India’s one of the first Windows Mobile 6.5 equipped phones have arrived, courtesy HTC and RCom. The Touch2 brings the new OS experience laden with an intuitive TouchFLO user interface and internet surfing RCom’s GSM network. Although HTC will sell Touch2 as an unlocked device, users buying from RCom can enjoy free data usage of 200MB per month for the first six months.
India’s Department of Telecommunication had ordered a special financial audit into the books of some telecom operators including RCom, Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular. This audit was conducted in May this year and the findings for RCom are out.
Parekh and Co., the official auditors appointed by the government, submitted an audit report to the DoT yesterday whose findings state that for the FY’08 actual wireless revenue earned by the company was only Rs 12,298 crore as against Rs 15,213 crore reported to the shareholders, which is an over reporting of Rs 2,915 crore. It also found that RCom evaded licence fee and spectrum fee to the tune of Rs 315 crore. Continue Reading…
China based mobile handset maker China Wireless Technologies has officially entered the Indian high-end Smartphone market in partnership with Reliance Communications. This joint venture plans to retail high-end dual-sim handsets in the market under the brand name, ‘Coolpad’. The venture will unveil three Coolpad models initially and will further bring in four models by December.
China Wireless Technologies will invest Rs 400 crore as capital and operating expenditure in the Indian market over the next three years. It expects to clock in a revenue of Rs 800 crore in the next five years.
The company plans to recruit 300 people by the end of 2009 and is expecting to take the count to 1000 by the end of next year. It also has a proposal to start a Research & Development centre in India by the beginning of 2011. The company officials believe that its venture with RCom is in line with its strategy to penetrate overseas markets and take a leadership stance in the global dual-mode market segment.
The Anil Ambani managed Reliance Communications is up to something big, its new ‘Simply Reliance Plan’ simply signifies its big plans. Since the time Reliance launched its telecom venture it has consistently stood out among mobile operators because of its simple yet awesome plans, here it brings us another one. Continue Reading…
Reliance today announced RIM’s latest Blackberry device dubbed as the Tour. Tour is chic looking device, bragging lots of features in a slim 14.2mm chassis. The CDMA powered Blackberry Tour features global roaming, thanks to GSM and CDMA network support and features a vivid 2.44-inch display, 256MB flash memory, full QWERTY keyboard, 3.2MP camera with flash, full HTML browser, GPS, microSD card support and 1400mAh battery promising to give about 5 hours of talk time and 14 days of standby time.
Reliance will sell the device for Rs. 27,990 but for users booking it by Oct 31, they’ll be eligible for two months of free Blackberry Internet Service.
If GSM Reliance users feel a bit left out, there’s some good news for them too. Reliance has confirmed to launch a GSM version of Tour soon.
Reliance Mobile has finally accepted competition and has introduced the pocket friendly, BlackBerry E-Lite plan which offers unlimited access to email and instant messaging (IM) on BlackBerry smartphones for a monthly cost of Rs. 299. Airtel and Vodafone already offer similar plans costing the same. For a complete list of BlackBerry plans and our review, click here
Rcom seems to be on a roll, with largest number of users added in Jan and Feb compared to any other operator in the country. Last month the count stood at 3.3mn, which is higher than what others managed to rope in. RCom believes that the results are a clear sign of the operators increasing dominance in the Indian Telecom market.
We Say: Though these figures represent GSM as well as CDMA users, the numbers are expected to increase in the coming months. We are of the view that this is the beginning of RCom’s continuous attempt to strengthen its foothold in the market.
Airtel and Blackberry makers, RIM have announced a new plan specifically for India. The plan dubbed as BlackBerry Personal Mail service plan offers Airtel Blackberry users unlimited email and instant messaging services for just Rs. 499.
However, before you jump with joy, let me clarify it again – its “Unlimited email and instant messaging”. In other words, you don’t have unlimited internet browsing but only IM and push email service.
Features:
We Say: Blackberry is all about push emails and I think if the user is looking for emails on the go, this is the thing to go for.
Reliance CDMA users in Uttar Pradesh have even more reasons to cheer. RCom has launched a couple of prepaid plans targeting CDMA plans who feel the need to make STD calls to other Relaince users. The two recharges targets users who buy bulk recharges, evident by their recharge values of Rs.2,222 and Rs4,444.
The former i.e. 2,222 gives users free local and STD talktime to other RCom users of 500 minutes every month for 12 months. The latter too gives users the same amount of free minutes each month, not for 12 months, but for lifetime. Overall the plans look quite great but we the operator would surely charge the users more for calls to other operators.