Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) has announced a cut in its voice and Video call tariffs for Trump prepaid subscribers. The services will now be available at 20 paisa per minute on the recharge coupon worth Rs 108.
In addition to providing voice and video calls to MTNL’s Mumbai and Delhi networks at 20 paise per minute, the coupon also offers local calls to other networks and calls to Maharashtra and Goa networks at 50 paise per minute and STD calls at 75 paise per minute. The coupon comes with a validity of 180 days.
The announcement comes a fortnight after Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) launched a promotional 3G tariff plan for its prepaid customers.
Under this the consumers are being charged at a rate of 30 paisa per minute for voice calls, both local and STD, as well as video calls.
MTNL offers voice and video calls at 20 paise per minute
Airtel extends one paisa per second to NRIs in USA
Airtel CallHome, a calling card service for NRIs, has launched a pay per second plan for USA subscribers making calls to India.
The $6.99 (Rs 350) plan comes with an administration fee of $0.49 (Rs 25), offering customers a tariff of 0.03 cents (one paisa) per second on the balance $6.50 (Rs 300). The plan has a validity of 30 days.
Airtel had earlier launched offers such as ‘India One’- a one cent calling plan to circles across India, and ‘Mharo Plan’- for calling to Gujarat, Mumbai, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, meant for Indian expatriates staying in the USA. It enables NRIs to make calls to India even if the phone doesn’t have international calling facility.
Airtel CallHome is available in the USA, the UK, Canada and Singapore. A user can sign up for Airtel CallHome online and can select a calling plan by registering up to three phone numbers, an email address and other personal information. The payment can be done online. After signing up, a subscriber can use one of the registered phone numbers to make a call by dialling a toll-free access number and entering the destination number.
Vodafone brings Zoozoos back to life
The egg headed creatures will be back in a couple of days to take over your TV screen. Those who were reminded of boiled eggs and felt queasy at the sight of the Zoozoos, may blanch on hearing this. To the three lakh odd fans on the ‘Zoozoo Official Fan Club’, this is great news.
For them, the icing on the cake is that only the fans witnessed the launch of the ‘Complete the Zoozoo story contest’, which kicked off yesterday. The contest is open on the microsite, www.vodafone.in/completethezoozoostory, which was designed by Ogilvy India, the creative agency of Vodafone.
As the name of the contest suggests, one has to make up a suitable ending to the given Zoozoo stories. Three incomplete situations with the Zoozoos have been uploaded on the micro site and the visitors get a chance to complete the story in any way they’d like.
Entries are open till the end of December and winners will get a Blackberry Storm from Vodafone. Apart from the mobile phone, Zoozoo T-shirts are also a part of the giveaways.
A Vodafone spokesperson says, “There is a huge community on Facebook dedicated to the Zoozoos and we wanted to have something specifically for them.” Apart from the microsite, which is being pushed through Facebook and the official site of Vodafone, online banners, too, form a part of the mix to push the contest.
Only recently, Vodafone entered into a deal with Shoppers Stop which has the exclusive rights to manufacture and retail Zoozoo merchandise, including T-shirts, kids wear, mugs and bed and bath accessories across its stores in India.
Banking at phone hubs soon
Outlets of telecom companies such as Airtel and Vodafone may soon double as bank kiosks for financial services like funds transfer or bill payment, especially in parts of the country where there are very few banks or none at all.
The government has set up a high-level inter-ministerial group to consider introducing a mobile-based model without links to bank accounts for delivery of basic financial services. This would allow customers to transfer money to a distant relative or pay shopping bills at the press of a button.
The group would define the type of transaction to be allowed, quantum of financial limits, guarantee to be offered by airtime vendors, eligibility of agencies involved, role and accountability of service providers and interoperability among them, interface with the Reserve Bank of India, security of deposits and transactions, and geographical coverage of services including borders and sensitive areas.
The group, to be set up under the IT ministry that mooted the proposal, would comprise secretaries or top officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs, telecom, financial services, posts, rural development, Planning Commission, UIDAI, and representatives of telecom regulator TRAI and RBI. It would work out the norms and define the role of various stakeholders in the report to be submitted to cabinet secretary in January.
The IT ministry, in a presentation to the cabinet secretary, suggested that low-value transactions should be allowed through mobile phones with little or no involvement of banks. It also proposed future two-way links between the UID Authority and mobile operators. It said the maximum permissible limit of Rs 5,000 should also be increased further to serve the purpose of financial inclusion.
A finance ministry official said, “RBI is comfortable relaxing the cap, but it is not in favour of providing financial services without links to bank accounts. It is of the view that this may lead to security problems as Know Your Customer (KYC) norms of banks are more stringent than mobile operators.”
A top official in the IT ministry said, “KYC norms can be enhanced if necessary. The technology is already there and regulatory barriers should not prevent people from getting the convenient, fastest and cheapest mode of accessing financial services. It will help curb money laundering as all transactions through this channel will be fully traceable. This will also bring down operational costs for banks.”
The model being proposed is similar to M-PESA in Kenya, which enables users to complete basic banking transactions without visiting a bank branch.
Customers can deposit, withdraw and transfer money from a network of airtime resellers and retail outlets acting as banking agents. Of about 31 million people in Kenya, 5.8 million use the service. The model has been replicated in Afghanistan and Tanzania, while Egypt and South Africa are also considering it.
RBI came out with “mobile wallet” guidelines in August 2009, which allow mobile phone users to deposit with telecom operators up to Rs 5,000 that can be used for merchant transactions. Some companies are piloting the service under whichthe recipient will be able to collect the money from an outlet of the mobile operator by showing a transaction authorisation code received from the sender.
There are about 400 million bank account holders in India, whereas the number of mobile phone subscribers has reached 490 million with an addition of 10-12 million new users every month. Of these 490 million subscribers added in the last 14 years, about 50 per cent do not have a bank account.
Mobile financial services will help 95 per cent of the 6.4 lakh villages in India that do not have a bank account. In December last year, Vodafone, which is running M-Pesa in Kenya for last 18 months, had proposed to the department of posts to facilitate mobile financial transactions through its post offices. It had asked for a share of revenue from the transactions process ed through this system.
MTS rolls out prepaid data service in Delhi
MTS, the CDMA mobile service of Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), has announced the launch of its high speed prepaid data service, MBlaze, in New Delhi. The service enables users to access few websites such as Yahoo, Wikipedia and Makemytrip without any data download charges. It is available at a rate of 10 paise per MB with a speed of up to 3.1 Mbps (megabits per second).
The prepaid data service is free of any roaming charges and security deposit and will be available in eight circles – Delhi, Rajasthan, Kolkata, West Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. It will also be made available in Mumbai from December.
MBlaze is an internet Modem which can be connected to a computer through USB. The modem can be bought for Rs 3499 for a premium model and Rs 2999 for a standard model. The price points for usage, depending on the volume of data downloaded per month, range from Rs 198 to Rs 5000.
Vsevolod Rozanov, president and chief executive officer, SSTL, says in a company statement, “Data services are going to expand beyond the metros with people demanding real time information and knowledge. We see the market expanding beyond the corporate user to include SME (small and medium enterprises) and students. Data services integrate the user with real time information and offer a wide array of benefits including interactivity and gaming.”
Sanjay Bahl, chief operating officer, Delhi-NCR and Haryana circle, MTS, adds, “All our base transmitting stations in Delhi-NCR are high speed data enabled, and hence MBlaze subscribers will have seamless connectivity even in a traffic jam of Delhi roads.”
MTS currently has over 2.5 million subscribers in nine telecom circles – Kolkata, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and Karnataka.
SSTL is a joint venture between Sistema of Russia and the Shyam Group of India. Sistema is the majority shareholder in this joint venture with a 74 per cent equity stake, along with the Shyam Group holding a 23.5 per cent stake and the remaining 2.5 per cent being publicly held. SSTL has the license to provide mobile telephony services in all the 22 circles across India.
Multimedia services to surpass share of SMS in revenues: IDC
According to IDC, a USA-based firm providing market intelligence and advisory services, mobile multimedia services will make up 11 per cent of the total revenue from mobile services in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) at the end of 2009, surpassing SMS revenue contribution for the first time.
The research firm says in a press statement that most mobile devices today have a built-in networking capability such as USB, Bluetooth, or WiFi and this gives mobile users improved access to content.
Last year, contribution of SMS to mobile revenues was 10.3 per cent, while that of multimedia was 10.1 per cent. IDC predicts that SMS contribution will be remain at 10 per cent in the coming years but the contribution from multimedia will be constantly increase.
Alex Chau, senior research manager for IDC’s Asia Pacific mobile and wireless technologies research, comments, “Early drivers of growth in mobile multimedia content have been ringtones and wallpaper downloads, particular with the younger demographics. Today, the emergence of handsets featuring larger screens and even touch-screen interfaces has pushed the uptake of mobile multimedia services to a new level. This has spurred content and application developers to develop tens of thousands of applications to satisfy this new demand amongst mobile users.”
He adds that the next stage of growth will require mobile operators to invest in and upgrade mobile networks in the region in order to handle the mobile packet data traffic growth.
IDC believes that with the foray of competitors such as Apps Stores, the market will become more competitive, which will lead to an eventual price war, benefiting mobile users in APEJ.
IDC is a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology industries. IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. It is a subsidiary of IDG, a leading technology media, research, and events company.
Idea Cellular to invest Rs 300 cr in Assam, North East
Idea Cellular, the mobile operator owned by the Aditya Birla group, has announced the launch of its 2.75G GSM network in Assam.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Ambrish Jain, director, operations, Idea Cellular, says, “We will invest Rs 300 crore in Assam and North East over a span of three years.” Jain further stated that of this amount, the company has already invested Rs 200 crore in one year and the rest will be invested in the next two years.
With this move, the company has expanded its network to 21 of the 22 telecom circles in India. The state of Assam has a teledensity of 22 per hundred population.
Idea’s mobile telephony services at launch will be available in 13 districts of Assam – Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Cacher, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Kamrup, Karbi Anglong, Kokrajhar, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sibsagar, Sonitpur and Tinsukia.
The mobile operator claims that it will double its network to 500 cell sites, mobile phone base stations that transmit radio signals to mobile phones, to cover 56 towns and 1400 villages in Assam, by March 2010. It will also set up a network of 450 cell sites in the North Eastern region during this period.
Idea’s services in the remaining circle of North East, comprising of the six states of Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh will be launched later in the year.
Idea will establish several customer service centres and a retail network of exclusive stores in the region. The company claims that this retail and service network will grow to over 4,420 retail outlets and 35 exclusive showrooms in Assam, by March 2010.
Other operators who also have presence in Assam and North East are Vodafone and Reliance Communications.
Mobile subscriber growth at 70% in Circle C towns
According to TRAI figures, Circle C registered a year on year growth rate of 70 per cent, an addition of 2.3 million mobile subscribers in absolute numbers.
According to the latest figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the telephone subscriber base in India reached 525 million in October, taking the teledensity to 44.8 per hundred population. The wireless subscriber base stands at 488 million.
In a break-up of circle-wise growth in mobile subscriptions, the figures reveal that in absolute numbers, Circle B had the highest number of additions at 6.8 million in October. In percentage terms, the growth rate is about 52 per cent year on year. This circle comprises Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal, Sikkim and Lakshwadeep.
While the absolute growth for Circle C is 2.3 million in October, its yearly growth rate is accelerating at 70 per cent. This circle comprises Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
As for the other circles, mobile subscribers grew at 47 per cent in Circle A (Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Goa) and 37 per cent in metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata).
Interestingly, wireline or fixed line telephony is registering a negative growth in all circles on a yearly basis.
TRAI fixes mobile number portability charges
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has rolled out regulations to determine the charges applicable for the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) in India. It has issued the MNP ‘Per port transaction charge’ and ‘Dipping charge regulation 2009’ as well as the Telecommunication Tariff Order 2009.
The per port transaction charge is the charge payable by the recipient operator (operator to whom the number is being ported or transferred) to the MNP service provider, who will process the Porting request. The dipping charge is the charge payable by an operator to the MNP service provider for dipping of each message. The porting charge is payable by the subscriber to the recipient operator for porting his mobile number.
As per the TRAI press statement, the regulator has set the per port transaction charge at Rs 19, the dipping charge is left to mutual negotiation between the operators and MNP providers. The porting charge, payable by the mobile subscriber, has also been fixed at Rs 19. However, the operators have the liberty to charge any amount less than or equal to the porting charge. These charges will come into effect from December 31.
TRAI also states that it has determined these charges after doing an analysis of the stakeholders’ comments and the cost details given by the MNP providers.
The regulator had announced in September that MNP shall be implemented from December 31 in metros, and by March 20, 2010 in the rest of India. It had also announced several guidelines for the implementation of MNP in the country.
MNP allows subscribers to retain their existing mobile phone when they move from one mobile service provider to another irrespective of the mobile technology, or from one mobile technology to another, in a licensed service area.
Bharti Airtel slashes roaming rates
Further intensifying the ongoing tariff war, Bharti Airtel has announced a new plan that reduces Roaming charges on its network by nearly 60 per cent.
Under the Airtel Turbo plan, customers will be charged at 60 paisa per minute for all incoming calls and for all local and STD outgoing calls to an Airtel number while on roaming. For all local and STD outgoing calls to any network other than Airtel, subscribers will be charged at 80 paisa per minute on roaming.
The service provider, which has 115 million customers across the country, had earlier launched Airtel Advantage Plan and Airtel Freedom Plans where both per minute and per second rates were offered to the subscribers.
“Recent research has shown that customers need benefits while travelling and are not satisfied with just local calling benefits,” says Atul Bindal, president, mobile services, Bharti Airtel, in a statement.
To avail of this benefit, Airtel prepaid subscribers will be charged a plan enrollment fee of Rs 98, which gives them an incoming validity of one year. For postpaid customers, Airtel Turbo plan comes with a monthly rental plan.