Shyam-sistema Gets Pan-india Cdma Spectrum !

[Honest 836]

Shyam-Sistema gets pan-India CDMA spectrum

Business Standard, August 29, 2008, 16:12 IST

Shyam Telecom and Russian major Sistema combine today became the first new telecom operator to get pan-India start-up spectrum to offer mobile services.

Communication and IT Minister A Raja has signed the file for allotting CDMA spectrum to Shyam Telecom, which has sold majority stake to Russian conglomerate Sistema Inc.

Shyam-Sistema had opted to offer mobile services in CDMA technology and had applied for 21 circles except Rajasthan where the company is already offering services under the brand name Oasis.

Shyam-Sistema will be the third private pan-India operator offering mobile services using CDMA technology apart from Anil Ambani group company Rcom and Tata Teleservices.

Other new telecom operators like Datacom, Unitech, Loop Telecom and Swan telecom have been alloted GSM radio frequency in six circles and the government is looking at the availability of spectrum in other circles too.

Shyam-Sistema has already started rolling out network in various parts of the country and is hoping to start the services soon.

[Honest 836]

Shyam-Sistema brings international brand MTS to India

Press Trust of India l 24 Dec l New Delhi

Shyam Telelink on Wednesday announced a strategic tie-up with Mobile TeleSystems of Russia that will bring the globally acclaimed brand MTS to India for offering telecom services.

Shyam Telelink, which is in a partnership with Russia's Sistema, has the licence to offer mobile services throughout the country and has already launched services in Rajasthan about two months ago. The services can now be offered under global brand MTS.

MTS is the largest mobile phone operator in Russia and in the CIS.

In April 2008, MTS brand was recognised as one of 100 most powerful brands, a ranking published by the Financial Times and Millward Brown, a leading global market research and consulting firm.

Under the terms of the agreement, Shyam Telelink will have the right to use the MTS brand in all its marketing communications and advertising in India.

STL's decision to introduce the MTS brand in India is in line with the company's vision to introduce the world class services and offerings in the Indian market and to pursue global standards in India.

[santhoshavanoor 7]

So new price war is coming up with CDMA operators. I think Shyam will look villages in India also, where Reliance and Tata failed....

[situ1962 21]

I think it will not be possible for a new entrant to focus on the rural areas from the out set,as it will require huge investment.they may spread their wings there after covering the metros,cities,towns etc.reliance's coverage is not as wife spread as bsnl or airtel.but it is far better than that of tata.That's why the user base of tata is not so healthy.this is the picture of ORISSA.i am not aware of other states though.

[ipkonfig 10]

^^ Wife spread ?

[savramesh 37]

its a good news for cdma mobile users.. now we have more choice..

any idea about BSNL's cdma service?

[prakashkadam 1]

choice is needed in OMH (Open market handsets) rather than in operators.

I think Videocon group is also venturing in CDMA space.

its a good news for cdma mobile users.. now we have more choice..

any idea about BSNL's cdma service?

[situ1962 21]

@ praveen it should have been wide spread instead of wife spread.sorry for the typo error.

[savramesh 37]

Sistema-Shyam launches MTS brand in Rajasthan for cell service

Business Standard

Thursday, Apr 23, 2009

Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), a joint venture between Russia's Sistema and the Shyam Group, today re-branded their existing mobile telephony services under the 'MTS' brand in Rajastan.

With this, the existing Rainbow brand, which has over 0.5 million subscribers in Rajasthan, would operate as MTS.

"We are delighted to re-brand Rainbow in Rajasthan to MTS. This is a natural progression to rationalise the mobile telephony offering from SSTL under a single brand name in India," SSTL President and Chief Executive Officer Vsevlod Rozanov told reporters here.

SSTL, which launched its operations in Rajasthan under the brand name Rainbow last year, has already launched the MTS brand in the Tamil Nadu and Kerala circles.

Rozanov said the company intends to increase its network coverage in Rajasthan to over 900 towns and 13,000 villages from the current presence in 600 towns and 12,000 villages.

MTS, which provides mobile services in six other nations, has a subscriber base of about 100 million globally.

Under the re-launch, SSTL is offering free calling from MTS to MTS and from MTS to fixedline for six months.

Apart from free calls on the MTS network, MTS mobile subscribers can also make local calls at 50 paise per minute and STD calls at Re 1 per minute.

Moreover, SMS to any MTS mobile would be free for six months within Rajasthan.

[Mukeshlst 5]

Dear Kamal bhai,

In rajsthan its brand names was RAINBOW.

[supernova 47]

any plans for haryana ?

[me_saket 73]

any plans for haryana ?

2-3 circle per quarter, and all india coverage by dec10

[Mukeshlst 5]

In rajsthan-

if you purchase new connection between 23 april to 31 may,u will get 6 months UNLIMITED calling and sms to any MTS mobile or landline.other offnet call will be charged 50 paisa/min and std will be 1 rs./min without additional charges.

you will get lifetime validity also.for exiting user can get these benifit with recharge of 100 rs.

NOT SO GOOD IN HEAR

[me_saket 73]

Red rolls out

Cash-rich Russian telecom major Sistema plans a significant share in the saturated Indian mobile services market.

Surajeet Das Gupta / New Delhi May 5, 2009, 0:24 IST

When Russian telecommunications service provider Sistema was planning to bring its international brand, MTS, to India, it was confronted with an odd problem. The symbol for MTS, which Sistema was going to use for the first time outside Russia and the CIS countries, was oval in shape and looked like an egg. The company feared the huge population of vegetarians in India could take offence at it.

A nervous Sistema then created a focused group of consumers across the country, many of whom were vegetarians, to gauge their response. To the company’s relief, the group gave its nod to the brand and its symbol. It could be sold to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.

It has been a quiet but fundamental change. Last week, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (a joint venture company in which Sistema has a 74 per cent stake and the rest is owned by homegrown Shyam Telecom) painted Pink City Jaipur red — the colour of its brand. The occasion was the change of its CDMA service brand in Rajasthan from Rainbow to MTS. It has launched the brand in Tamil Nadu, Chennai and Kerala too. By June, it will launch MTS in West Bengal, including Kolkata, and in a few short months, in Mumbai and Delhi too. Thus, in the next nine months, the MTS brand will be seen in half of the 24 telecom circles across the country. Sistema has a war chest of over $5.5 billion to give shape to its ambition.

Rainbow goes red

So, what has prompted the company to dump Rainbow and use Sistema’s international brand? MTS, mind you, was launched only in 2006 and does not have the same equity as is associated with other global brands like Vodafone, even though it uses the same red colour. Though last week, it was ranked as one of the world’s most powerful brands by Financial Times and market research firm Millward Brown. Sistema, of course, is the eighth-largest telecom company in the world with over 100 million customers.

The reason is simple: Rainbow was a regional brand limited in appeal to Rajasthan and what the company needed was a pan-India brand name. While it had the option to call it Sistema, research showed that the brand had no special recall in India. So it had to be nothing but MTS. “The most important factor was the time-to-market, how quickly we could launch the brand across India in the next nine months. With MTS, the brand material, logo and specifications were all readymade and already available,” says Sistema Shyam President & CEO Vsevolod Rozanov.

Rozanov and his team were aware that changes would have to be made in the MTS brand communication to suit the Indian market. The advertising and marketing messages in Russia where it is the market leader was one of leadership and dominance. Things would have to be different in India. “In Russia, our marketing and advertising approach was one of a dominant leader. In India, we are the sixth or seventh operator; so the message has to be friendlier with a human touch,” says Rozanov.

So, signs and shapes or symbols used in advertising campaigns in Russia became a strict no-no. Instead, it is using faces of models talking on the mobile phone to relate to the consumers and give its service the human touch. It has also decided to concentrate most of its advertising spend on the local media of the region instead of using English. “We have seen that the consumer needs to be explained the product and it is best done through the regional language,” says Rozanov.

So far, Sistema Shyam has been a marginal player in the ever-expanding Indian telecom service market. It has only 500,000 customers, a majority of them in Rajasthan (it launched in other circles less than a month ago), which is a fraction of the 288 million mobile connections in the country.

If the company has to grow fast, the message is clear: It has to wean away customers from the incumbents apart from getting new customers (first-time users). In Rajasthan, for instance, the key message of its campaign is to create a churn in the market through the slogan, Badlo life ka plan (Change your life’s plan). At the moment, the company’s plan seems to be working as over 50 per cent of its subscribers are not new customers but those who have switched from other mobile service operators in Rajasthan. “They (these customers) are doing so because they are frustrated with the quality of the old incumbent networks and they are willing to try us as it is a non-congested network,” says Rozanov.

The CDMA challenge

Observers see it with skepticism. Is CDMA the right platform to grow in India, they ask? Aren’t large CDMA service operators like Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices moving towards GSM to expand their footprint in the country? Aren’t customers wary of being tied down to the handset provided by the CDMA service operator? “Sistema has money to put in and that is an advantage. But its entry into mobile services through CDMA is a suicidal strategy as the market has clearly rejected the technology. Also, telecom service operators cannot make money as they have to subsidise the phones which adds to the acquisition cost,” says a senior functionary of a rival telecom service company.

Sistema Shyam does not think so. It says it is getting about 12.5 per cent of the net subscriber additions month-on-month (which includes both GSM and CDMA). Rozanov points out that despite the low tariffs from Reliance Communications on its new GSM service, MTS has actually gained subscribers. Still, the company has not set very ambitious targets. Rozanov hopes to get 8 to 10 per cent of the net additions in each market he enters. If these numbers are reached, he expects the company would be EBITDA-positive in two and a half years.

The targets may be modest, but Sistema Shyam, it seems, is ready to pay the price game. The company has dropped the price of entry-level colour phones to Rs 999 and it comes with six months of free calls and lifetime validity. “The subsidy that we incur on every phone is going down as the price of phones is going down faster than the fall in new offers,” says Rozanov.

Enticing users

Meanwhile, Rozanov is already looking closely at segmenting the market based on subscriber data. He says that the numbers show that a large percentage of his subscribers belong to the SME (small and medium enterprises) segment for which the attraction is a non-congested network and attractive tariffs. The next stage will be to create offers for various segments to expand the market.

In Tamil Nadu, Sistema Shyam has found that bulk buyers have bought the service because of the large minutes offered free — on its “one million offer”, customers get validity till 2028, apart from 150 minutes of daily local calls free for just Rs 499. Rozanov says that the aggressive pricing has triggered bulk purchases in 50s and 100s from taxi service companies and courier service operators who are looking at how to keep in touch with their employees at minimal cost.

But will Sistema Shyam be able to enter the home of India’s discerning mobile customer who is being spoilt by choices? Rozanov and his team have a tough challenge to put the MTS flag on the country’s telecom map dominated by local players, Europeans and Asian service majors.