After having seen the intense price war amongst telcos over call and SMS rates, we can now see them triggering another war by cutting tariffs for other services such as multimedia Messaging (MMS). The first to kick off MMS rate cut is Bharti Airtel.
The service provider has announced a major reduction in MMS charges for its prepaid as well as postpaid customers in Delhi and NCR. It has cut tariffs from Rs 5 to Re 1 per MMS for limited period.
” With this initiative, our customers can now send photos, pictures, Images and visual greetings to others only at Re 1 per MMS, “says Shashi Arora, chief executive officer, mobile services for Delhi and NCR, Bharti Airtel, in a statement.
Currently, service providers such as Vodafone and Idea are charging subscribers Rs 3 per MMS along with additional data usage charges.
Bharti Airtel drops MMS rate
Reliance Webstore to distribute Coolpad handsets
Reliance Webstore Limited, the wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications and the retail venture of Reliance ADA Group, has entered into handset distribution in addition to its current handset retailing business through Reliance World and Reliance Mobile stores.
Reliance World stores will act as distribution hubs, with each store registering its own channel partners and handset retailers and developing its own distribution network. The company has already signed up 1200 handset retailers and multi brand outlets (MBOs) in 100 towns.
The company has entered into an agreement with the Indian joint venture of Hong-Kong based China Wireless, Coolpad Communications. Reliance Webstore signed a strategic distribution agreement with Coolpad Communications gaining exclusive rights to market and distribute Coolpad’s dual mode smartphones in India.
Sarup Chowdhary, director and chief executive officer, Reliance Webstore Limited said in a company statement, “In addition to our exclusive distribution agreement with Coolpad Communications, we have also identified other new business opportunities to leverage this model for a larger participation in the Indian telecom retail sector.”
Coolpad also plans to establish a R&D unit in India. According to the official communiqué, Coolpad is planning to invest Rs 400 crore in India over the next three to four years. It will also establish a R&D unit in Shenzhen, China. The special R&D unit will work with Reliance Webstore teams across India to seek customer feedback and develop differentiated products for the Indian market. The Coolpad smartphones are expected to contribute over 30% of the overall handset sales at Reliance World and Reliance Mobile Stores, according to the statement.
Over the next three years, Reliance Webstore is looking at a distribution network of over 10,000 MBOs and retailers spread across 700 Indian towns.
The telecom retail business currently contributes over 50 per cent to Reliance Webstore’s annual revenues, claims the company.
Loop Mobile reintroduces pay per second plan
Loop Mobile (formerly BPL Mobile) has announced the relaunch of its pay per second plan that will charge consumers one paisa per second for all local and STD calls. Existing subscribers can recharge with Rs 48 to avail this plan. It is also available for all new prepaid subscribers.
Sandip Basu, chief executive officer, Loop Mobile, says in a statement, “Though Loop Mobile had pioneered the concept in 2004 and launched it across circles then, we find the market is more receptive to this offer due to increase in both access and acceptability. We are revisiting the service now and are confident that our customers will widely accept it.”
Loop Mobile, then BPL Mobile, had introduced the concept of per second billing across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Goa and Pondicherry in September 2004.
The operator was charging prepaid subscribers a standard tariff of 3 paise per second for local calls and post-paid subscribers a flat rate of 2 paise per second for all local calls.
Telephone subscriber base in India crosses 500 million
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released figures on the telecom subscriber base as in September 2009. The government had set a target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010. There are 509 million telephone subscribers, up three per cent from August. The teledensity in India has reached 43.5 per cent.
In the mobile segment, the subscriber base is almost 457 million. The teledensity in this segment stands at 40 per cent. Among the operators, Tata Teleservices showed the maximum growth in subscribers at 26 per cent. The operator has two brands – Tata Indicom in CDMA and Tata Docomo in GSM. This is followed by Bharti Airtel with 16 per cent additions.
MTS, a newcomer in the space, has shown an increase of 13 per cent in the subscriber base from the previous month, and has 1.9 million subscribers.
The wireline subscriber base stood at 37 million. BSNL and MTNL lost about 60,000 subscribers in their fixed line services.
The Broadband subscriber base has reached 7.22 million in September-09, showing a growth of 3.2 per cent.
RCom launches pay per second plan
Reliance Communications has succumbed to the pay per second trend. The operator has launched two new tariff variants effective November 5 under its Simply Reliance Initiative plan.
Reliance Communications sees three distinct segments emerging in terms of call patterns in the country – short duration calls, long duration calls and standard length calls. For short duration callers, Reliance is launching 1 paisa per second call rate. For long duration callers, there is a Re 1 for 3 minutes call rate and for standard call duration, it will continue charging 50 paisa per minute tariff rate. Reliance is launching these plans across both its CDMA and GSM networks.
The company claims that the new tariffs are valid on all local calls, STD calls, to any CDMA or GSM mobile and landline anywhere in India, all incoming and outgoing calls while roaming, anytime of the day or night, without any monthly charges and without any hidden charges or any conditions.
Mahesh Prasad, president, Reliance Communications, says in a company statement, “The launch of Simply Reliance Plan in October was very well received in the market, both by customers and trade. We now extend the Simply Reliance Initiative by offering two new products catering to varied customer needs with the same simplicity and unconditional transparency.”
Almost all operators today are offering per second billing in some form or the other, including Vodafone, Aircel and Idea Cellular.
Google launches voice search for Nokia smartphones
Google India has launched a free downloadable Google Mobile App for Nokia Series 60 phones. The application is equipped with speech recognition technology designed to understand Indian accents. Search by voice on mobile leads to Google Search and gives the user the required results.
The application also helps users to search for updates on cricket and local business listings. It automatically detects the user’s location and gives him the results closest to his current location. In addition to this, it also has a smart suggest feature which suggests search terms, minimising typing. In order to use this app, one needs to download it from m.google.co.in on the mobile phone.
Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India, says in a statement, “There’s no denying the importance of search by voice in India, and the extension of Google’s search by voice feature to more mobile handsets is a natural next step for our mobile strategy. With millions of new mobile users being added every month Google Mobile App’s will provide them with a quick and easy way to get the required information whenever and wherever they need it. With the launch of this service for Nokia S60 handsets we would be catering to a larger segment of mobile users, as a significant number of Nokia phone users are on the S60.”
Currently, Google India provides mobile services such as web search, SMS search, maps, photos and news. The voice search feature becomes the latest application to join Google’s mobile portfolio.
Tata Docomo brings comic books to mobile
Tata Docomo, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), has launched of ‘CoMix on-the-go’, in collaboration with Zero-Sum Wireless Solutions. The service enables users to read full comic books on the mobile, along with special effects such as character vibration, sounds and zooming text bubbles that magnify the blurbs for better reading.
The full comic book content ranges to about 2000 titles from mythological tales to Supandi from Amar Chitra Katha, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Princess Diaries from Disney, and Sadhu and Devi from Liquid Comics. Tata Docomo claims that it will provide an experience similar to Amazon’s book reader, Kindle, for graphically rich, comic content. The service comes at a price of Rs 20 per full comic book, valid for one year. To access the service the subscriber needs to download the application.
Comix-on-the-go supports two ways of viewing books – scroll view and picture story view, depending on the features of the content to be delivered. The scroll view displays a page of the comic directly and the user can view the entire page by scrolling up and down. To read, the user can magnify the balloon containing the text.
The picture story view displays the cartoon frame by frame, with each frame displayed at the optimum size. The option to scroll and add various effects in the comic strip is also available, but the feature is largely dependent on the data speeds and some of these would be 3G features.
Prepaid connections banned in Jammu & Kashmir
The Ministry of Home Affairs has announced a ban on the use of prepaid SIM cards in Jammu & Kashmir quoting security reasons. It has decided that no prepaid mobile connections should be issued and existing pre paid SIM cards should not be renewed after November 1.
In an official statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs states, “The step comes in the wake of the reports that proper verification is not being done while providing such pre-paid mobile connections by the service providers/vendors. In some cases, a single person had been issued with multiple number of connections.” Some connections are being acquired based on fake documents.
The Ministry has asked the Department of Telecommunications to implement the ban as soon as possible.
Earlier this month, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram had spoken on the same issue while addressing the media in Srinagar.
Iwaymedia to launch SMS based payment solution
Iwaymedia, an applications company for windmill manufacturers, is planning its foray into mobile consumer services. It is planning to launch Iwaycash, a cash on mobile concept, in the country by January 2010 using prepaid debit cards. Through this service, customers will be able to top up through their existing bank accounts or by depositing cash. These cards can also be used in ATMs for withdrawals.
“This is the first time that we are getting into consumer services,” Parameshwaran Pillai, one of the partners at the company, told Telecom Yatra.
The company has developed a three tier security code of SMS Messaging concept for consumers so that they can send an SMS to conclude their transactions without any fear on online risks.
The service does not need software downloads and can work well with ordinary phones. It follows simple SMS based instructions to make payments for shopping, utility bills and money transfers.
Iwaymedia, with its channel partners, will expand their team with pan India operations, who will be working under their respective channel partners to provide ground zero support to mobilise dealers for the payment services and to provide logistic support for the communication of payment related information to the utility services including various government departments.
Iwaymedia is promoted by a team of engineers with over 20 years of experience in custom design embedded information systems. The research and development oriented project design department designed the windmill monitors to ease the maintenance process involving the repair works on the turbines. The company’s client base includes NEPC, PIONEER, INDOWIND, ASHOK LEYLAND, SG REVA and NIF.
NewsX channel to be streamed on mobile
NewsX, the news channel of INX News Pvt Ltd, will now provide live feeds on mobile phones. The mobile URL for accessing live feeds is m.newsx.com/live.
The new service is compatible with all Windows Media mobile phones, iPhones, Blackberry and Symbian phones.
Ajatshatru Singh, head of online, NewsX, tells afaqs! Telecom Yatra, “The new service will be offered free of cost and users will have to pay only regular charges applicable for logging onto the web. We are targeting young, upwardly mobile Indians, who want their news irrespective of the medium.”
However, Singh adds, “The bottleneck for this service is from the operator side and not from the technology side.”
The channel has partnered with US-based company Yupp TV for the implementation of this service.
To promote this service, NewsX is organising trade events apart from launching some initiatives for consumers as well.
INX News is wholly owned by Indi Media Company Pvt Ltd, a venture co-founded by Vinay Chhajlani, chief executive officer of NaiDunia Media Pvt Ltd and founder of Webdunia.com, and Jehangir S Pocha, former editor of Businessworld magazine.