Month: June 2010

Reliance Infratel demerger from RCom into GTIL Infrastructure

Reliance Communications announced it has approval to demerge its tower business Reliance Infratel (RITL) into GTL Infrastructure Ltd. (GTLI). The combined entity will have over 80,000 towers and has EV of US$ 11 bn, implying an EV/tower of US$133k. Optic fibre assets, owned by RITL, are not a part of…

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COAI spreads the ante against TRAI’s 2G Spectrum

COAI the powerful GSM Operators controlling over 61% of the Indian Mobile Subscribers have spread their ante further against TRAI’s 2G Spectrum recommendation. COAI’s Director General – Mr. Rajan Mehta told Analysts that, 3G prices are not a true indicator of market price of spectrum. [Recall, TRAI proposals released on…

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Wireless Connections Reach 611 Million

The Indian Wireless industry continued to grow in May-2010, albeit with lesser momentum though. Wireless Connections Topped 611 mn at the end of May-2010. This implies penetration of 52% compared with 57% in China (Mar-10). However, reported sub base for India is inflated due to higher incidence of multi-SIM ownership…

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Will MindTree’s Product Strategy / Smart Phone Pay Off ?

MindTree intends to launch smart phones on Android-OS platform with an ASP of US$300+ by Nov-Dec 2010, which will be sold on white-labeled basis to telecom service providers globally. Jankiraman, Head- R&D Services of MindTree discussed the company’s Product Strategy. Here is an excerpt, MindTree’s product focus will be on…

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Reliance Wireless Broadband likely over LTE

Infotel Broadband Services Ltd, winner of Pan India BWA Spectrum is now 95% owned by Reliance Industries Ltd led by Mukesh Ambani. Reliance told us that, A single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE (Long Term Evolution) has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared to existing…

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What End of BWA Spectrum Auction mean to the Sector ?

The Broadband Wireless Access Spectrum Auction came to an end this morning with Infotel Broadband Services springing a surprise by winning Pan India Spectrum. Lets analyze what this mean to the sector and leading operators. Bharti has won BWA spectrum in Maharasthra (and 3 other circles), a very important circle…

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State of WiMax – Indian BWA Auction Bids Justified ?

Four years of operation, more than 500 deployments across 148 countries and pathetic 6.5mn subscribers, is not a very good situation to be in for the Indian WiMAX industry. Initial WiMax roll outs in unlicensed spectrum in India have been a miserable failure. Given that 802.16m is still being developed…

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Bharti Airtel Africa plans to collaborate on network expansion

Bharti Airtel known for innovative business models in running wireless Operations is planning to join hands with other tier-2 telecom operators in Africa (where it acquired Zain’s operations) to share each other’s radio access networks. If true, this would be directionally positive, enabling Bharti to (1) expand its network more…

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