Honest

^^^ Oh, thats really a great news my dear Kumaar.

Every fourth Indian is connected 1 Jul, 2008, 1801 hrs IST BANGALORE: Every one in four Indians has a phone now, thanks to the scorching pace at which the burgeoning telecom services sector grew in the last fiscal, says an annual survey. With the total wireless subscriber base crossing 261 million as on March 31, wireless connectivity forms 22 per cent of the total tele-density at 25 per cent across the country, the survey adds. The annual survey by Voice and Data of CyberMedia group revealed that the Indian telecom subscriber base zoomed by 66 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the fiscal under review over the previous year. "A booming economy, easing of entry barriers and lowering of tariffs fuelled the growth in FY 2008, with 104 million new subscribers getting connected and making India the second fastest growing telecom market in the world," CyberMedia publisher Prasanto K. Roy said Tuesday, citing the survey findings. The trigger for rapid telecom service growth was the revolutionary telecom policies of the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments, resulting in affordable connectivity to a common man. "With India's telecom tariffs still the lowest in the world, there's enormous and sustained growth beyond the metros. So telcos see huge opportunity in the three-fourths of Indians still untouched by the mobile phone revolution," Roy noted. Leading the growth was the proliferating cellular service in urban and rural areas, accounting for 59 per cent of the total revenue, followed by fixed line and international long distance (ILD). "A whopping 104 million more subscribers were connected during the fiscal under review, with about 50 per cent of them originating from tertiary and rural areas," the survey said. Thriving in the growing market, the Indian telecom services industry generated Rs.1,306 billion ($31 billion) in 2007-08, registering 21.3 per cent growth. Mobile, fixed line, national long distance (NLD), ILD, broadband, VSAT (very small aperture terminal) and radio-trunking constitute the telecom services industry. Growing at 36.4 per cent YoY, revenue from mobile service increased to Rs. 766 billion from Rs. 562 billion in the previous fiscal (FY 2007). Majority of new mobile subscribers is from towns and villages with less than 200,000 population. The mobile network covers about 50 per cent of the 600,000 towns and villages across the country. "The mobile services are available from over a million outlets, which exceed that of FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) or postal outlets. Expansion into rural areas, lowering entry price of handsets through freebies and customer retention efforts have helped operators to ramp up their subscriber-base and revenues," Roy pointed out. In contrast, revenue from fixed line declined by 11.6 per cent to Rs.267 billion from Rs.302 billion in the previous fiscal. Revenue growth from ILD service remained flat at Rs.115 billion. Both the services respectively accounted for 20.4 per cent and 8.8 per cent of the industry revenue. Revenue from NLD service, however, grew by 35.4 per cent to Rs.97 billion from Rs.72 billion, accounting for 7.5 per cent of the total revenue. Unlike in previous years, broadband service witnessed a phenomenal growth of 163 per cent YoY to generate Rs.54 billion as against Rs.20 billion in the previous fiscal. The subscriber base grew to 3.9 million in the last fiscal from 2.5 million in the previous year. The telecos also have to leverage SMS, data, and other value-added services to remain profitable in the face of the low and falling ARPU (average revenue per user). The top five service providers vie for a larger share of the growing telecom pie. State-run BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) leads the pack with Rs.353 billion despite 12 per cent decline from the previous fiscal," Roy pointed out. BSNL is followed by Bharti Airtel, with Rs.264 billion, Reliance Communications Rs.186 billion and Vodafone Rs.155 billion, respectively. The top five operators based on cellular subscriber base are Bharti (62 million), Reliance (46 million), Vodafone (44 million), BSNL (41 million) and Idea cellular (24 million).

60% of mobile users in rural India by '12: E&Y Economic Times l 2 Dec l New Delhi Rural India too prefers mobile phones over landlines. Of the next 250 million Indian wireless users, approximately 100 million (40%) are likely to be from rural areas, and by 2012, rural users will account for over 60% of the total telecom subscriber base, according to a report jointly released by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Ernst & Young. As per Trai figures, subscriber additions in rural areas exceeded additions in the metros. In the first nine months of 2008, the four metros together added 10.3 million subscribers, while the rural areas added over 11.3 million. Mobile phones in rural India also grew by close to 13.72% to reach 70.83 million in the quarter-ending June 2008. This is expected to continue till 2012, according to the CII and Ernst and Young analysis. “The majority of new wireless subscribers will emerge from circle B and circle C,” said Ernst & Young telecom analyst, Prashant Singhal. While the overall teledensity in India is over 30%, in rural areas the figure languishes in single digits. CII predicts the number of subscriber addition in rural areas to exceed the additions in metros by 2012 with about 120 million new users expected to adopt wireless telephony in rural areas compared to about 62 million in the metros. With over 300 million mobile subscribers, India is the second largest market, after China, in terms of subscribers. By 2012, the total telecom subscriber base is expected to shoot up to include about 700 million subscribers, of which about 650 million will be wireless users.

BSNL told to act fast on revenue front Economic Times l 2 Dec l Mumbai Alarmed over the decline in Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) revenues and its payment of quarterly licence fee to the government, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has written a letter to the public sector unit to stem the rot at the earliest. The PSU telco’s revenue dipped around 23% during the first quarter of the current fiscal over the immediately preceding quarter. In a letter to BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal, DoT secretary Siddhartha Behura has said that the rapid decline in revenue in the first fiscal quarter is “alarming” and will “also affect the budgetary estimates of DoT for licence fee for the current year”. In FY07-08, BSNL’s licence fee payments up to the second quarter stood at Rs 1,265.23 crore against the annual budget estimate of Rs 2,800 crore, which is 45.19% of the total licence fees. However, during the current financial year, the payments in the first two quarters amount to only Rs 1,147.12 crore against the annual budget estimate of Rs 2,880 crore, which is around 40% of the total licence fees. “It’s a matter of great concern that the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) figures that have been reported by BSNL are also beginning to show a decline. While the gross revenue had shown a consistent increase in the four quarters of 2007-08, it has shown a considerable decline in the first quarter,” said Mr Behura in the letter. According to a top official in BSNL, the PSU operator is preparing a detailed note in response to the letter by Mr Behura. This letter is expected to detail the various financial issues plaguing BSNL and will be despatched later this week. BSNL had a subscriber-base of around 40 million users at October-end, with a market share of 13.7%. It has been extremely inconsistent in subscriber addition due to capacity constraints. It has also been seeing a decline in revenues due to various factors. Following enormous delay in finalising its tender for GSM lines, floated in 2006, the public sector unit lost subscribers as well as market share to private players. Further, its fixed line user-base, which was its core strength until recently, is also going down. Also, obligations for roll out in commercially enviable rural areas have led to a financial setback for the telco. To add to its woes, the access deficit charge (ADC), which was paid by private operators to BSNL for subsidising rural telephony, has been ended. The regime was in force from 2003 till October 2008.

^^^ Yes my dear Kumaar, I think CDMA will completely shut-off even before 5 years in India.

QUAKE III Hits S60 Mobiles From the mobile gaming section the latest reports are that the once popular multiplayer First Person Shooter, QUAKE III Arena can be played on a Series 60 (3rd edition) Symbian device. The handset should be equipped with a TI OMAP 2420 processor though. To make things interesting Bluetooth features have been tossed into the mix. In this context, a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse. Although it hasn’t been confirmed yet, the game just may be enabled for actual multiplayer gaming by accessing a game server. The developer of the other QUAKE ports Olli Hinkka has put this into action. Some of the handsets that should support the game include Nokia N95 8GB (only), Nokia N82 and Nokia E90. For more information and on how to install the game click here. Courtesy : Tech2

Samsung Shows Off Their i900 i-Killer Samsung’s i-Killer, the i900, has been unveiled and christened the Samsung i900 Omnia. The i900 is a Windows Mobile handset (6.1 Professional)with a large 3.2-inch QVGA display sporting a 240 x 400 pixel resolution. Like Sony Ericsson’s Xperia and their own i780, this handset also comes equipped with a small optical mouse. It is 12.5mm thick and is quite easily going to look and feel stylish, especially with its sliver brushed metal back. Some of the other features that are incorporated into the Omnia are a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera that uses face and smile detection technology to optimize pictures. It also has a Geotagging feature that works in tandem with the inbuilt GPS unit that the i900 comes integrated with. The QuadBand i900 also supports GPRS/EDGE, 3G with HSDPA 7.2Mbps speeds, Bluetooth with an A2DP profile and Wi-Fi as well. Samsung has also incorporated their TouchWiz interface into this handset. It may not be quite like HTC's new TouchFlo 3D interface but I'm sure it'll have something worthwhile to offer users. The i900, like the iPhone and so many other new handsets being launched, also has an accelerometer that will automatically rotate the display when held in landscape. It also comes with an FM radio aside from the media player. The handset will also come in 8GB and 16 GB capacities and oddly enough Samsung has also included a microSD card slot for more storage. That seems like a bit of overkill, but why not! The handset will be out sometime this month but there’s no official pricing attached to it so stay tuned. Courtesy : Tech2

Samsung Omnia Bags DivX Certification To debut in mid-June 2009 in Southeast Asia Samsung has introduced Samsung Omnia (SGH-i900) with DivX certification in the US market. The company had released world's first DivX format supporting phone, Ultra SGH-F500, last year. Released late September in India, Samsung Omnia retails for Rs. 39,000. We've already reviewed the Omnia. Omnia has become the first Windows Mobile-based smartphone to be DivX certified so far. Now DivX already has Video-on-Demand service and by certifying Omnia, DivX has just added yet another popular smartphone to their list of Video-on-Demand certified products. The DivX certified Omnia will be launched in Southeast Asia in mid-June 2009 and post that will be made available in the European countries. Courtesy : Techtree

Blackberry Storm Gets First Software Update Faced with flak, RIM comes up with a fix The just released Blackberry Storm got its first much-needed update treatment with a few users getting to upgrade to version 4.7.0.75. The Blackberry Storm, launched last month, was plagued by software-related issues and faced flak from users for problems ranging from loss of email connectivity to issues with the screen orientation. RIM seems to have paid heed and has now come up with a fix. Unlike most firmware updates where most changes are under the skin and nothing noticeable shows up, this one is different. After the update, users reported a marked improvement on various fronts. While some noticed faster camera load times, others were drooling over the improved response times and the overall snappiness that was so alien to the device. While there are other chinks in the Storm's armor that will ensure it might not live up to its "iPhone killer" expectation, improvements on the software front are certainly welcome. Let's hope we have a stable version by the time the device ends up in India. Courtesy : Techtree

Anil Ambani healthiest, happiest person in business: Survey Economic Time l 1 Dec l Mumbai Anil Ambani, chairman of ADAG Group, has been voted as the happiest and healthiest person in business in a study by magazine Complete Wellbeing. The survey was conducted by global market research firm Synovate, to find out India's healthiest and happiest people. The survey gives an insight into who Indians feel are the healthiest and happiest people in the world of business, entertainment, politics and sports. A majority of 47 per cent chose Anil Ambani as the happiest person. He was closely followed by 72 year old Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group (36%) and brother Mukesh Ambani (35%). Two foreign business magnates who've had a deep impact on many Indians and have made it to the survey are, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffet, the renowned investor, the American who ranked as the richest man in the world during the first half of 2008. Anil Ambani was also chosen as the healthiest person in business, having caught the attention of the entire nation with his early morning marathon run. More than half the respondents of the survey, i.e. 53 per cent, voted for him as the health icon and an inspiring leader. Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani feature second and third with 46 per cent and 40 per cent votes respectively. Interestingly, one of the most dynamic and exemplary businessman of India, Aditya Birla, who died in 1983, is still perceived by a good number of people to have been one of the fittest in the world of corporate finance. Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys founder chairman Narayana Murthy, is the only woman, followed by Balaji Telefilms' Ekta Kapoor, among the chosen top twenty healthy business leaders. The survey was conducted across eight major cities in India among a broad age group of 25 to 45 years old.

Reliance GSM Service Launch on Course Targets 7 million handsets sales CDMA major Reliance Communications (RCom) is expected to roll out its GSM services across the country early 2009. The company is currently in talks with handset manufacturers including LG, Samsung and Motorola to acquire the handsets. The company has set a target of 7 million handsets, which it intends to bundle along with its service and sell mainly through its 2,500 retail stores across India. According to sources, RCom has earmarked approx. Rs 15,000 crore for its GSM services. The Department of Telecommunications' dual technology policy allows existing CDMA players to also operate GSM services within the same licence. Apart from RCom, CDMA operators Tata Teleservices and Shyam Sistema are also in the race to launch GSM services. The Indian telecom market is projected to reach 700 million subscribers by 2012 from the present 325-million plus.

^^^ The mobile seems to be good my dear friends, but Camera is missing from the handset. It could catch up sales if this device got a camera also. Regards.

^^^ This is one of my favourite song my dear Asit. Keep it up my dear friend. Cheers !

^^^ Thats really a good one my dear Asit. Keep it up buddy. Cheers !

^^^ My dear friend, please do not post multiple threads on the same topic. One thread is sufficient for the response. We have deleted your other thread. You can discuss here in this thread only. And please be specific in your posts. You didn't mention clearly what exactly do you want. Regards.

@Dj My dear friend, for general discussions regarding Iphone we use GSM / CDMA Mobile Networks/Handsets Discussion Forum of Rimweb. Regards.

^^^ My dear friend, please do not post multiple threads on the same topic on the forum. One thread is sufficient. You will get the reply. We have deleted your other thread on the same topic. Regards.

Wish you many many happy returns of the day my dear Ashok, Amit, Chiraj, Mauk and all others.

Thanks for the tones my dear Saurabh.

^^^ Thats really a valid point my dear friends.

Vodafone Essar removes towers as it fails case in both HC, SC Press Trust of India l 29 Nov l Thane Vodafone Essar today removed the mobile phone signal towers following dismissal of their petition against the Thane Municipal Corporation by the Bombay High Court. Vodafone Essar had challenged the order of the Thane Municipal Corporation to remove the towers in the vicinity of the Thane district court. Apprehending threat to the society from the cell towers installed by the service providers BPL and Vodafone, a Thane lawyer S S Bhutala had filed a complaint with the Thane Municipal Corporation and wanted the towers be removed. In his complaint, the lawyer stated that the tower installed just next to the Thane district court premises not only posed a threat of radiation to members of the judiciary, but to hundreds who visit the courts daily. He wanted the Corporation to remove the towers in the city in the interest of the city itself. It was pointed out that the towers were mounted on the water tank which posed further threat to the building. The TMC administration which heard the complaint ordered the BPL and VODAFONE to remove the towers forthwith, else warned that it would pull it down. The service providers had challenged the order in the Bombay High Court which dismissed the petition and asked the corporation to go ahead with their plans to pull down the towers. The service providers did not not rest there, instead challenged the order of the High Court in the Apex court which also dismissed the appeal on Friday.

Samsung Launches Handset For Pre-Teens I’m not entirely sure if this is good news, bad news or just ‘news’ news but Samsung has recently launched a new handset - The Tobi S3030 slider phone - that’s apparently designed and directed toward the pre-teen market. Of course it would be irresponsible to assume that that’s their prime demographic, considering the release also states that it’s for ‘young adults, and anyone who desires to experience fun and safety features from their mobile phones’. The handset is available in colorful variations (Sweet Pink, Bright Orange, Loyal Blue, Oasis Blue, Apple Green and Snow Silver with interchangeable back covers) and is reportedly made from non-toxic recyclable and biodegradable bio-plastic. It’s painted using non-toxic paints and non-allergic materials to keep the environment as well as the health of the users safe. Does this mean that kids can safely shove this up their nose, or bite on it without the materials causing them any harm? Hopefully. Additionally, the earphone is also made of eco-friendly materials without any polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The Tobi is quite an equipped handset that comes with a 1.3MP camera, audio player, Bluetooth (with BT messaging), a 1.9-inch TFT display (176×144 pixels, 65k colors), GPRS and microSD card support. What’s supposed to make the handset so enticing are the GUI colorful themes - Monster theme, Snowman theme and Ocean World theme as well as the interchangeable cover with a transparent portion at the back for inserting a photograph. It’s a light-weight phone at just 85g so I’m presuming it’d be easy to misplace or break too, unless the company has thought of that and it comes equipped with Samsung’s resident Mobile Tracker software and is made of some truly rugged yet ‘eco-friendly’ material. But jokes aside, the handset does come with safety features that include - SOS Call, SOS Message and a feature called Fake Call. Using these safety features, users can be directly linked to their family members and friends in emergent situations and even “easily escape from dangerous situations”. I’m not sure how, but that’s what the release says. The handset will be out sometime this month in the Europe sector and could make its way to Asia soon after that. There’s no price mentioned yet. There are probably a slew of arguments for a scenario that arises out of a pre-teen requiring a cell phone. While a mobile handset can in no way be construed as a mere toy and there are innumerable handsets that are directed at the youth in general, the S3030 is just another electronic gizmo for a slightly younger generation. Whether or not it’s relevant is something for you to decide. I’m curious, and I’m sure most of you mobile maniacs out there are too, to find out what everyone thinks of a mobile phone for kids. But before posting your comments do stop to think of the security features etc. that the handset comes with. Courtesy : Tech2

Trai rebuts Raja claim, says DoT ignored call for 2G auctioning Economic Times l 29 Nov l New Delhi Trai chairman Nripendra Misra has refuted telecom minister A Raja’s claim that department of telecom (DoT) went ahead with the first-come-first-serve (FCFS) basis to allot 2G licences to new players on the basis of Trai recommendations. Mr Misra said Trai had recommended auctioning of 2G licences but the telecom department chose to ignore its suggestion. The Trai chairman said market forces should have determined the price of a licence, which includes start-up spectrum. “We had recommended a mechanism for giving licences which must capture the market price. DoT had not sought our views on whether spectrum was to be auctioned or not,” he said. The DoT had earlier stated in reply to the central vigilance commission (CVC) that it had gone by the guidelines laid by Trai. Telecom minister A Raja has been repeatedly accused of favouring a few players to grant the 2G licences and for selectively quoting Trai recommendations to go ahead with the FCFS formula. But Mr Misra said DoT had bypassed Trai’s initial recommendation and did not adopt the auction route. He was speaking at the roundtable conference on ‘India Telecom Landscape 2012’, organised by industry body CII. Mr Misra also said that the process of spectrum management must capture the three cardinal features of good governance—predictability, stability and transparency. “The entire decision-making mechanism in the telecom sector should be in the public domain,” said Mr Misra. He said Indian telecom sector has remained unaffected in the adverse global trend. “The current global financial crisis is now one of the major constraints on the pace of economic reform, but the Indian telecom sector is one of the few sectors that have remained almost unaffected,” said Mr Misra.

Update My dear friends, Battle ends in Mumbai, death toll rises to 195.

^^^ You are right my dear Kumaar, the above handsets are GSM handsets. Regards.