BSNL duped
The sleuths of
City Crime Branch (CCB) are looking for four unidentified persons who have
tricked
the Salem BSNL by making long distance phone calls to the tune of Rs 4.35 lakh in four
months
from four separate landlines.
Long distance calls
But what was
disturbing the Crime Branch Police here was that these calls had been made to
Kerala and
A senior
Police officer told `The Hindu here on Tuesday that Telecom officials were
shocked
when
they found that `huge telephone bills against four landline connections at Arisipalayam
and Ammapet in the city remained unsettled for four months.
According to the complaint
preferred
by the BSNL, the landline connections had been allotted against Madhavan, G.
Ganesan, A. Kannan and Mahesh after obtaining from them relevant
documents.
Bills unpaid
But when the
telephone bills remained unpaid for long (between April 2007 and August 2007),
the
officials grew suspicious and brought the numbers under monitoring at the Sevvapet
Telephone Exchange here.
To their shock
they found the metres of these telephone connections
had been running
continuously despite the houses remained locked.
Immediately
they preferred the complaint and based on which the Deputy Commissioner of
Police (Law
and Order) P. Sakthivel ordered a thorough enquiry.
Absconds
Assistant
Commissioner (CCB) Sivanandam formed special squad
under Inspector
Subramanian
who after the preliminary enquiry on Tuesday found that all the four persons
who
operated
the telephones absconding.
False documents
The
investigation revealed that they had rented the houses some four months back
and
obtained
telephone connections after producing false document proofs for addresses and
their
names.
Investigation
The
investigation officer said that a gang might have used the land line
connections for making
calls
with a mobile link to evade the BSNLs charges on STD
and ISD calls.
But since a
majority of the calls destinations had been to Kerala
and
investigation has been taken up, he said.
The Hindu
GSM firms go European way with big handset bundling
Indian GSM operators are finally headed
the European way of large-scale handset bundling.
All major operators, Bharti
Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL and Spice, are undertaking a
major shift in
their strategy and tying up with handset
makers to offer bundled handsets.
Traditionally, GSM operators in
have shied away from this space as handset
vendors such as Motorola, Samsung and LG and
Nokia have been extremely aggressive with
their sales strategies.
However, with the next surge of growth
expected to come from rural
now adopting an aggressive handset driven
expansion strategy at a pan-India level to drive up
their subscriber base. Industry watchers say
that operator-branded phones which account for
less than 2% of GSM connections in
This will also enable Chinese and
Taiwanese handset makers (who have so far been
struggling to get a foothold in the world’s fastest
growing mobile market) to increase their
presence in
Bundling as a strategy for GSM players
was kicked off by Vodafone, which earlier this year had
announced that it would launch an array of
low-cost cellular handsets in
directly marketed under the Vodafone brand or
co-branded with select overseas handset
makers.
Chinese handset maker ZTE, which is
looking to set up a cellphone manufacturing unit in
is expected to provide Vodafone with a bulk
of its handsets in
(handset
systems) He Shiyou told ET that as per the deal,
Vodafone would offer ZTE’s
handsets to its subscribers in
This has also led to
the world’s largest handset maker Nokia to
offer bundled phones at partly subsidised rates.
The two companies will also follow a ‘joint
go to market strategy’, where they will combine
some of their advertising and marketing
initiatives to tap the mid- and lower-end segments,
which account for a vast majority of
“We are deepening our alliance with Nokia
on a large scale, both companies will go to rural
exploring other areas of partnership,” Bharti Airtel’s marketing and
communication head Gopal
Vittal told ET.
Similarly, when asked on the issue, Spice
Group president Dilip Modi
told ET, “Spice
Communications as the GSM operator is not
in the cellular handsets business. But sister Spice
Group company,
Spice Mobile Phones at present sources a host of cellphones
from entry-level
to high-end from ODMs
with a global presence. Cellphones sourced from
top-draw ODMs like
Inventec, Bistron and Asustek (All Taiwan-based) and
under the Spice brand banner.”
When contacted, Essar
group officials said that the group’s mobile retail arm, Essar
Telecom
Retail was working on a plethora of
initiatives to offer hefty discounts on cellular handset
accessories that come bundled with handset offers.
“We have specific schemes with Motorola
and Nokia, wherein cellular handset accessories like
bluetooth-enabled headsets are available at sizeable
discounts in special combo offers select
cellphones. There is no plan, however, to source handsets
from ODMs and market them under
the Essar brand at
this stage,” said Essar Telecom Retail CEO Rajeev Agarwal.
The Economic Times
US-based Palm Inc, a leading high-end
mobile handset maker, Tuesday entered an exclusive
agreement with Bharti Airtel Ltd,
750 smartphone
in
The Windows Mobile-based smartphone will cost Rs.26,990.
Sharon Ee, head
of business, South Asia, Palm Inc, told a press conference here.
"We have signed an exclusive
agreement with Airtel to penetrate the Indian
market," Ee added.
The smartphone
segment in
about 9.2 million units, according to company
estimates.
Airtel had earlier entered a similar agreement
for providing bundled services with BlackBerry
and HTC.
The $1.56-billion Palm Inc entered the
Indian market first in 1999.
DNA
• Motorola aims for
premium makeover
mobile handset player in
strategy and advertising expenses will be largely
skewed towards this segment in
Motorola believes its strategy to
re-invent itself in
grab a larger share in the fast maturing
Indian market. For starters, the company will set up 300
smaller version of its flagship concept store
christened ‘MotoStore’ in
months.
Motorola’s director marketing (India & South West
Asia — mobile devices) Lloyd Mathias said
the company’s strategy is to gear up to reap the
forthcoming opportunities in the Indian
handset replacement market. Estimates suggest the Indian cellphone market will rise from
present 180 million to 450-500 million by 2010 driven by
replacement sales.
“Metros like
purchases will be for up-gradation . This is a huge potential
which will be our future growth
driver. Hence we want to solidify our portfolio in the mid
to high-end handset segment,” Mr
Mathias told ET.
Of Motorola’s current portfolio of 25 models, 12
products are in the mid-to-high end segment
sold at Rs 8,000 onward. This
includes recent launches like Moto ROKR, Moto RAZR2 and
Moto Q. While Moto Q is
currently bundled with CDMA operator Tata Teleservices, the
company will roll out the GSM version with 2-3 mobile
operators in October.
“The strategy to re-position the brand will reflect
not only in product launches but also in our
advertising strategy. At any given point if we are running three
advertising campaigns, two will
focus on this segment. The campaigns will also be localised for faster connect with
consumers,” said Mr Mathias.
Motorola, which has 12 Moto-Store
outlets across
version of such stores over the next six months. “The
smaller version will be a ‘shop-in-shop’
format inside other cellphone and
lifestyle stores. Such stores will provide a complete
experience to the consumers and deepen our retail presence,” Mr Mathias said.
Incidentally, Motorola’s brand transition in
consumer research. “Every month we study the market with a
panel of 2,000 consumers and
also undertake ‘usage and attitude’ studies twice a year
across 12 markets in
provides us with future market trend and the brand perception
,” Mr Mathias added.
The
Economic Times
DoT`s licence norms may be
tougher
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is looking at allowing two or three
more pan-
Universal Access Service Licence (UASL).
Among the new guidelines under
discussion, DoT is looking at raising the net worth
criterion of
companies applying for a pan-India UASL licence from Rs 1,380 crore to Rs 1,500 crore.
These and other guidelines are being
considered by a DoT internal committee that is
expected
to finalise the
new criteria for UASL applications in 10 days. Yesterday, Communications
Minister A Raja announced a deadline of
October 1 for new UASL applicants.
To ensure that only serious players are
in contention, DoT is also looking at reducing the
time
allowed for operators to convert their letters
of intent to licences to less than a week against the
current 90-day period.
In simple terms, this means that
applicants that are cleared for UASL will now have to pay the
licence fee within a week of the award.
To this end, DoT
is also planning to give preference in spectrum allocation to companies that
apply for a pan-Indian licence
over those that plan to operate only in some of the country’s 22
telecom circles.
It is also considering offering spectrum
on a “first-come, first-served basis” to the company that
pays its licence
fee the earliest.
for UASLs, which
allow service providers to offer both CDMA and GSM mobile technologies.
Meanwhile, Mumbai-based IndiaBulls is also expected to put in an application for a
pan-India
UASL and
Business Standard
TRAI's
guidelines on Next Generation Networks soon
Telecom regulator TRAI will soon come out
with recommendations to address issues like
numbering plan, interconnection and common
exchange to facilitate the migration of mobile
operators to Next Generation Networks.
At a meeting recently in Department of
Telecom to discuss the progress of National Focus
Group on NGN (NFG-NGN), service providers
expressed the need to review regulatory
requirements in view of migration to NGN. Issues like
long-distance and local level numbering
plan, location of mobile switches at circle
level and a common exchange were also discussed.
A TRAI representative informed the
meeting that the regulatory recommendations addressing
these issues would be released shortly,
official sources said.
All operators would have to shift to NGN
networks in near future. NGN is a single network of
services and infrastructure functioning over an
Internet Protocol network. This digital mode is
superior to the existing network as it saves cost
and improves voice, data and video delivery
system.
At present, service providers are
implementing NGN in a partial way and are facing
interconnect issues on billing, numbering plan and
migration. The Focus Group is aimed at
providing a platform to address such issues
urgently.
Mobile operators will now inform DoT the problems they are facing on inter-operator issues
and
a pilot NGN network consisting of the
equipment will be deployed by operators soon.
The Economic Times
BSNL focus on Wi-Max, Wi-Fi circuits
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL),
more intently as these are the future of telephony, said
General Manager (Central) V. Govinda
Raju here on Tuesday. Interacting with the members of the Federation of
Karnataka Chambers
of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), Mr. Govinda Raju said that BSNL
Bangalore has identified
few hotspots for Wi-Fi
operations in the city and efforts are on to cover more areas under the
scheme.
Mr. Govinda Raju said that Wi-Max, however,
will take some more time as the technology
works better only in an area where there was a scope for
expansion. But sooner or later,
Max will be the most sought-after telephony in
of cables is becoming difficult due to constraints, Wi-Max is sure to become popular.
Outlining the developments in some niche services of BSNL,
Mr. Govinda Raju said the
city
had 1.21 lakh broadband
connections and to improve the connectivity as well as the speed of
the service the company has opted for “multi-play”
connections. This new generation of
equipment has been installed in Vijaynagar,
Indiranagar and J.P. Nagar.
Other areas will also
get them soon. BSNL will use “gel filled” cables in all
future connections.
Earlier, senior vice-president of FKCCI D. Muralidhar welcomed the gathering.
The
Hindu