Category: telecom
Idea cellular Pre IPO placement
Kumarmanglam Birla controlled Idea Cellular has been continuously offloading stake in the company to various Venture Capital and Private Equity investors since August-06. Just a while ago, Idea has sold 1.5% stake to Sequoia Capital at $40 Million. With this Sequoia Deal, the valuation of Idea cellular has moved up…
Reliance Communications to float largest telecom tender
Anil Dhirubhai Amabni groups biggest company, Reliance Communications Ltd [RCom] will float the worlds largest Telecom tender in few weeks. The size of this tender is estimated to be around $9 Billion for 100 Million phone lines much larger than BSNL’s Mega tender of 45 Million lines. The tender is…
250,000 Indian Villages to get Mobile Phones
The Government of India has done a commendable job by inserting the Universal Service Obligation [USO] clause in the National Telecom Policy of 1994. Under the USO clause, telcos need to extend services to remote villages[or fund the project] such that they are not left behind in the Telecom revolution…
Government considering to reduce telecom tariffs
Budget after Budget, the Indian telcos and cellcos have been lobbying hard to bring down the government levies. In a pre-budget memorandum submitted by the telcos last year, they had requested the government to reduce annual revenue share or license fees from 6-10%[Metros & Circle-A 10%, Circle-B 8% and Circle-C…
BSNL IPTV to be launched in 3 Months
After MTNL’s IPTV launch, BSNL is planning to launch IPTV services in the country starting from Pune within the next 3 months. I don’t understand the logic behind IPTV deployment in India where broadband penetration is pathetic and pay additional monthly fees of Rs500 for IPTV service the broadband fees…
Aircel and Reliance Telecom PAN India Operations
Maxis Telecom managed Aircel and Reliance Telecom hope to start their PAN India operations by the end of 2009 and 2007 respectively. Aircel operates in Tamilnadu and North East. It has secured licenses for Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. It has plans to install 5,000 cell towers and…
The Economist – Business-process innovation award to Sam Pitroda
Sam Pitroda a.k.a. Satynaryan Gangram Pitroda, the Father of Indian Telecom is honoured by The Economist under “Business Process Innovation” category. The Economist magazine said,“In 1987 Mr Pitroda was asked by Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, to help democratise access to telecommunications. His response was to deploy instantly-recognisable yellow…
Security agencies enforce CLI
The Indian security agencies have called for strict enforcement of Caller Line Identification on all international incoming calls. Their are only four Indian carriers who have point of interconnect for international calls – Reliance Communications Ltd, Bharti Tele-ventures Ltd, VSNL Ltd and BSNL. If their is no CLI on an…