Pink transformed to Red

After the successful acquisition of Hutch by Vodafone beating the Reliance and the Hindujas bid they have launched thier sizzling red brand, today in the indian market. This is defnitely a big day in the india telecom and probably the biggest migration happened so far...

Asim Ghosh, Managing Director, Vodafone Essar, said: "We've had a great innings as Hutch in India and today marks a new beginning for us. Not as a departure from the fundamentals that created Hutch, but an acceleration into the future with Vodafone's global expertise."

"It is even larger than our own previous brand transitions as it touches over 35 million customers, across 400,000 shops and thousands of our own and our business associates employees." said Mr. Harit Nagpal, Business and Marketing director.

With the acquisition of Hutch in India, Vodafone has spread its operations in 26th country, covering five continents & 40 partner networks with over 200 million customers worldwide.

Though it costed Vodafone over $11b to bag hutch in India they strongly belive its the right deal and a good strategic move for them & thier brand to enter this emerging market. Vodafone has also got a 10% stake in Bharti Airtel.

To Know more log on to http://www.vodafone.in/

The National Do Not Call Registry NDNC

As per TRAI guidelines the NDNC (National Do Not Call Registry), had finally taken shape and is now operational since Sep 1st' 07. This is started with the purpose to curb all Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC).

The mobile subscribers can get registered to NDNC service, if they do not want to get disturbed by any telemarketing calls or messages via any telecommunication services. Ideally, this directory contains the list of all the mobile subscribers who are not willing to take any calls or receive messages for any sort of marketing & promotional activities. This NDNC registry is maintained and monitored by National Informatics center (NIC),

For registering the request for DND (Do Not Disturb) the subscriber can contact their operator through the customer care / SMS / via online website / in writing.

The regulation had prescribed NIC a three-month time frame to establish the Registry. Once registered, the Telecom operators will verify the same and has to intimate the registry within the next ten days. Finally, post 45days from the date of request no unwanted commercial calls can be made to that number failing which the subscriber can lodge a complaint with their operator with complete details of the call.

An amount of Rs 500/- per UCC has been proposed who violates the guidelines. If the UCC is repeated by the same telemarketer for the second time, his service provider shall charge a higher tariff and also service providers have been directed to disconnect telephones connections of telemarketer if sending of such Unsolicited Commercial Communication is repeated.

For more information please visit http://www.trai.gov.in/ or http://www.ndncregistry.gov.in/

For registering with NDNC Registry, please follow the below links:

Reliance Users: Click here

MTNL Delhi: Delhi Users Click here
Idea Cellular: Idea users click here
MTNL Mumbai: Mumbai Users Click here
Spice Users: SMS the keyword "BLOCK" to 363

Hutch Users: SMS "ACT DND" to 111 or Click here
Airtel users: SMS “START DND” to 121 or click here

BPL Users: SMS "NDNC" to 50800 (for postpaid) or 50505 (for prepaid) Or Click here

Iphone prices slashed!!!

Ever since the iphone has been launched on June 29th this year, the iphone has been the most covetous smart phone, with a million units sold. The unanticipated decision of apple to cut down the prices of iphone by about $100 on both the models, has upset the existing iphone users. The new prices would be $299 for a 4GB iphone & $399 for an 8GB model.

The news of price cut on iphone have deeply hurt & disappointed the existing users and Mr. Steve Jobs has been kind enough to offer a store credit of $100 for all the early birds who made iphone the only choice to go mobile, As he writes in an open letter that “We want to do the right thing for our valued iphone customers. “We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”

In spite the store credits which are seldom received well, the existing iphone customers felt it was a core abuse by offering that credit more over for this credit reimbursement they are still supposed to stay tuned.

Are Idiot boxes getting smarter or the smarter PC’s turning to Idiot boxes????

It sounds a conflict of interest or say a point of debate but with the nascent IPTV services fast penetrating into the India market leaves you behind with this question.

Internet Protocol TV is a method of offering digital television services using the Internet Protocol. Can be defined, as the method of transmitting the television content over broadband infrastructure generally used for computer systems instead of traditional broadcast and cable formats.

IPTV is growing rapidly and major television broadcasters round the globe are already offering their broadcast signals over the internet, It only requires an Internet connection with an Internet enabled device like a computer, HDTV connected to a computer or even a 3G mobile phone to watch the IPTV broadcasts. There are many free IPTV’s available worldwide and this segment is fast growing.

The IPTV offers a tailored television services using the high speed broad band access technology, with high picture quality even on the giant screens, it allows the users to store, replay the content. It also offers Video on demand, music on demand and many other customizable features. This IPTV concept is emerging in India and a firm called Optibase has already celebrated the successful launch of their IPTV services in New Delhi and this company is looking forward for international tie ups so that their can create their footprint across the nation.

Now, with the availability of mobile streaming technology over mobile phone appeals the Telcos to offer the IPTV services which can be broadcasted over the mobiles using the high speed data access. Hence, the Telcos are now eying for it big time, as this will surely shoot up their ARPU’s.

The recent news that the TRAI has approved both the Telcos and the cable operators to offer IPTV services that too much without the need for renewal of existing licenses created fire in the industry, although the entire services no matter offered by Telcos or cable operators will be governed by the Ministry Of Information & Broadcast. But, now the ability of Telcos in India to capitalize on this potential is still a debate, they are required to upgrade their existing networks, having said so they also have deliver a rich experience rather then just access.

VASillating Facts…

VAS : The services apart from the basic voice services like OG & IC which allows the user to personalize & add value by enhancing the mobility & can be subscribed by the user based on their requirement can be defined as VAS… the big tool to build ARPU

VAS is mainly segmented based on content to Infotainment, Entertainment & m-Commerce

Infotainment: The info broadcasted which is intended both for entertainment & information
Entertainment: The broadcast information provided with amusement content or content designed purely for entertainment.
m-Commerce: the commercial transactions which can be done wireless (OTA) using mobile technology & mobiles.

Further the Value Added Services can be classified to Text, Voice, Call Management, Data, and USSD Based.

The foremost troops who have a big say in this are, telecom companies, content providers, technology & solution providers, content copyright owners, IT vendors, aggregators, developers, handset manufacturers, mobile internet, portal providers, short code owners, system integrators, smartcard manufacturers, multimedia providers, financial service providers etc…

As per IAMAI the VAS industry in India is now a 4560cr which is just about 2850cr in 2006 and is anticipated to fold 10- 15times by 2010.

The Total Revenues

The maximum revenue shares are from the entertainment services and can be quantifies as below as per IMRB research

P2P ---------------- 40%
P2A & A2P --------- 15%
Game & Data ------- 7%
Ringtone download- 35%

Others -------------- 7%

The VAS Revenue sharing

P2A & A2P------------- 15%
Copy right Owner ------ 15%
Aggregator n developer- 25%
Operators -------------- 60%

(Telcos take major share as the SMS stands in top when it comes to VAS )

Revenue sharing in Enterprise solutions:

Short Code Owner ------- 30%
Operator --------------- 70%

OTA : Over The Air
P2P : Person to Person, P2A : Person to Application
USSD : Unstructured Supplimentary Services Data

ARPU : Average Revenue Per User per month

OG : Outgoing Calls, IC : Incoming Calls

IAMAI: Internet and Mobile Association of India.

The Accelerating VAS

Though the growing subsciber base was exhilarating & good news to celebrate, the flip side was that the ARPU’s have been descending, leaving only a thin line of profits for operators which is now the momentous concern…

The waning ARPU’s & reducing tariff rates on voice have urged the mobile operators to look for an alternative to push their revenues up the ladder drawing their focus on innovation of mobile VAS which is increasingly a growth area, helping operators to maximise revenues and build healthy ARPU's.

Introducing new concepts of mobile VAS at an affordable price has been an appealing source of revenues and a key differentiator when talking in terms of service provisioning and price war, as the entire products are driven by the subscriber demand, who now wants to be more sophisticated being mobile and demands much of personalization of the luxurious services defnitely at a competitive price.

With voice fast becoming a commodity, it’s no more a differentia and of course many a VAS products will face the same challenge in due course of time.

In the resent past there has been a great demand for data & data related services like EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, IP TV etc but these superior services are band width hungry and can be offered to subscribers only if an operator owns a gargantuan infrastructure and necessary spectrum, though the operators are ready to pump as much funds as required there has been a discrepency in the spectrum allocation by the government. You might have heard a lot about the quantum’s of GSM spectrum, its allocation and pricing in the recent news...

As the game has just begun, all the competitors wants to grab the opportunity to offer the services for the first of its kind to lead ahead in the race thereby winning the customers heart and meeting their expectations by providing superior services at the comfort of mobility. This has led the operators to look forward for the tie ups with content providers though only a little focus is put upon content development…

Note :

VAS: Value Added Services

ARPU: Average Revenue Per User per month

HSDPA : High Speed Data Packet Access

EDGE : Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution

The Indian Telecommunications

The Indian telecommunication industry has been growing exponentially and especially the mobile sector in particular has today emerged as the most vibrant & dynamic business ever…

If we have a glance at the numbers, which represent the mobile user growth in India & the rate at which the industry is growing, its just flamboyant and the change is very promising, and will reveal many interesting facts about the mobile revolution India is going through…..

Looking back into the last fiscal, in March’06 the mobile sub base was around 96million which ripened to 120million by Aug06 which shows that the user base is increasing @ 3 - 4 million a month.

Remember? Sometime mid April’06, was when India celebrated 100million mobile users. Though this growth was very enthusiastic it did not leave much excitement within the operators due to various factors out of which, the declining ARPU has been their major concern. Their top priority was to look for alternatives to accelerate the revenues.

A glance at the market share of Post paid & prepaid sub base on an industry average, looks little bumpy and I really wonder how healthy is the business with these numbers... The prepaid base grabs an whooping 80% share in that pie leaving just about 20% for the postpaid.

May be the industry has been digesting this huge variaion in the pie share, due to the fact that the acquisition cost of prepaid stands much lower than post paid although postpaid fetches a promising and higher ARPU largely to that of prepaid and moreover the prepaid loyalties are extremely low and hopeless… This now recoils the fact that it requires the operators to focus more to maintain and retain the sub base from churn which can only be achieved by superior differentiating tools like VAS and after sale support; after all voice has just become a commodity and will surely remain a raw material going forward….

Is this Blog Dead???

The answer is a big NOOOOOOO..... Every fall has its rise. right??

Folks, i know this blog sounds much faded but I have to tolerate the same, as i was held up with too many things; which are though not impressive...

Well, apologies and i shall try my best to bring life back to this blog soon, and make it more lively and atleast polish it to an extent that it is worth having a glance for updates..... the count down begins...