding for its book built issue that is expected to raise Rs 5,000-6,000 crore. Mr Ambani’s Reliance Power also offered same sops to the retail investors who had applied for its recently-concluded Rs 11,560 crore IPO, the country’s largest primary market issue so far. It had offered a flat discount of Rs 20 a share to them, nearly 4% of the issue price of Rs 450 and a part-payment facility wherein an investor could apply for the issue with a 25% payment. Although the exact amount of the discount for the RITL issue will be determined later, bankers close the IPO said they will be in line with Reliance Power. Reliance Power was the first company to offer discount to retail investors after the market regulator, Sebi permitted such freebies with a cap of 10% of the issue price. RITL proposed the idea of offering these sops in the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) of the issue which was submitted to Sebi on Monday. ET was the first to report on the forthcoming issue and the possibility of filing the DRHP with Sebi this week in its Monday edition. According to DRHP, the entire book built issue will hawk 8.91 crore shares, representing 10.05% of the post-issue equity capital of the company, of face value of Rs 5 each. RCom, the Ambani group’s telecom company, now holds 95% stake in RITL. Post issue, the equity capital of the company will go up to Rs 443.6 crore from Rs 399 crore. Going by the expected issue size of Rs 5,000-6,000 crore, the issue is likely to be priced at Rs 560-670 a share. The proceeds of the issue will be spent to finance the company’s’ expansion plan which entails setting of 16,000 towers for over Rs 4,600 crore next year. It has tower sites of 23,434 in the country’s each 22 circles on December 31, 2007. The draft prospectus says RITL posted a net profit of Rs 154 crore in the nine months ended December, 2007 on total income of Rs 902 crore. Its operating profit before tax at Rs 247 crore. A Macquarie Equities research report valued RITL at Rs 54,400-71,000 crore while RITL’s valuation stands at $13.1 billion to $14.9 billion (Rs 51,247 crore to Rs 58,288 crore), according to a Deutsche Bank report. Both the valuations were based on the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.

SINGAPORE: Bharti added a record number of mobile subscribers in the last quarter, helping to boost Singapore Telecommunications' (SingTel's) regional subscriber base to 171.54 million, the company said on Monday. SingTel's mobile subscriber base in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand rose 53 per cent in the quarter ended December 31 from the same period a year earlier, it said. The figure was boosted by the addition of Warid Telecom's 13.21 million subscribers, SingTel said. The companies announced last June that SingTel would take a 30 percent stake in Warid, Pakistan's third-largest mobile operator. Bharti, SingTel's largest regional mobile associate in terms of subscribers, attracted 6.29 million new mobile customers in the quarter, SingTel said in a news release. The Indian firm now has 55.16 million mobile subscribers, SingTel said ahead of its third-quarter earnings report to be issued on Tuesday morning. SingTel is Southeast Asia's largest telecommunications firm. Indonesia's Telkomsel, with the second-largest mobile subscriber base among associates, added 3.43 million customers during the quarter, bringing its total mobile subscribers to 47.89 million, SingTel said. Wholly-owned unit Optus in Australia added 108,000 new mobile subscribers last quarter, pushing the total number of Optus mobile customers to more than seven million, SingTel said. At home, the company saw a record quarterly increase of 197,000 pre- and postpaid mobile customers, bringing its total mobile customers to 2.33 million in the city-state, it said.

NEW DELHI: Reliance Communications (RCom), which had acquired US-based Yipes Holdings last year, has decided to rebrand the company as ‘Reliance Global Services’. Yipes is a provider of managed Ethernet services in the US. RCom will also introduce Yipes services in India in addition to developing channel partners to sell Yipes services in Middle East, Europe and Asia. In December 2007, RCom obtained the FCC approval and completed the acquisition of Yipes for about Rs 1,200 crore. The company will also integrate the management of Yipes with that of its undersea cable arm, Flag Telecom. According to Flag Telecom’s group president, Punit Garg, following the completion of the acquisition, RCom over the next 12 months plans to ‘more than double Yipes’ network in he US from the current 14 key metros to fully address the $4billion demand in 2008’. Currently, Yipes has over 22,000 km of optical fibre across these 14 cities with clients such as include Verizon and NTT DoCoMo. Yipes already boasts of over 1,000 enterprise data customers in the US, including New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. RCom is also confident about Yipes potential to bring in increased revenues: “Global Ethernet is the preferred means of connectivity for business due to its ‘plug and play’ technology and security features. As per market data, Global Ethernet is the fastest growing segment of the data services market, projected to climb to $30.7 billion by 2012,” says Mr Garg. Ethernet products help firms compress and transfer data across cities or geographies efficiently. Put simply, Ethernet products are a network of hardware — switches and routers – that facilitate data connectivity across geographies.

MUMBAI: Prithvi Information Solutions has bagged an order valued at Rs 309 crore from BSNL, for supply of transmission equipment that helps to increase the network bandwidth. Prithvi has tied up with a Chinese telecom company, Huwei Technologies, to source the equipment and is customizing it for BSNL. Prithvi will also be responsible for embedding the networking maintenance software, assembling, quality check, along with the maintenance of the equipment for the next 5 years. The company's order book stands at Rs 203 crore as on Dec 31, 2007 with orders from companies like T-mobile, Singular of Rs 183 crore in US. On Monday, Prithvi Information shares closed up 7.42 per cent at Rs 329.95 on BSE.

well mine was ok yesterday but i dont know what happened today! bull**** 17k download speed!

mine waSA AFFECTED FOR A DAY NOW OK!

hey should i buy this handset or not! its available @ 7K

well recently i wsa in ranakpur, there only two operators were working definitely BSNL and what second one was reliance. i was shocked to see this. yeah airtel was working but at some distance but then i was made to think that total network! is working

guys its official now reliance covers 4,00,000 villages and 15000owns. and what more a dedicated website for that http://www.totalnetwork.co.in and download screensaver for thatr ScreenSaver and ringtone too find out more Akshat

NEW DELHI: State-run telecom operator BSNL has tied up with US-based WiMAX solutions firm Soma Networks for the largest WiMAX deployment in the country covering four states in three circles. The proposed infrastructure would provide services to about 20 crore people in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Goa. Soma Networks was selected after field trials in urban, suburban and rural areas. In the first phase under the tie-up, WiMAX would be deployed in Ahmedabad which would be up and running by June-July this year. The complete deployment will take three years. The alliance between the country’s largest telecom operator and the WiMAX solutions firm is on a revenue-share basis. “BSNL has awarded the contract to Soma for complete deployment in these states. It’s difficult to put a value to the contract since it’s on a revenue-share basis,” BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal told ET. “We would ride on BSNL’s infrastructure and provide our solutions based on the 802.16e-2005 standard, which ensures greater subscriber density,” Soma Networks MD Jatinder Ahuja said. The states, he said, were chosen on the basis of their high industrial growth. BSNL had earlier received some spectrum in the 2.5 GHz frequency band. It plans to roll out WiMax services in 70 cities across the country by mid-2008 and set up 50,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) — ICT-enabled kiosks — across the country using WiMAX. The government has set itself a target of 20 million broadband lines in service by 2010. Soma Networks is a leading provider of mobile WiMAX solutions. It’s a principal member of the WiMAX Forum. Its solutions are currently deployed in five continents. Headquartered in San Francisco, it has offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Gurgaon, and Singapore. While WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is still an evolving technology, it is still considered a threat to third generation mobile services. As per global industry experience, WiMax offers data speeds that are 10-30 times faster than 3G. To put this in perspective, the data speeds of 3G networks are over five times faster than those offered by 2G cellular networks that telcos in India currently use.

wow rs 25 less from my bill next time

MUMBAI: Reliance Communications (RCOM) plans to sell another 5% stake in its wireless tower business in the second such transaction in this calendar year. JP Morgan, which advised RCOM in the last transaction announced in July this year, invited bids from financial investors last week amidst indications that the deal will be bigger than the previous one, which fetched a value of $6.75 billion for the tower business. Reliance wants the business to be valued at about $9 billion. It believes that the profitability of the tower business will increase as tenants increase. For instance, the roll-out of RCOM’s GSM business in 16 circles will be considered another tenant. The introduction of 3G and WiMax next year will give opportunities for further tenancies. The bidders are likely to be financial investors such as hedge funds and institutional firms. Reliance Communications spokesperson declined comment on the issue. The wireless tower business is witnessing frenetic activity as companies begin to see immense benefits in spinning off the asset and are either listing it separately, or selling a small stake to investors at a premium. A wireless tower enables smooth passage of signals across a wide expanse of territory and is crucial in helping telecom companies achieve penetration. Big telecom companies own thousands of towers, but it need not always be on their books. The companies can spin off the tower business and lease space on them to other telecom companies, their competitors. The tower business becomes an independent company with its own revenue stream and a relatively stable business model. The telecom operators benefit as they get much-needed cash from such a spin-off for their operations. Their shareholders also benefit from an increase in share price and market capitalisation. Companies with no major infrastructure to boast of can ride piggyback on those with towers after paying rental and other pass-through charges. Reliance Communications has spun off its business earlier this year and sold a 5% stake to investors such as Fortress Capital, HSBC Principal Investors, GLG Capital, Quantum Fund, New Silk Route Advisors, Galleon Group and DA Capital. Other telecom companies have quickly followed suit. Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest wireless services provider, has announced the spin off of its business. The firm is also in talks with Vodafone and Idea Cellular to create a single mega business. Spice Telecom has decided to sell the business while Tata Teleservices wants to sell a substantial stake. A tower business needs to have at least two tenants in order to be profitable. RTIL now has Reliance Communications’ CDMA business as one of its major clients. Its other tenant is Reliance Telecom which runs GSM services in the seven circles. A third tenant will be added when RCOM rolls out GSM services in the remaining 16 circles. It has already got a licence and is waiting for spectrum to be allocated.

well in 1 circle they had given the contract to NOKIA too as told by zee business