Indian telecom industry is gearing up for better times

India's telecom industry is at the cusp of a new beginning. After hitting many lows in the past, the sector is readying itself for better times. A new government is in place, investments are poured in from companies like Reliance and most importantly, international collaborations are being encouraged.

Developments like India and the UK going for collaboration route in the field of next generation telecommunication; new telecom minister's assurance to set things right and continue focus on quality and domestic manufacturing; and RIL's plan to invest Rs 30,000 crore, will build confidence amongst the investor's fraternity.

For a sector which has been reeling under tremendous price pressure for some time, these progresses can certainly give reasons to stay optimistic and encouraged. The government's emphasis on developing a strong domestic manufacturing ecosystem will also laid the foundation for many local domestic manufacturers, who have been exploring global markets for growth.

New Gameplans

There has been a realignment of priorities for many telcos now. Customer acquisition is the thing of the past, there is no blind competition and most importantly telcos are making efforts to highlight their value credentials amongst the subscribers.

There has been clear understanding that the sector cannot accommodate too many players in the country. Hence, consolidation is expected to drive more coherent structure in the telecom ecosystem. The consolidation wave is likely to pick up pace from the merger of state run incumbents BSNL and MTNL.

For those interests in numbers, Europe, Middle East India and Africa are jointly projected to close $50 bn of M&A deals during next few years, according to leading analysts.

Going forward, the sector is also expected to witness alliances in the space of social media, mobile payments and business intelligence. The upcoming auctions for both 700MHz and 800 MHz are expected to give much needed push to the 4G data services in the country.

Innovate and Collaborate

In technology side, a report from Cisco expects that there will be 177 million wearable devices globally, growing eight fold from 22 million in 2013. Analysts believe that this will eventually triggered the M2M and Internet of Things market, across the globe. Hence, that's an area of interest for many enthusiasts. While still in early stages in India, it will also open up a new revenue stream for telcos in the country.

The difficult times of the past have made way for the sector to start afresh and come up with new ideas to grow. Leading telcos like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, TTSL and Uninor are extensively exploring the potential of Big Data for customer retention, market their services and improvement in customer service. There is also a strong emphasis on implementing solutions for right charging, billing and personalisation. In order to make their RoI reasonable, one may expect them to collaborate with each other to understand the customer behaviour through various intelligence tools.

Like someone says, difficult times help us innovate, choose wisely and grow in the longer run. India's telecom industry, perhaps, is learning it well...

Source: ET

Reliance Jio to invest in LTE Broadcast technology, says GSA

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the billionaire Mukesh Ambani promoted 4G telecom venture of Reliance Industries, is set to invest in LTE Broadcast technology to boost its video offerings, said a report by GSA.

The other global telecom operators that are investing in LTE Broadcast include AT&T, Verizon Wireless, EE, Three, KPN, Orange, Vodafone, Meo, Etisalat, SingTel, China Mobile, China Telecom, Smart and Telstra.

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the only pan-India 4G service provider, is in the process of rolling out 4G LTE services on both TD-LTE and FD-LTE technology. The company recently said its 4G services would be available in 2015.

Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Aircel are in the process of expanding TD-LTE technology based 4G services in select parts of India.

The telecom operator list shared by GSA indicates that several 4G service providers are yet to commit investments in LTE Broadcast that can be utilized for off-peak capacity to deliver new service offerings including rich media caching, or managed software updates including applications updates.

Alan Hadden, president of GSA, said: “LTE Broadcast enables innovative and profitable business opportunities for mobile network operators.”

LTE Broadcast enabled by evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) technology allows telecom operators to manage networks more efficiently by multicasting content sought by multiple subscribers including live TV broadcasts, or tailored content for sporting events in stadiums or other venues.

GSA said at least 16 mobile network operators, working together with LTE systems providers and broadcast content owners, are currently deploying or trialing LTE Broadcast technology in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, UK and the USA.

LTE Broadcast supports all specified bandwidths and formats of LTE, including FDD and TDD modes and LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation. 

KT in South Korea was the first telecom operator in the world to launch LTE Broadcast commercially in January 2014.

Source: telecomlead.com

Reliance Jio, BSNL sign tower sharing deal

Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) has signed a deal with state-owned telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for leasing around 4,000 mobile towers. As per the deal, BSNL will be offering a base rate of Rs.38,000 per month for ground based towers (GBT) and Rs.24,900 per month for rooftop based towers (RBT). BSNL, however, will offer discounted rates if Reliance Jio commits leasing of at least 1,500 towers in the first year.

“The rent for ground towers will be Rs.35,000 per month and Rs.21,000 per month for rooftop towers if Reliance Jio commits leasing of 1,500 towers in first year,” BSNL director (consumer mobility) Anupam Shrivastava told PTI. He added there is also a provision of 5% discount if RJIL commits leasing of at least 1,000 towers within three months. When contacted, no response was received from RJIL on the deal.

Reliance Jio already has an agreement with Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Viom Network, American Tower Company and Ascend Telecom Infrastructure to utilise their infrastructure. The company holds pan-India broadband wireless access spectrum that can be used for 4G services. Besides, it won radiowaves in the 1800 Mhz band, widely known as 2G spectrum, which is also being used for 4G services worldwide. RJIL is the first telecom operator in the country to get a unified licence for all 22 service areas in India. The unified licence, which it received in October, will allow RJIL to offer all telecom services, including voice telephony.

Source: Livemint

PM Modi's Digital India project: Government to ensure that every Indian has smartphone by 2019

The Digital India project that aims to offer a one-stop shop for government services would use the mobile phone as the backbone of its delivery mechanism. The government hopes the Rs 1.13-lakh crore initiative that seeks to transform India into a connected economy to also attract investment in electronics manufacturing, create millions of jobs and support trade.


In an interview with ET, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to ensure a smartphone in the hands of every citizen by 2019. Currently, nearly 74% of the population has mobile phones, most of which though is in the hands of urban India.

"We want to ensure that all the services can be provided through a mobile handset, especially, health, education, various government services and retail," Prasad said. "We want it (handset) to be used as a tool for empowerment. We will need to incentivise its usage in order to promote the social and the economic objectives of the government."

In order to use the mobile phone to help achieve financial inclusion, the government will need to structure the delivery of financial services in a manner that encourages a villager to go for mobile banking, the minister said. For instance, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial inclusion plan the Prime Minister announced on August 15, can be effectively rolled out through mobile handsets. The programme seeks to give every household in rural India access to bank account, along with a RuPay debit card and insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh. At present, nearly 60% of the nation's population doesn't have access to financial services.

Digital India promises to transform India into a connected knowledge economy offering world-class services at the click of a mouse and will be implemented in a phased manner, according to information released by the government last week.

Plans to digitally connect the entire country will be supported by 20- and 40-hour modules on digital literacy in regional languages, which the government plans to run over the next few years. "During a presentation, the PM remarked IT+IT equals IT. This means India Today plus Information Technology (through Digital India) will yield India Tomorrow," said Prasad.

The government feels that open access to "broadband highways" across cities, towns and villages would give a fillip to trade across the country. "The other important benefit we see is surge in e-commerce. If we can bring broadband to the remotest corners of the country it will give rise to trade and warehousing," Prasad said.

Supporting the initiatives will be 6-7 manufacturing clusters for electronic goods which have been approved to be set up in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for products such as mobile handsets, microchip and chip-less designs and set-top boxes, he said.

The intention is to bring down net electronics imports to zero by 2020, from about $100 billion now, a move which will help the country control its current-account deficit. As things stand, net annual electronics imports could rise to $400 billion by 2020, outgrowing oil imports.
"The PM is absolutely focused on making India the manufacturing hub and we see massive potential in electronic manufacturing," Prasad said.

Modi had listed Digital India and local manufacturing as among the top priorities for the new BJP-led government during his Independence Day speech on August 15.

In his Budget for this fiscal year through March 2015, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had introduced a slew of measures to boost electronics manufacturing, such as a basic customs duty of 10% on telecommunication products outside the purview of the Information Technology Agreement and investment-linked deduction for semi-conductor wafer fab units.

Prasad said the government is working towards establishing the first manufacturing cluster by March next year.

According to the minister, the programme has already generated huge interest nationally and internationally. "We are holding a conference with the IT ministers of various states on August 26," to decide on the modalities of how to implement the project as state participation will be key, he said.

Referring to his meetings with global corporate honchos, Prasad said companies such as American network equipment maker Cisco Systems wanted to access benefits of cluster manufacturing.

"Facebook has also expressed interest in partnering with the government in delivering governance programmes such as e-education," he said, referring to his meeting with the US social media company's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, two months ago.

Prasad though admitted that the main backbone of Digital India — National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) venture — had seen virtually "no progress" for the past three years. He said given the current focus on Digital India, which is being monitored by the Prime Minister himself, NOFN will meet all its deadlines henceforth.

To suggestions that the private sector may be roped in for the NOFN project to speed it up, Prasad said the government will continue to implement it through state-run public sector units Bharat Sanchar Nigam, Power Grid Corporation and RailTel.

As reported earlier by ET, common service centres in villages will serve as critical pivots around which most goods and services will be delivered. Once connected to broadband, an entire village's requirements of goods can be placed through these centres and people can use these facilities as one-stop shop for all their e-needs, said a senior official at the telecom department.

Source: ET 

Green energy to be used to run 2,200 mobile towers

For the first time in India, solar power will be extensively used to run 2,200 mobile towers to be set up in nine Naxal-affected areas.

The mobile towers, to be set up at a cost of Rs 3,216 crore, will be operated without any support from electricity or generators. This is for the first time in India that green energy will be used so extensively to run such a large number of telecom towers, official sources said.

Solar energy will be used to avoid interruption of electricity supply, which is irregular in most of the areas. Diesel-run generator sets create lots of pollution in addition to the problem of regular supply of fuel.

A technology developed indigenously by an Indian vendor will feed the towers with solar power to function normally in addition to charging the battery simultaneously.

On August 20, the Union Cabinet gave its approval for the project to be implemented in one year.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has been pushing for installation of mobile towers in Naxal-hit areas since 2010. The absence of mobile services has made it tough for security forces to operate and get timely help in critical situations, leading to loss of lives in some incidents.

The lack of telecom infrastructure in Left wing extremism affected states -- Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh -- severely compromises the position of the security forces vis-a-vis the Maoist ultras.

Most of the towers will be set up in secured locations like police stations or camps of security forces so that the extremists cannot target them for destruction.

Source: ET

Telecom industry to benefit from e-commerce boom: survey

Indian e-commerce companies will be able to drive the next phase of growth for the telecom companies wherein they would be able to generate additional revenue of Rs. 48,000 crore and EBIDTA of Rs. 17,400 crore over the next three years, according to a study.

A joint study conducted by Google India and A T Kearney said with over 155 million mobile Internet users at present, India will see a major mobile explosion as the Internet user base will more than double to 480 million by 2017. It is estimated that in next three years, smartphone penetration will grow six times to touch 385 million people and the number of users who transact online will grow to 160 million.

The study says data consumption on mobile phones will triple, and consumers will buy five times as much content.

Nikolai Dobberstein, a Partner at AT Kearney, said, “Indian telcos are poised to leapfrog directly into a digital play since the shift from data to digital will happen much faster in India, as more digital content and services are adopted by users. By FY17, the Indian telecom industry is expected to reach $35 billion in revenues, with data revenues growing at over 70 per cent annually till then and with new digital VAS streams emerging and growing exponentially. Indian telcos may have had varying degrees of success with digital content and services in the past, but the outlook for these services, as well as digital customer engagement, which can unlock massive opportunity in e-stores and e-care, is extremely positive.”

The study also looked into consumer lifestyle needs and telcos’ internal digitisation capabilities to compile a list of four priority areas that could unlock billions of dollars of cumulative value for telcos. These are e-store and e-care, media content and services, mobile business apps for SMEs and mobile payment.

Rajan Anandan, VP and Managing Director of sales and operations, Google India said, “Indian telcos have the opportunity to significantly expand the pie by catering to unmet demand in online music, video and online recharges.”

The study outlines that by 2017, data and paid content consumption will double organically to 470 MB data per user per month and $1.6 in content revenue per year. Global markets have seen similar shifts as they matured from voice to messaging and from data to digital. Markets such as Japan and Korea have taken up to 10 years to move from data to digital, but India is poised to leapfrog as the country has already embraced the Internet, as seen by the massive adoption of social networking and the recent e-commerce boom.

Source: HBL

It’s time to say hello to Reliance Jio

RJio has the financial muscle, but it may take a while before it overtakes its competitors and emerges as a key player

The prospect of the Big Boy of oil and gas, Reliance Industries, muscling its way into the telecom sector has been watched with much interest in recent years.

So, will the entry of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) into the fray force the top players to rethink their strategies?

Not necessarily.

It has been nearly four years since the company first successfully bid for and won spectrum for offering data services on a pan-India basis. But the venture has not commenced active operations yet.

In the meantime, entrenched players in the market have emerged much stronger and have enhanced their revenue share. Even in the broadband space, BSNL, Airtel, RCom, Idea and Vodafone have very strong presence. These operators together command nearly 85 per cent market share.

In wireless mode
In the spectrum auction this February, RJio bid for spectrum to offer voice services in 14 circles.

It also signed tower-sharing agreements with several players. But even after these moves, what its bouquet of offerings will be is unclear.

It now appears that RJio would not just be a data services provider but would offer a combination of broadband (wireless) and voice services. Recent data from the telecom regulator indicate that nearly 92.5 per cent of all internet consumption in India takes place through the mobile wireless mode.

This means that RJio will first have to look at adding a substantial number of mobile subscribers first before getting them hooked to its data and internet plans.

In the mobile services space the top three operators have a 70 per cent revenue market share.

Other prominent players such as RCom, Tata Teleservices, BSNL and Aircel too would compete for subscriber and revenue share. So, RJio’s task is certainly not going to be easy.

One differentiated strategy could be that, given that the metros and top cities are already saturated, it will set its sights on smaller cities.

A recent report from the telecom regulator shows that while urban teledensity is 139.7 per cent, the figure for rural areas is just 43.7 per cent. So there is an undertapped market to target for RJio.

Not for tariff war
Then, there are reports that it may offer 4G LTE (long-term evolution) services, where speeds are likely to be faster than even 3G offerings.

But handset compatibility would need to be worked out and smartphones need to be configured to work with 4G technology.

The company has invested an estimated $8-10 billion thus far in capex and spectrum charges; so it is unlikely to start a tariff war as a new entrant. It would know from the experience of new entrants in the last few years that playing the tariff war against seasoned incumbent players is a sure way to lose money.

While over time RJio may emerge as a strong fifth or sixth player in the telecom market, trying to race to the top through tariffs would surely mean a race to the bottom.

The industry itself simply cannot afford any more tariff wars, as evidenced by the kind of erosion in margins and realisations of operators that it led to during 2009-12.

Looking for clarity
More clues may emerge if it decides to bid for spectrum in the auction slated for early 2015.

Of course, if the company does take the inorganic route to expansion, possibly acquiring the weaker operators, it would certainly stand a good chance.

Maybe that’s one thing the smaller players in the telecom space could look forward to.

Source: HBL

Market concerns about impact of Reliance Jio entry overdone: Morgan Stanley

Market concerns about the impact of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio's (RJio) entry into the fiercely competitive telecom sector are "overdone", foreign brokerage Morgan Stanley today said.

"Despite robust data and strong Ebitda growth, the market is concerned about the impact of new entrant RJio with newer and faster technology. However, our case studies suggest these fears are overdone," it said in a note.

The US-based financial services company said telecom stocks have underperformed over the last 12 months despite good operational revenue and robust growth on the data front.

However, anticipation of the entry of RJio with its faster 4G services has resulted in some concerns, it said.

The launch of RJio's 4G services has been getting delayed for long and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani had in June announced it will be launching the services in a phased manner starting 2015.

In the note, Morgan Stanley said RJio may be able to garner 11 per cent of the wireless market share, including 8 per cent on the voice front, and 20 per cent on the data side, by FY18, only if it is able to expand the market.

"In our eyes, the market share will only be possible if it (RJio) becomes a market expander."

Ambani re-entered the key sector with the June 2010 acquisition of a little-known firm Infotel Broadband Services Pvt Ltd (IBSPL), which successfully bid for a pan-India 4G licence. In May 2010, he had ended a non-compete pact with younger sibling Anil, who had got the telecom business during the 2005 split.

RJio has a planned investment of Rs 37,000 crore into the telecom sector over the next few years.

Source: ET

Homeshop18 keen to tap RJio’s 4G services to grow biz

E-tailer Homeshop18 is betting big on the 4G roll-out by Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio), the telecom subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries.

The company, largely a home shopping channel, is now a part of RIL after the latter acquired its parent company Network18 this year.

Network18 owns a 54.5 per cent stake in Homeshop18, and has invested $53.8 million (around ₹330 crore today) in the business.

Sundeep Malhotra, CEO of Homeshop18, told BusinessLine that 4G will be a great opportunity for the entire e-commerce sector and that Homeshop18 will benefit from it. “We are assessing the entire relationship with RJio and it is a great partner for us,” he added.

According to industry experts, RJio, which is likely to roll out the 4G services by March next year, will be able to tap into Homeshop18’s large customer base, who will in turn use the 4G services to shop online without facing any connectivity issues.

Homeshop18, which sells on all three channels — online, television and mobile—is planning to create a model where its consumers, who mostly buy products over the television, will be able to continue doing that over a 4G-enabled smartphone. “Consumers are driving that change where website, television and mobile come together to provide a better and convenient shopping experience. We are catching them everywhere,” Malhotra said, adding that TV has a greater potential to attract customers as it is more interactive and also a source of entertainment. For Homeshop18, which competes with pure-play online retailers such as Snapdeal and Flipkart, about 80 per cent of the revenues come through television as a shopping channel. However, mobile is also fast catching up with over 100 per cent annual growth. He added Homeshop18 will be the first virtual company to turn profitable by 2015.

Fund raising plan

On the company’s fund-raising plans post the Reliance takeover, Malhotra said Homeshop18 is internally discussing and evaluating it. The company had earlier this year filed a prospectus for a $75-million IPO with the New York Stock Exchange.

He added the company is looking at adding more categories such as packaged foods and home improvement products. It has over 21 different categories with digital and lifestyle contributing over 50 per cent to the total sales.

Source: HBL

Google Is Investing in a Superfast Fiber-Optic Cable Across the Pacific

Google will be joining forces with five East Asian companies to build a 9,000-km (6,000 mile) fiber-optic underwater cable that will span the Pacific Ocean, connecting the West Coast of the U.S. to two cities in Japan. The $300 million project aims to address the needs of rising Internet usage along the trans-Pacific route.

China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Japanese mobile carrier KDDI, Singapore’s SingTel and Malaysia’s Global Transit — some of the largest telecom firms in Asia — will also be investing in the project that is scheduled to begin service by 2016. The cable system, called FASTER, will be supplied by the Japanese vendor NEC and designed to deliver speeds of 60 terabytes per second — “about ten million times faster than your cable modem,” Urs Hölze, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure, wrote on his Google+ page.

“The FASTER cable system has the largest design capacity ever built on the Trans-Pacific route, which is one of the longest routes in the world,” Woohyong Choi, the chairman of the consortium, said in a statement.

The system will connect to the cities of Shima and Chikura in Japan and will also extend to major cities and their environs on the U.S. West Coast, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle, according to a statement released by NEC.

The project is not Google’s first investment in underwater cable systems; it also backed UNITY in 2008 and SJC (South-East Asia Japan Cable) in 2011. Google’s investments in network infrastructure in Asia reflects global trends that indicate the region now has the greatest number of Internet users in the world.

Source: time.com

Reliance Jio joins Cellular Operators Association of India

Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Monday joined the GSM lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) that represents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Aircel and Videocon Telecom. With Reliance Jio as its core member, COAI's core membership has gone up to seven, said association in its statement.

Reliance Jio is currently in the process of creating the digital infrastructure backbone, and is expected to commercially launch its high-speed data and voice services (4G) in 2015.

"We are all acutely aware of the significance of the expansion of advanced data networks such as LTE in our country," said Reliance Jio managing director Sandip Das, in a joint statement.

Das said that they are pleased to join the COAI, and along with other operators, they hope to create an operating environment in the overall context of national development.

"We see ourselves contributing significantly by building out a nationwide high speed data network, "added Reliance Jio top executive.

"Together with Reliance Jio and our other members, we look forward to working with the government to achieve the ambitious targets enshrined in the government's agenda of creating the new 'i-way', smart cities and broadband for all," said Rajan S Matthews, director general, COAI.

Reliance Jio holds pan-India broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in 2300 MHz and acquired the unified licence from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in October 2013. The company also holds spectrum in the 1800 MHz band, across 14 out of 22 service areas in the country.

The company has also entered into agreements with various telecom companies including Reliance Communications, Bharti Infratel, American Tower Corporation, Tower Vision India, Viom Networks and Ascend Telecom for sharing of their infrastructure for rolling out 4G services. 

Source: ET

Telecom industry grows 11% to Rs 429,087 cr in FY14

The telecom industry rose by 10.8% in FY 2013-14 on the back of robust growth in the services space, according to the Voice&Data annual India telecom industry survey 2014 (V&D100) results, released by CyberMedia Group. The total revenues generated in the telecom industry in India for FY 2013-14 stood at Rs 429,087 crore compared to Rs 387,298 crore in the previous financial year. Services segment, which includes enterprises as well as user services of voice, data and other services, recorded cumulative revenues of Rs 233,793 crore, contributing 54% of the total revenues. 

The revenues of equipment and solutions, including carrier infrastructure, enterprise communications and user communication devices', amounted to Rs 195,294 crore (46% of total revenues). The equipment segment grew at a little higher rate of 11.6% against 10.1% growth registered by services. Ibrahim Ahmed, group editor, Voice&Data, said, "The ghost years of the India Telecom industry seem to have gone and we are seeing both - infrastructure as well as services grow. This indicates that while the operators are reaping the benefits of investments made over the years, they are still investing to delight the customers by offering new world class services." 

The top three telecom service providers in the country--Airtel, Vodafone and Idea-accounted for more than 50% of the services revenues for FY 2013-14 as the launch data services essentially 4G and strengthen their 3G services base. Among the major service providers, Uninor has registered the maximum YoY growth of over 21%. On the equipment vendors' front, Samsung, Nokia and Indus Towers lead the vendor and solution providers' community with the top three players contributing a little over 29% of the total India telecom equipment revenues for FY 2013-14. From the vendors' side, the list of leading players is dominated by user devices manufacturers, tower companies and telecom core equipment vendors.

 Among the vendors, Micromax has shown phenomenal YoY growth of over 115% in revenues. This year, Voice&Data jointly conducted the industry survey with CMR (CyberMedia Research). The survey segmented the entire telecom industry into 25 segments across equipment and services and sized each of them by revenues for the FY 2013-14. It also identified the leaders in each of the segments with their estimated market shares, besides highlighting the major trends in each of these segments. 

Source: voicendata.com

India signs MoU with Japan for telecom towers

The Indian government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) for renewable energy management solutions at telecom towers in the country. The project aims at demonstrating a system which will reduce the consumption of diesel and ensure stable supply of electricity at tower sites. "Introduction of renewable energy systems and lithium-ion batteries; and application of energy management system supplied by Japan-based NEC Corporation will demonstrate efficient power usage at telecom towers," said a senior official. 

Application of photo catalyst coat, which reflects solar radiation, on the side wall and roof of BTS shelter, will be supplied by Pixela to control the temperature inside the shelter, contributing to the reduction in power consumption at telecom towers. The objective of the NEDO model project for energy management system in telecommunication towers in India is to facilitate energy conservation at telecom tower sites in India by introducing renewable energy and energy management system. The project will be implemented at 62 sites across India to achieve energy conservation. It is expected that once replicated across the 400,000 towers in the country, this model will result in 50 per cent energy conservation and reduction of 1,000,000 kiloliters of diesel consumption. The demonstration project comes at a time when the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is emphasising on the reduction of diesel usage at telecom tower sites. 

The DoT has directed telecom tower companies to ensure that 50 per cent of telecom tower sites in rural areas and 20 per cent of urban telecom tower sites should run on hybrid power, comprising grid power and renewable energy by 2015. Further, the tower companies are expected to cover 75 per cent of rural towers and 33 of urban telecom towers under the hybrid power net by 2020. Sudhir Prasad, Chief Operating Officer, Viom Networks, who was present at the ceremony, stated: "Energy efficiency is crucial to cutting carbon emissions. Aiming to do our part for the global cause, Viom Networks and NEDO have collaborated to explore newer avenues of bringing greener energy solutions to India's telecom infrastructure sector.

 "As India's leading independent telecom tower company, Viom Networks has clear environmental goals in the areas of energy efficiency and climate protection. We are fully committed to improve our energy efficiency. Viom Networks and NEDO will assess what can be done to further improve energy performance of telecom towers. We have jointly identified key areas for improvement, and we are looking forward to cooperating to reduce the Indian telecom industry's carbon emissions." 

he said In addition, the MoU has been signed under the aegis of India-Japan Energy Partnership. It is a symbolic project that was agreed upon during the visit of Kazuyoshi Akaba, the Senior Vice Minister of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to India in end-July 2014. This project is the first under India-Japan bilateral co-operation in the energy sector, which is priority of the new Indian government. -

Source: voice and data

No undue advantage given to Reliance Jio: DoT

The department of telecommunications (DoT) has repeated the government has not done anything wrong in allowing Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm to transfer its internet service provider (ISP) licence to a unified licence (UL), or in the auction of the broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in 2010, as alleged in a draft report of the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG).

DoT and the company have not done anything that breached the guidelines mentioned in the notice inviting applications (NIA) for the auction of the BWA spectrum in 2010, it stated in a reply to CAG’s draft audit report.

CAG has said DoT had failed to recognise “telltale signs of rigging” in the 2010 auctions and had enabled an unknown company, Infotel Broadband Services Pvt Ltd (IBSPL), to acquire pan-India broadband spectrum by paying 5,000 times its net worth of Rs 2.5 crore.

According to the report, IBSPL had made an earnest money deposit of Rs 252.5 crore and won 20 Mhz of pan-India BWA spectrum. It had through the “covert and overt assistance of third party or private bank” bid for Rs 12,847.77 crore and sold the company to a Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) entity on the day of completion of the auction. CAG accused IBSPL and RIL, the parent of Jio, of conspiracy, and has asked for a probe into the whole matter. It has asked DoT to cancel the broadband spectrum the company was allotted after the 2010 auctions, and to give “exemplary punishment” on the colluding firms.

According to the report, DoT had favoured Jio by allowing it to convert its ISP permit, which would enable the firm to offer voice services, for Rs 1,658 crore, a price telcos paid in 2001 when the sector was in its infancy and a price struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012.

“Hence, Reliance Jio Infocomm appeared to have been accorded an undue advantage of Rs 22,848 crore,” the draft report noted.

DoT, in its reply to CAG, has said the government has not only the sovereign right to take policy decision but is also duty-bound to take necessary steps to achieve policy objectives. The decisions were of similar policy nature to fulfil the larger policy objectives in the interest of the economy, it added.

DoT said the policy decisions were timely and in fulfilment of mandate given by the Cabinet and taken with the approval of the then telecom minister. The observations of the audit, in effect, challenge the decision-making powers of various organs of the government and the authority vested under the rules of business with the telecom minister, added DoT.

It also seeks to substitute the wisdom and the decisions of the decision-making authorities of relevant time with that of another alternative approach suggested in the report which need not have been the best approach, DoT noted, asking CAG to delete the paras in the draft report. DoT, in its reply, has explained that the rules for 3G and BWA spectrum before a 2010 auction did not restrict BWA winners from providing voice telephony.

“IBSPL complied with all the required documents and the spectrum was being sold through a competitive bidding, so there were no restrictions on sale of equity,” said a DoT official seeking anonymity.

Source: BS

Reliance Jio Infocomm intra-city fibre network may now be largest: Credit Suisse

Telecom operator Reliance Jio Infocomm is gearing up to build country's biggest mobile back-end facilities for its 4G services launch by March 2015 while its own optical fibre network within city areas may already be the largest among peers, says Credit Suisse.

"We suspect RJio already has the largest intra-city optic fibre network with over 85,000 km across 700-800 towns. This is a major differentiator for mobile backhaul in an industry with sub-10 per cent fibre penetration into towers," a Credit Suisse report by analysts Sunil Tirumalai and Chunky Shah said.

All calls and mobile data are largely carried by optical fibre cable (OFC) network in telecom networks. As per the report, RJio services will be launched by March 2015.

The analysts said that till now, Reliance Communications (RCom) was believed to have the largest fibre network among private operators, with an intra-city network of about 70,000 route kilometers. The report said that channel checks of Credit Suisse suggest that over the last couple of years, RJio has completed rollout of about 100,000 Rkm (route kilometer) of OFC.

Credit Suisse also said it expects that RJio is could be soon among largest data centres companies in India has it has already build about 5 facility.

"We understand RJio has also built about 5 data centres, with many more expected to come. This could make them among the largest data centre companies in India. We understand that the long term game plan is to have over 40 data centers across the country," the report said.

Tata Communications at present has 11 data centres in India -- the maximum. As per the report, RCom has 9 centres Airtel 7 and Vodafone 2.

"Moreover, our channel checks suggest that the bandwidth of fibre cable being rolled out by RJio is superior. The normal cables used by the industry have 12-24 fibre threads, while RJio's appears to be using mostly cables with 288 fibres, in some cases 96 fibres," the report said.

Source: ET

4G means more money for Chennai Corporation

The launch of 4G internet services in the city by telecom service providers like Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJI) Limited in a few months will generate more money for the Chennai Corporation in the form of track rent.

Telecos have to lay an optical fiber cable network across the city to provide the high speed internet connection. The state government has approved the civic body's proposal to increase rent for laying underground and aerial cables from Rs 9,400 to Rs 32,450/km a year. The new rent was approved by the corporation council last year.

The civic body has also decided to raise the track rent by at least 10% every year. The corporation has not increased the track rent since 2000.

As many as 17 telephone and high speed internet service providers have installed cable and fibre optic networks on 15,645 roads in the city (a total of 4,124.87km). In 2014-15 alone, civic body collected Rs 3.41 crore from these companies.

Bharti Televentures Ltd is the corporation's top customer, paying it a track rent of Rs 1.43 crore. Bharti is followed by Reliance Communications Limited (Rs 92 lakh), Reliance Jio Infocomm (Rs 42.80 lakh), Tata Tele Services (Rs 26 lakh), Vodafone (Rs 18.13 lakh) and Tata Communications (Rs 14.92 lakh).

In 2012, Apollo Hospitals became the first non-communication entity to pay the track rent, shelling out Rs 1.27 lakh for a 69-metre-long pipeline.

The corporation does not charge Metrowater and TNEB any rent as they provide essential services.

Many residents said they would like to see the corporation use its extra funds to fix the roads after the roads are dug up to lay cables. "Most telecom companies dig up roads to lay cables, but neither they nor the corporation repair the roads after they've dug them up," said A Raman, a resident of Kodambakkam.

According to a 2001 government order, all restoration work after cable laying in urban areas should be carried out by the applicants at their own cost.

Source: TOI

Mobile tariffs to pinch you hard as Trai may raise call rates by 8-9%

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Chairman Rahul Khullar sees mobile call rates rising by 8-9% over the year as phone companies weed out freebies.

He also said in an interview with ET that the government should hasten the opening up of spectrum for high-speed access and that the new M&A norms were too stringent and would inhibit much-needed consolidation in telecom.

Khullar said though headline tariffs were currently at Rs 1.2 per minute, the net revenue earned by the industry — or realisation rates — were as low as 44-45 paise. "So, what you should be ready to see is some marginal rise in the effective call rates. You won't really feel the pinch of the tariff hike because what operators are really doing is clawing back the freebies," Khullar said.

This means subscribers could find free SMSes and talktime offered by operators steadily declining.

Khullar, however, warned that any move to increase headline tariffs won't go down too well. "What we don't expect is a rise in the headline tariffs. In case there is a rise in the headline tariffs, the authority will surely look into the matter and, depending upon the case, might intervene," the chairman said. The regulator has a stated policy of 'forbearance' on tariffs.

Referring to the quarterly results of Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular, Khullar said there were ample signs that growth was returning to the sector but warned that to keep the momentum going, the government should soon put in place a clear pro-industry policy on the most critical issues of spectrum sharing, trading, auction and overall consolidation.

Khullar urged the telecom department to move faster on making more spectrum available.

He said the government's inability to increase the availability of airwaves couldn't be explained, especially on 3G spectrum. "Four years have lapsed from the time of 3G auctions, no one could get it across the country in 2010 auctions owing to shortage of airwaves and the government further also proscribed people from sharing it," he said.

Khullar said availability of airwaves was critical for the industry.

"The next big concern for the industry is scarcity of spectrum, fragmented nature and overall availability of spectrum, leave aside problems of contiguity which are huge, particularly in 800, 900 and 1800 (Mhz). So DoT should notify the spectrum trading and sharing guidelines and start the market-driven process for consolidation. While it may result in a shakeout in the industry, whatever little spectrum is available, fragmentations will end.

If the government can't release any more 3G spectrum, then DoT must find a way out through consultation and dialogue with the industry, Khullar said.

At least 2100 Mhz should be put up on auction immediately and if you can't then devise rules permitting sharing of 3G spectrum and charge them for it," he said. In such a scenario, the government must allow the operators to share whatever airwaves they have and pay a flat charge to the government, he said.

He indicated that getting DoT to change its way of thinking has taken some effort.

"When I joined here two years ago, all this was a taboo, sharing, trading etc. It has taken huge effort to push the department in the direction of these changes."

The Trai chairman allowed that various considerations had complicated matters for DoT in the past two years or so. "Now there is a new telecom secretary. To be fair to them, they need to be given some time."

Operators are unhappy with telecom department's new mergers and acquisitions rules. The cap of 50% on the market share of the combined entity and the Cabinet decision that a buyer must pay a market price for spectrum bought if it was not purchased by the seller through auctions will discourage consolidation, critics have said.

Saying that the cap could certainly be eased, Khullar said, "This bug of increasing competition which first led to 12-14 operators in a circle and now has led to this situation. All over the world there are about threefour operators. In US, AT&T and Verizon and even in Germany there are basically two main operators." The cap currently prohibits any of the three large operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular from consolidating.

On operators being asked to pay market price, Khullar said the government needed to incentivise exit and entry from the market. "If the cost of consolidation is letting an operator accumulate a premium on spectrum, it might be a small cost to pay for consolidation," he said, adding that he was not making a case for the entire windfall gain to accumulate to operators. "But suppose an operator can buy it at 80% of the market price, then there is still some incentive for both the operators to enter into the deal."

The regulator recently issued its recommendations on sharing of airwaves, which though more liberal than those of the telecom department, still fell short of industry expectations. "Only certain things are within my purview," Khullar said. "DoT as licensor has stipulated ceilings on spectrum holding of 25% and 50% and as a regulator I can't change these."

Trai said in its recommendations that while sharing airwaves only half of each operator's holding must be counted while calculating the respective caps. Explaining how he had to balance various interests, including the stated public policy, Khullar said, "If I had relaxed the caps then all the small players with 5%, 10% market share would say that this was done to ensure the GSM lobby drives all competition out."

Interestingly, while the regulator did not permit inter-band sharing of airwaves, the recommendations categorically said the regulator reserves the right to revisit this issue of permitting inter-band sharing in the future. Industry experts said the issue will need to be revisited once the regulator begins to work on the mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) policy.

"The problem in permitting interband sharing is that this runs counter to the stated government policy on intra-circle roaming arrangements. Reliance Communications, Aircel and in some cases even one of the top three operators (Airtel, Vodafone, Idea) is affected by this policy," he added.

Source: ET