This could spell some trouble for four of India’s biggest telecom operators. India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has ordered a special financial audit into the books of four telecom operators, including the country’s largest mobile phone service provider Bharti Airtel Ltd. and other big names like Tata Teleservices Ltd., Vodafone-Essar Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd.

The purpose behind this audit to check these operators’ revenue sharing with the government and to confirm if prescribed revenue sharing norms are being practiced. Telecom service providers in India are required to share between 6% and 10% of their annual revenue as license fees and 2% to 6% of their domestic and international long-distance telephony service revenues.

DoT has decided to appoint special auditors, who will be given up to three months to submit a final report. A similar special audit had earlier been ordered for RCom Ltd., and the auditor’s report is expected later this month. DoT has also ordered that if these operators are found guilty than they would be strictly penalized. The fiscal penalty will depend on the variation in shared revenues.

As of now, these four companies have not spoken to the media and Tata Teleservices and Vodafone-Essar claim to not have yet received an official communication on this matter.

Source

Do you need a proof to know that Indian telecom is heavily shielded against recession? Month after month, GSM operators have added millions of subscribers and its 8.93 million for the month of April. The report includes major GSM players except Reliance who is said to report the figures separately. The total count now stands at 297.7 million GSM users in India and if we take Reliance into account we may be very close to the iconic 300m landmark.

Another good news is that India’s leading operator, Airtel added 2.81m users during the same tenure taking their subscriber base to 96.74m. Will they cross 100m in May or June? Start your petty bets.

This shouldn’t be surprising, right? In an analysis done by TRAI, Airtel has emerged as the most congested GSM network for the period of Oct-Dec. During this period, Airtel had 14 POIs (Point of Intersection) with congestion followed by Vodafone who had 12 and Reliance Communications and Idea with 11 each.

Note: POI signifies the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with a customer of another network. This parameter also reflects as to how effective is the interconnection between two networks. TRAI has set a benchmark of less than 0.5 percent, which means out of 200 calls between two operators, there should be a single call facing a congestion problem.

Ed’s Note: Our overworked brains ditched us. Sorry for the goof up, we have added the plans and edited the story accordingly.

When TeleGyaan did an exclusive review of MTNL’s 2G/3G plans, one of our avid readers voiced his opinion and asked us to look at other operators in the landscape. Given the reader-friendly blog we are, here is a post comparing all the GSM – Blackberry plans on offer::

Continue Reading…

State-owner telco – BSNL is expected to offer Blackberry services from April. This move would help the operator gain an edge over the others. Here’s how::

• BSNL is one of the two operators offering 3G services in the country. 
• The other operators which provide Blackberry services, are in the queue to bid for 3G, which is not expected to take place soon…
• Thus, lau, nching the service in April could give it a first-mover advantage in the Blackberry-3G zone. 

However, the user base for the service is quite small and with Airtel and Vodafone providing ‘killer’ plans for Blackberry users, BSNL might just find it tough to compete against the private telcos. We expect BSNL to come up with some equally good plans to counter competition.

With the additions done and dealt with, let’s have a look at the market shares and user base of these GSM operators. Here it goes:

• Airtel - 32.88% – 91,114,971
• Vodafone - 23.79% – 65,920,902
• BSNL - 15.94%  - 44,180,880
• Idea - 14.98% – 41,518,613
• Aircel - 6.31% – 17,476,962
• Reliance - 3.88% – 10,744,953
• MTNL - 1.47% – 4,084,579 
• BPL - 0.75% – 2,073,184 

We Say: With Bharti adding the highest number of users to its kitty each month, it is unlikely that it will lose its position. However, Vodafone is trying its level best to reach closer by adding around the same number of users as Airtel. BSNL and Idea also seem to be battling it out for the third position. Though Reliance may seem to be a small player out here, it is adding large number of users each month and we expect to see it climbing up the rankings soon. 

The month of February turned out to be quite positive for Indian Telecom, with GSM operators adding 9.18 mn users in the month. This has taken the total count to 277.11 mn. In percentage terms, the industry clocked a healthy growth rate of 3.43%. 

Getting into specifics, here is how some operators contributed to the figure (additions and growth rate):

•  Airtel: 2.7 mn @ 3.09%
• Vodafone: 2.58 mn @ 4.07%
• BSNL: 1.5mn
• Idea: 1.5mn
• Aircel: 0.7mn @ 4.27%

We Say: Going by the figures, nothing seems to be obstructing the growth of Indian Telecom, making it even more lucrative to more giants. However, we hope to see this growth accompanied by a simultaneous growth/ improvement in the management and service quality. 

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:

Users can configure up to 10 POP/IMAP email accounts including free services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc.
There is no quota on BlackBerry Personal Mail. All emails are automatically deleted after 30 days (that’s from the Blackberry servers).
IM services include Yahoo!, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger

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.

Airtel Blackberry

Airtel is playing the handy role of a marketer to sell Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic phone. Today, I received a mail from them saying they had a ‘great’ offer for me. However, my expectation of some monetary waiver was short-lived because the greatness in the offer was not monetary but was emphasized on services. Purchasing the phone from any Nokia Priority Dealer or The MobileStore, a user will be eligible for:

100MB free data usage for first three months

Free 1 month subscription of 4 VAS services – EZmail, Matrimonial, Portfolio Manager, News and Sports

The complimentary card to get a Rs. 400 discount on any Bluetooth accessory purchased along with the phone

We Say: Nice try Airtel but the offer ain’t that good to make me jump into the XpressMusic bandwagon. Offering some discount off the phone rather than the accessories might have made me interested.

Airtel continues to shower its love on subscribers in Delhi & NCR region. Today they have announced an SMS Dhamaka pack for the prepaid users that can help them to reduce their monthly SMS tariff. There are basically five options starting with just Rs. 13 and going up to Rs. 112.

Packs:
Rs. 13 – 30 SMS free (Local)
Rs. 42 – 100 SMS free (Local & National)
Rs. 46 – 200 SMS free (Local)
Rs. 94 – 250 SMS free (Local & National)
Rs. 112 – 1112 SMS free (Local)

All the packs carry a validity of 30 days and are applicable to lifetime as well as non-lifetime customers.