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 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.
RCom signed up a deal recently with HTC to sell the CDMA version of the Touch Diamond (P3051) phone. It might be good news for some people but with the price tag it carries, it surely is way out of budget for majority of the RCom users. They are selling it for freakin 40K or Rs. 39,900 to be precise. Agreed its got all the goodness of TouchFLO 3D on a 2.8-inch VGA screen, 4GB memory, Windows 6.1 OS, 3.2-megapixel camera and much more but paying 13K premium over the GSM version of Airtel doesn’t look justified to me. Ok, you argue that CDMA radio gives good voice clarity and better data rate transfers but paying 13K more for that is not a viable decision for me. Don’t you think?
We saw Tata Teleservices franchise Virgin Mobile revising its local and STD calling rates this week. Now its time for RCom to do so. RCom on Wednesday added a new recharge pack to their Jaadu basket. This pack is meant to lower outgoing call rates for prepaid subscribers who are looking for a lifetime commitment with Reliance Mobile. This plan is called the ‘Lifetime Jaadu Pack’ and offers:
This pack is a boon for subscribers with lifetime validity as they can now just subscribe once to this pack and enjoy the lowered calling rates for lifetime as compared to buying packs and special tariff vouchers every month for making affordable outgoing calls.
Airtel, Vodafone and RCom have revealed their latest offering from their Blackberry portfolio. They will soon be selling RIM’s Blackberry flagship phone, Bold at a hefty price tag of Rs. 34,990. This is the best Blackberry phone to come out of RIM’s stable and if you’re not so price conscious then you might be able to pick it up from the end of this month, if you’re an Airtel or Vodafone customer or by end of October if you’re under RCom GSM service.
Despite the controversy which hounded Blackberry services and RIM for quite some time, there is a continuous upward trend in the number of Blackberry users in India. And seeing it as an opportunity, Reliance Communications announced the availability of prepaid Blackberry services which is a first-of-its-kind in India. Prepaid plans for Blackberry start from Rs. 1,099 which goes upto Rs. 1,599 giving the user the benefits of free local SMS, voice and STD calls. Supported phones are:
BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone, which operates on both CDMA & GSM networks
BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone on CDMA networks
BlackBerry Curve 8300 smartphone on GSM networks
BlackBerry Pearl 8100 smartphone on GSM networks
BlackBerry Pearl 8130 smartphone on CDMA networks, and
BlackBerry 8703e smartphone on CDMA networks