Uninor Taking Cautious Step Towards 3G Bidding

[savramesh 37]

Source

NEW DELHI: Uninor — a joint venture between Telenor of Norway and Unitech Wireless in India — is taking a conservative stand on the upcoming 3G auctions. Speaking to TOI, Sigve Brekke, executive vice-president Telenor Group and head of the Asia region said the 3G market was not an immediately addressable opportunity.

“We do not perceive a market demand for 3G in India. Our main focus is to grow penetration to 50% teledensity levels. We will offer voice and data services with m-health and m-commerce solutions. For now, basic voice connections will dominate the market with 3G later down the road”, he said.

According to Brekke, given the limited slots of spectrum being auctioned and a reserve price of Rs 3,500 crore, 3G spectrum may be too early in India’s telecom lifecycle and certainly too expensive.

“The government must clear 2G regulations on 2G spectrum sharing, trading and M&As before moving into 3G. The DoT should come out with clear polices”, he said.

The DoT had written a detailed report on 2G spectrum issues in May 2009 but decided to send it to the Trai for its recommendations, which it is still to release despite over 6 months of deliberations. The recommendations are expected at the end of March after which the ball will go back to DoT’s court.

Uninor is operational in 8 of its 22 circles, jostling for market share with as many as 8 to 9 operators in each circle.

[me_saket 73]

new entrant trying to in 3g specturm war

[KanagaDeepan 1,084]

Uninor taking cautious step towards 3G bidding...

People are also taking cautious steps in looking @ Uninor's offers , since it either has call mole$ting charges or Daily Rent, which is NOT AT ALL specified in any ad...

[vvinayakpai 26]

But whatever said about Uninor, I appreciate one thing.

For continuing lifetime validity, no minimum recharges are necessary. One incoming/outgoing call is suufficient every six months. Thats a good initiative by Uninor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am planning to take one just for th sole purpose of incoming

[KanagaDeepan 1,084]

I am using more than 10 Prepaid SIMs of TataIndicom (given to my office workers), almost all are using for two years, whose last recharge done (Rs200) was just 13 months back.. But NOTHING happened after the six months of non-recharge... No THREATENING SMS/Calls.. Everybody is using without any hint of a problem... So Uninor is NOT the only one to offer such scheme, imho...

Dear friend, be careful while selecting Uninor, even-though they have written about LT validity earlier... Because @ that time they had Rs2 daily rent, which itself accounts to Rs360/6Months.. Now they have removed the daily rent and so there is possibility of change in LT validity policy too... May be, because IT IS UNINOR...

[HetalDP 947]

They want more customer to be attached so they can claim more spectrum. This is a Business and till the time Spectrum is linked to Subscriber Number they will be soft to life timer

[vvinayakpai 26]

@ kanagadeepan

Thanks for the information. My guess is that now all telecos would go for the consolidation phase. This I say because, there are only three more operators to start their commercial services on a pan India basis (at least in Karnataka, i.e. Etisalat, Videocon and Loop). Also, players like MTS were offering 1ps/2 secs for lifetime in circles like Kolkata. Now it has been reduced to 1 year. ALso, our very dear RCOM also reduced the tariff validity of all their SIMPLE plans for 1 year from the earlier lifetime (Thank God its only foor the new customers though).

I really feel that the existing operators would slowly form a cartel and ensure that the rates dont go down below a certain point as they have a superior network as their USP.

The above is my practical theory and I really pray that I am proved wrong.

[raccoon 53]

Existing operators don't always have a better network. Best example is Airtel (Mah). Only recently its become barely usable. And I'm sure most of the new operators will improve their network with time.

That said, cartelisation is always a possibility. I just hope the competition is somehow kept up to prevent this... else there is nothing to prevent veteran leeches like Airtel from suc*ing us dry.

Edited March 15, 2010 by raccoon

[me_saket 73]

instead of cartelization, merger will take place

[savramesh 37]

Indian market is not yet ready for 3G: Uninor

Chennai, March 21

Uninor, the four-month-old telecom operator, may have kept away from bidding for a 3G licence, but the Unitech-Telenor joint venture is eagerly awaiting the 3G regime in India.

Surprised? But it there is a logic.

“Now, operators who are bidding for 3G will be down for some months in their preoccupation with 3G,” says Mr Stefan Kercza, Hub Head, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Uninor, told Business Line.

He said that 3G hopefuls would need to do a lot of things, such as upgrading their base stations, which are “very costly and time consuming.” “You wait and see how much time and money they will be spending in building up their 3G business,” he added.

Uninor, which stormed into the telecom market in January with an aggressive 29 paise-per-minute offering, has won 3.5 million customers in the last three months. It expects to consolidate its customer base further – when its well-entrenched competitors are busy with 3G – launching more features to its offerings, the principal one of which will be GPRS. (General Packet Radio Service is a wireless communications technology that is particularly suited for sending and receiving small bursts of data, such as e-mail and Web browsing, as well as large volumes of data.)

GPRS launch

Mr Kercza said Uninor would launch GPRS within the next fortnight.

Uninor, whose Norwegian partner, Telenor, is a large player in Europe, did not bid in the recent 3G auctions. Mr Kercza said that Telenor knows from its experience in the Nordic countries that the Indian market is not quite ready for 3G. He recalled Telenor, which had not participated in the first round of bidding for 3G, did get into 3G five years ago, but found there was no market.

“All the revenues that we were looking at did not come because people were not ready to use it as it should be,” he said. Operators thought people would use their mobile phones “to see each other while talking” but it did not quite happen that way because to do that both talkers need to be on the same network and same technology platform.

In developed countries with high broadband penetration, people were used to higher speeds than 3G and were hence apathetic to 3G. But now with the onset of 4G or ‘long term evolution', which allows speeds of 100 mbps (against 14.4 mbps of 3G), operators in the Nordic countries are now planning to roll out the technology, Mr Kercza said.

In countries such as India, first there has to be an ecosystem of value-added services for 3G to take off, he observed. It takes time for the ecosystem to develop because there will always be teething problems such as revenue sharing and who takes responsibility in case the service fails.

Uninor, which currently operates in eight telecom circles, intends to roll out its services in five more over the next couple of months. It is also engaged in an exercise of collecting data of its customer profiles and behaviour.

[me_saket 73]

uninor didn't participate in 3g auction?

[::Hitesh:: 1,763]

it that make any difference ?

[KanagaDeepan 1,084]

Yes HITESH JI, It will bring ONE VERY BIG difference imho... And that is NO CALL MOLE$TING CHARGES in 3G

[::Hitesh:: 1,763]

^^^

LOLz

[vvinayakpai 26]

Yes HITESH JI, It will bring ONE VERY BIG difference imho... And that is NO CALL MOLE$TING CHARGES in 3G

Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!