250mm telephone target achieved 2 months in advance: TRAI
Delhi India
TLNS

India has achieved its target of 250mn telephone connections two months ahead of the scheduled December-end, telecom regulator TRAI has said in a statement.

The gross number of telephones crossed 248.66 million in September with the addition of 7.64 million telephone connections, it said.

When contacted, TRAI officials said with a monthly addition of six-to-seven million, in October, the 250 million telecom connections will be surely achieved, they said.

In fact, in September, the wireless subscriber addition was 7.8 million but due 0.16 million negative growth of wire line segment, the overall addition was 7.64 million. The wire line subscriber base decreased to 39.58 million in the month.

Mobile companies led by Bharti, Vodafone and Reliance are adding over six to seven million connections a month.

"Keeping the growth projections on conservative scale, the subscriber number has already crossed 250 million, the target for December 2007. Thus, the expectation of 500 million by 2010 is by no means ambitious. The teledensity target of 1 per cent by 2010 was achieved last year, four years in advance ", the statement said.

The overall teledensity (number of phones per 100 people) has reached 21.85 per cent in September.

In August, there was an addition of 8.31 million mobile subscribers. Broadband subscriber growth continued to be tardy as the user base touched 2.67 million in September with the addition of 0.11 million connections.

DoT accepts subscribers as criterion

New Delhi, Oct. 19: The department of telecommunications (DoT) on Friday accepted the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to hike subscriber link criterion for allocation of spectrum to mobile operators. The DoT has set up a committee under the Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) to study further allocation of spectrum to telecom operators as recommended by Trai.

With this decision, it may become difficult for existing telecom players to get additional spectrum for further expansion as the DoT has raised the subscribers base to nearly five times. The government has also accepted the recommendation of Trai that there should be no cap on the number of access providers in any service area.

DoT said that the access service providers should endeavour to use more efficient methods and optimum technologies for efficient spectrum utilisation. In order to encourage licencees to use all available methods for efficient spectrum utilisation, the "spectrum enhancement charge", in addition to annual spectrum charges based on revenue shares will be levied at the time of additional spectrum allotment to licencees beyond 10MHz for GSM operators and 5MHz for CDMA operators.

Source: Deccan Cronicle

Logitech’s wireless radio

IT Watch

Most people nowadays use the PC as their music player but haven’t been able to connect it to their home entertainment system. Now Logitech has launched a new wireless DJ music system that can stream music from PCs to audio systems. You can connect your PC to any speaker using plug-n-play wireless technology in the system. It can play any audio format, including MP3, WMA and podcasts. Along with the system, Logitech is also supplying a wireless remote which has an LCD screen and a scroll wheel to help you pick your song.

Mobile goes on air

European countries are planning to introduce technology which will allow people to use mobile phones during flights. At present, passengers are not allowed to use mobiles on flights since it would disrupt aircraft communications. The new technology would allow people to make calls when the aircraft is at an altitude of more than 3,000 metres. The cost of making calls would also be higher. It involves setting up a base station in the plane which will link up the handsets of the passengers.  It will create a network area within the plane and connect the phone signals to a satellite which in turn will connect it to mobile networks down here.

Nano radio is here

Scientists in the United States have created a radio which is thousands of times smaller than the human hair.Researchers from the University of California used the nano-sized radio detector to transmit classical music from an iPod to a speaker the other day.The detector was made of carbon nanotubes and is a pointer to the future of radio technology. 

Source: Deccan Cronicle

DoT may issue LoIs for telecom licences
21 Oct, 2007, 1708 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Finding it difficult to scrutinise a sea of applications for telecom licences, the government is contemplating to issue Letters of Intent to all applicants and ask them to pay a fee of about Rs 1,650 crore (for pan-India operations) but without giving any time-frame for spectrum.

This would not only help in scrutinising the applications but would also help in keeping non-serious players out of fray, sources said.
They, however, said that a final decision in this regard would be taken soon.
Telecom Commission has met several times to deal with the situation and has forwarded comments to Telecom Minister A Raja for finalising the policy.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has received over 570 applications from companies, including AT&T, Ispat Industries promoters Mittal brothers, Hindujas, HFCL, Shyam Telecom and a host of reality players such as DLF, Parsavnath and Unitech.
The last week's decision of DoT to grant permission for using dual technology--CDMA and GSM-- for mobile services has irked the existing players, with Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) likely to challenge the decision in sectoral tribunal TDSAT.
On top of it if LoIs were issued by the DoT, the decision may hurt existing players.
COAI, when contacted, however, declined to comment on it. The association has also opposed DoT's decision to accept telecom regulator TRAIs recommendation of enhanced subscriber- linked criterion for spectrum allocation as with this most of the existing players would not be eligible for additional spectrum.

Source: The Economic Times

More services from BSNL

Staff Reporter

CHENNAI: Customers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s cellular phone service may now enjoy quicker communication with other users, as BSNL has introduced more value-added services.

The instant messaging service, launched recently by Chennai Telephones, facilitates online communication and enables users to send and receive instant messages using GPRS. Normal GPRS charges are applicable for data transfer. Customers may register for the service by sending a short text message to 57070 with the message ‘IM’. As an introductory offer, it would be provided free of charge for a month.

Another facility is the ‘people finder’ service that enables customers to create a contact list and find the location of their contacts across the country with their mobile phones, short messaging service or wireless application protocol (WAP).

Consumers may also chat with other users from mobile-to-mobile or mobile-to-web with their WAP-enabled phones through the mobile chat service. Call 2495 3717 or 94000 24365 for details.

Source:- The Hindu

Telecom News dated 22-10-2007