Nokia Networks signs 12 telecom deals in India in 1H 2014

Nokia networks today said it has signed 12 telecom deals in India during the first half of 2014. During the same period last year, the company had signed 9 telecom infrastructure deals.It is believed that Nokia Networks has signed a 4G deal with Reliance Jio. However, Nokia Networks officials did not confirm the details.

Sandeep Girotra, head- India region, Nokia Networks, said, “We are engaged with Reliance Jio and other operators. However, we cannot confirm about any such deals.”

“Indian telecom market is reviving thanks to a stable government . we are seeing significant investments in mobile broadband by telecom operators,” Girotra added.

Virotra welcomed spectrum sharing recommendations by telecom regulator TRAI.

“spectrum sharing is a welcome stage. These are initial stages. Spectrum sharing will improve the business conditions of mobile operators. However, we are concerned about preferential market access guidelines. We are also concerned about 10 percent levy imposed on certain telecom equipment. This will be a blow on capex plans of operators,” he added.

Nokia Networks last week said its second quarter sales dipped around 7 percent to €2.6 billion.

Net sales in mobile broadband business unit rose 6 percent year-on-year. This performance was driven by strong sales not just in LTE, but also by double-digit growth in core sales.

Last week, Rajeev Suri, president and chief executive officer, Nokia, said: “We still have work to do to get global services back to growth after our many contract exits during the last two years.”

Nokia Networks has won 10 new managed services deals this year.

On a regional level, two out of our six regions, Asia-Pacific and Greater China, were back to year-on-year growth, and all regions grew sequentially.

“The large LTE rollouts in China are proceeding well for us. Europe, which has been a difficult region for us, declined year-on-year.

North America was largely between major rollouts, though Sprint deployment activities are likely to accelerate in coming quarters.

Nokia Networks posted declines in the Middle East and Africa. However, its telecom deal momentum in the region has strengthened significantly. Latin America remains its most challenging region, partly a result of regulatory changes in Mexico, but also partly due to our earlier overreliance on services in the region and high impact of exits from those projects during our transformation.

Source: Telecomlead

DoT to dial DeiTY to prepare cloud roadmap for government

The telecom department will shortly dial the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeiTY), and not the sector regulator, to formulate a cloud services deployment roadmap for all government organisations.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had initially mandated the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to send recommendations for migrating computing and data storage functions of government organisations to the cloud platform, but is now likely to approach DeiTY, according to an internal DoT note seen by ET. The electronics and IT department is already involved in running cloud services applications with the Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu governments.

The move comes at a time when companies are swiftly migrating core enterprise applications, sales & distribution, financial accounting functions and CRM systems to the cloud platform, by renting server space instead of using their own to unlock efficiencies in processing and data storage, and in turn, reduce costs.

"All government departments are being encouraged to adopt the cloud platform for their e-governance projects initially as part of its MeghRaj, or GI Cloud, initiative," a senior DeiTY official said. The objective, he said, is to step up IT adoption in government and enable it to partner with private technology players to develop India as a global hub for delivering cloud solutions.

DeiTY is also developing a national data centre that will be a repository of e-governance apps.

DeiTY's endeavour to migrate the functions to the cloud platform is also aimed at leveraging cloud computing to deliver affordable e-services, accessed over the Internet. Such e-services could relate to public distribution system and land records and e-health to e-education, although DeiTY has yet to notify the details.

"Implementation of strategies for cloud services in government organisations may not be included in Trai's final recommendations on introduction of cloud-based services in India since the matter is being dealt by DeiTY," the note said. DoT is slated to send an official communication to Trai in this matter.

Indications are that DieTY will come up with recommendations to build secure state-owned data centres, a key element of cloud computing infrastructure. It also likely to suggest ways to overcome data security challenges thrown up by dismal power infrastructure.

Research firm Gartner in a recent forecast predicted that some $4.2 billion would be spent on cloud services in India over the next five years. This is since small enterprises, especially those which are keen on renting computing services rather than directly buying and owning it, would opt for the cloud platform.

Source: ET

GSM operators to coax the Department of Telecommunications to release 1800 MHZ spectrum

GSM operators will soon coax the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to release bulk of 1800 MHz band airwave holdings that will be available with the government in the next auction as they fear "there isn't adequate fall-back spectrum in this frequency band" for incumbents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications if they can't win back their 900 MHz spectrum in non-metro circles, post expiry of their permits over the next two years. 

GSM operators also want DoT to free up all unused 1800 MHz spectrum with multiple government agencies as licences on only 26 MHz of airwaves in the 1800 MHz band will expire over the next couple of years. 

Some 104 MHz or 'units' of spectrum in the 1800 MHz band is slated to be available in the upcoming auctions, including the 78 MHz left unsold in the February airwaves sale. 

Unlike the February auction when GSM operators in the metros had enough 1800 MHz spectrum to fall back on if they failed to retain their 900 MHz holdings, the situation will be "very different in the ensuing battle for 900 MHz airwaves in non-metro circles, since there isn't enough back-up 1800 MHz spectrum for telcos failing to win back their 900 MHz holdings," a top executive of a noted GSM carrier told ET. Atotal 184 units of spectrum in the 900 MHz band will come up for renewal post-licence expiry over 2015-16. 

The stakes are huge as market leader Bharti Airtel has 900 MHz holdings in 13 non-metro circles, of which six expire by April 2016. Vodafone India, in turn, has the same premium bandwidth in nine nonmetro service areas, and seven of these will need to be bought back. Idea faces an even stiffer challenge as it will have to win back its efficient 900 MHz airwaves in nine nonmetro circles while the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications has to buy back 900 MHz spectrum in seven non-metro circles once these permits expire in December 2015. 

"There's clearly insufficient spectrum for operators whose licences are due for extension to continue their current level of service, which is why, we will urge DoT to auction bulk of the 1800 MHz spectrum inventory with multiple government agencies, including the armed forces," said another executive familiar with the matter. 

Indications are Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the trade body representing GSM carriers like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, will shortly approach DoT secretary Rakesh Garg in this light. 

The COAI is also likely to urge DoT to reshuffle existing 1800 MHz spectrum to make more contiguous or "continuous" bandwidth available to enable delivery of mobile broadband services like 4G. 

At present, only eight contiguous blocks of spectrum in the 1800 MHz band are available in a total four out of India's 22 circles. 

"Though a unified licence allows a telco to offer 4G data services on 1800 MHz frequencies, such spectrum cannot support mobile broadband in India's biggest telecom markets like Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, UP-East and UP-West as it is non-contiguous. Continuous or 'contiguous' spectrum in the 1800 MHz band is available only in Kolkata, Orissa, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. In the other circles, it is fragmented and can at best be used for 2G services," said the GSM carrier executive quoted above.

Source: ET

Department of Telecommunications may use TRAI's data to reach uncovered areas

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will shortly ask the sector regulator to determine which areas remain outside mobile coverage ahead of the next spectrum auction.

It's likely to use the data collated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to design the next airwaves sale more effectively, especially with regard to rural rollout obligations for spectrum winners, a top official aware of the matter told ET.

DoT plans to use Trai's inputs to measure India's "unique mobile subscriber" penetration and also review the effectiveness of existing telco rollout obligations. It is keen to quantify unique subscribers as the "number of mobile connections" can be a misleading indicator of penetration since a subscriber can have multiple SIM cards.

Moves to address the issue could also mean mobile service providers having to step up investment, which would add to the pressure on finances at companies already burdened by high spectrum costs and having to keep tariffs low because of competition.

Trai's assessment of gaps in coverage will exclude the northeastern circles, where it has already concluded that some 9,000 villages have no mobile connectivity. The exercise comes at a time when sections within DoT have voiced concern about India's "very modest 40% rural tele-density levels".

The National Telecom Policy 2012 seeks to increase India's 40% rural tele-density levels to 70% by 2017 and 100% by 2020. Accordingly, the possibility of telcos being asked to meet 80-100% of their rural tele-density targets within defined timelines as part of their contractual obligations is not being ruled out.

Trai's inputs may prove handy in designing the next round of spectrum auctions, said Mahesh Uppal, director of Com First (India) — a consultancy dealing in telecom regulatory affairs.

"Accurate and robust data will be invaluable to estimate India's rural mobile coverage. It can also be useful for designing future auctions as it will help specify realistic rollout obligations for telcos that win spectrum through those auctions," he said.

DoT is learnt to have internally estimated that there are nearly "40,000 uncovered villages" across India (excluding those in the Northeast) and the cost of provisioning 2G coverage in these regions would be upwards of Rs 11,000 crore, a departmental official said.

Source: ET

Trai open to spectrum leasing, says Khullar

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has not shut the door on spectrum leasing and is open to allowing it. However, it first wants to see how spectrum trading and sharing, for which guidelines have been issued but not yet approved by the government, is implemented and the experience arising out of them. Only then would the matter of spectrum leasing be taken up.

In an interview with FE, Trai chairman Rahul Khullar said, “I have not closed the door on spectrum leasing. But first let’s see how spectrum trading and sharing take off. Let the government first approve them so that we can see how they take off. Once the experience of their implementation and roll out is there, we would certainly look at spectrum leasing also.”
The guidelines for spectrum sharing was unveiled by Trai on Monday while those for trading were released in January. While it is still early for the department of telecommunications to decide on sharing, it has dilly-dallied on taking a decision on spectrum trading thus far. Under spectrum trading, outright transfer of spectrum is allowed, which means that the ownership of the usage right is transferred to the buyer. Once implemented, if any operator feels it has spectrum it cannot utilise properly, it can sell it to another operator after paying a marginal charge to the government. Under sharing, Trai has allowed two operators to pool together their spectrum to create greater efficiency.

However, operators feel that leasing, which has not been recommended by Trai till now, would be the best option to ease the spectrum crunch they face. Under it, the ownership would vest with the operator to whom it has been assigned but if its utilisation rate is poor, it can lease it to another operator on rental charges and take it back once it finds a need for it. This way operators whose active subscriber base is low — say 50-60% — can lease the airwaves to bigger operators with over 90% utilisation and earn revenues. It would be a win-win situation for both.

Khullar also said that operators who are upset that inter-band spectrum sharing has not been allowed — this means that operators can only share spectrum in a particular band like 800 or 1800 MHz — should wait for some more months by when the regulator would come out with the guidelines for MVNO operations.
“I could not have allowed inter-band sharing at this point of time as it would have meant allowing mobile virtual network operators, which is not allowed under the telecom policy. But a couple of months down the line we would issue recommendations on MVNO and then the matter of inter-band sharing would get addressed,” Khullar said.
MVNOs are not licensed operators but buy bulk airtime from licensed players and retail them to the consumers.

Khullar said that the caps on spectrum holding on operators could not be lifted in case of sharing or trading because the regulator cannot breach policy guidelines. However, for the purposes of calculation he has relaxed it in the case of sharing. The cap lays down that operators cannot have more than 25% of total spectrum assigned in a circle or 50% in a given band. However, Trai has said that in case operators share, only 50% of shared spectrum would be counted as additional.
On the 0.5% additional spectrum usage charge on shared spectrum, Khullar said, “I wanted to put in place a clear road map on SUC. Suggesting no additional SUC would not have been acceptable to the government and it could have levied a higher charge as was done in an earlier proposal.”
Similarly, the Trai chairman said that he did not allow intra-circle roaming for 3G services since the government has taken a policy decision for not allowing any such pacts.

Source: FE

Mobile services market in India to be $19.2 bn in 2014: Gartner

The number of mobile connections in India is expected to grow by 8 percent to touch 815 million this year, even as the market is expected to remain at almost the same level as last year - at USD 19.2 billion, research firm Gartner said.

The mobile user base is expected to grow to 815 million this year, from 755 million connections in 2013, it said.

"The mobile market in India is going through a rough patch, where voice average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling very fast, and the increase in data ARPU is not able to fully compensate for the decline," 

Gartner Senior Research Analyst Neha Gupta said in a statement.

She added that if the prevailing market conditions do not change in the Indian mobile market, India will account for 12 percent worldwide mobile connections.

However, the country will account for just 2 percent of worldwide mobile services revenue, she said.

Gartner said one of the biggest challenges faced by Indian mobile operators is the growing appetite for over-the-top (OTT) voice services, driven by the explosion in personal connected devices like smartphones and tablets.

"Mobile broadband provides a substantial revenue opportunity in India on the back of low fixed line broadband penetration. Packing and selling mobile broadband in small and affordable chunks is critical to uptake," Gupta said.

Another area of opportunity, according to Gartner, is focusing on innovative mobile apps that help increase loyalty of the consumer.

"These could go beyond the popular category of social and video apps to include utility apps like shopping apps. Apps that can provide high user-experience on low tech phones are likely to have higher traction than others," Gartner said.

Operators that engage with popular content and service brands and bundle their apps and services with their data plans will drive consumer interest in mobile broadband, it added.

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, there were 910.16 million mobile phones, and 938.34 telecom service (including landlines) users in India at the end of May 2014.

Active wireless subscribers on the date of Peak VLR in May, 2014 were 790.52 million, it added. 

Source: Zee News

Spectrum norms to ward off CAG terror

Trai's guidelines on spectrum-sharing mark an improvement on the current state of affairs but fall far short of what is desirable. 

They impose all kinds of arbitrary restrictions that limit utilisation of spectrum far below what technology and commercial conduct permit. This is unfortunate. 

India started off by offering operators tiny slivers of spectrum that did not allow optimal network design. Operators have had to carry out excessive investment to service their growing customer base because of this scarcity of the raw material of telecom. Yet, thanks to the policy of making spectrum available with minimal upfront costs, till the auctions started, and intense competition among a large number of licensees, consumers got some of the cheapest tariffs in the world. 

The common good lies in regulation and licensing terms encouraging, not blocking, evolution of services to the latest technology platforms and business models that incorporate available technological possibilities. It is against this requirement that we have to measure the Trai regulations and government policy. And the latest sharing guidelines fall far short. Why not allow sharing among more than two operators? Why insist that an operator would not be able to share spectrum in a band that it did not possess prior to sharing? Why limit the kind of services that any operator can provide using shared spectrum? After all, the government only needs to ensure that it does not lose any revenue as a result of companies pooling their spectrum resources. 

What Trai and the department of telecom are doing is, in everyday parlance, covering their backside. Maximising the common good is far from their topmost objective. They want to guard against being accused of causing notional revenue loss. It's time they stopped fearing CAG ghosts

Source: ET