3G Spectrum Auction in India - Current Status

India is supposed to be the booming telecom market all over the world.

Facts about telecom industry in India:

• India has around 490 million mobile subscribers by the end of November 2009.
• India has mobile penetration of around 40%
• Rural penetration is around 32%
• 12 mobile service providers are existing and around 4 more in line to launch their service.
• Competitive pricing strategy is compelling TSP to generate more innovative ways to create revenue
• ARPU for the companies is reducing drastically.

All these figures are just a glimpse. But the main fun will be when one of the most awaited technology will be launched in India.

3G (Third Generation of Mobile Communication)

When the world was welcoming 3G, India was struggling to implement fully functional 2.5G in India.

Now it has been a situation that the American and European market is almost saturated for 3G implementation but still, India is trying hard to launch its 3G service.

Government Stance:

Government decided to do auction of 3G much before but the process is "still" under review.

Facts:

• Initially Govt decided to auction 3G spectrum on May 2009.
• Later it got postponed to Sep 2009. Many of the service providers gathered money and were geared up for the auction.
• But government later changed its decision and decided to do the bidding program on 7th Dec 2009. And as expected, government changed its mood and postponed to Jan 14, 2010.
• Now the current news is that the auction is still delayed to mid of Feb or Mar 2010.

So what this is all about?

Government is giving reason that defense is not releasing spectrum on time. Also they are saying that now there will be only 3 private players who will get 3G after auction. This will heavily impact the business strategy of the companies who are betting big time on 3G.

People have kept lot of hopes on the competitive pricing of 3G too. Now if the government delays the auction, it will generate a vicious chain of events which will create lot of problem for many players.

Group getting affected by delay in 3G auction:

· Telecom Service Providers who have invested a lot on 3G infrastructure.

· Equipment Vendors like Alcatel Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Juniper networks.

· Indian Telecom Department who are waiting for proper revenue from 3G auction.

But all this will take place only when Government takes proper steps to auction 3G.

Hopefully the auction will be ending by March end and the companies will be launching services by the end of October 2010.

Keep reading my blog for latest news of 3G telecom auction in Indian market.

----------------------------

Hardik

Indian Mobile Subscriber Base - August 2009

Hi,

Again I am here with the statistics of Indian Telecom Market ending July 2009.

India adds 14.38 m wireless users in July.

India's telecom industry is growing at a rapid pace. You can check the subscriber base details of previous months from my blog.

India added 14.4 million new mobile subscribers in July, bringing the total number of mobile subscribers in the country to 442 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Thursday.

The demand for mobile phones has been growing despite an economic downturn because Indians view mobile phones as a necessity, said analyst firm IDC India. The increase in July can also be attributed to new rollouts by some service providers and a focus by large operators on rural markets.

The country added 12 million new subscribers in June. The number of fixed line subscribers in the country continued to decline from 37.54 million in June to 37.41 million in July.

The country's largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, added 2.8 million subscribers in July for a total of 105 million subscribers. Reliance Communications, the second largest player, added 2.4 million subscribers, bringing its total up to 82 million.

Tata Teleservices, which is rolling out its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) services under the Tata DoCoMo brand, saw the number of subscribers for its GSM and CDMA services grow by 2.3 million to 39.4 million in July.

Tata Teleservices added 624,905 subscribers in June. NTT DoCoMo holds a 26 percent stake in the company.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam added 1.6 million mobile subscribers in July, taking its total to 56 million.

Indian mobile operators and handset makers are targeting India's rural markets. Nokia announced this week plans to launch micro-finance schemes across rural areas in 12 Indian states. The plan means people can buy a handset and pay it off in weekly installments for as little as 100 Indian rupees (US$2).


Analyst firms such as Gartner, however, describe India's rural market as low margin and too geographically spread out to be comparable to the country's urban market.

While the total wireless—GSM, CDMA and WLL (F)—subscriber base stood at 441.66 million in July, the wireline connections declined by 0.13 million to 37.41 million during the month.

The broadband subscriber base reached the 6.80 million million mark. India's mobile user base rose 25 times in the last five years and research firm Gartner expects it to touch 737 million by 2012.

Will keep you guys updated with latest news about Indian Telecom Industry.


Copyright © Hardik Upadhyay

You can follow me on TWITTER

JSK

Mobile Advertising Industry

Hi Folks,

The advertising industry is gearing up. I thought to get data on how much exactly is the amount of money which the industry is spending on the advertising.

According to the recent reports I got the following data for advertising on mobile.

The advertising pool is small. Magna, a unit of the Interpublic Group, reported in May that it expected advertisers to spend $229 million this year on mobile media, including mobile Web sites and applications. Though that is up 36 percent from 2008, it is revised down from Magna’s forecast in the summer of 2008 of a growth rate of 43 percent. And $229 million is a tiny slice of the advertising pie. - Data is for US only.

“It is experimental — no one’s moving their TV budget to mobile — but it is a part of every conversation we have with business advertisers,” Mr. Howard-Sarin said. “We have a lot of oars in the mobile water because we think there’s money there.”

But the research says that it is supposed to increase to around 1 Billion in US by 2012. All these all are predictions but the pace at which people are thinking to move their content on mobile and usage of mobile broadband of customers, forces the marketing team to change their strategy.

Copyright © Hardik Upadhyay

You can follow me on TWITTER

JSK

Telecom Market Overview - Part 1

Telecom market is growing inspite of the recession. You can check out these details from my previous blog "Mobile Market In INDIA"


Lot of companies are entering in the market to find out some business. India is such a country where there are lot of opportunities. Its the country with huge population and diversity and is often termed as a "Developing Country".

Before going in the business, let me give you few overview about Indian telecom market. Indian government has proposed a rule that any foreign company cannot start as a Telecom Service Provider (TSP). They need to start as a joint venture with some Indian company. Now this sounds bad!! But this is business and trade agreement. No need to be more political.

So many companies came to India and invested in the existing Indian mobile market. I will list out few companies.

Also there are two technologies which are dominant in india

1. CDMA

2. GSM

Mobile market is changing in the recent scenario.

To Know How you need to read my next blogs...

Few things which I will discuss next time.

• What is the future of the mobile market
• What are the benefits of the TSP by reducing the mobile calls
• What complications will be arising by reducing the pulse rate
• TATA DOCOMO deal.
  
• New Zealand mobile phone rates.
• Cheapest mobile rates of Finland, Amsterdam and Norway.

And much more.

So keep reading.. And do give your comments.

JSK

Mobile Market in India - Latest March 2009

Hi Friends,
Today I am going to give some data about the current mobile market subscriber base in the Indian Market. I have read from the few sources like financial express and economic times and came up with the following data. It may be helpful to many people who are dealing with the mobile industry.

Telecommunication Scenario in India:

As everyone knows, if they are not knowing, i will tell you one fact. There is a regulation in Indian market that any company cannot come to India unless they have a tie up with the Indian company.
So many of the foreign companies are coming to India by tying up with the existing mobile companies in India. Latest news is about Japanese company DoCoMo tying up with TATA communications and launching the service named TATA DOCOMO. It is supposed to be a hit which is estimated by many market researchers.

Also there are few ways where they can expand their business with their new technology and other features. Let's see what happens in the near future.
Below are the current features in the mobile market of India.

Overall ARPU GSM services in India:

March Quarter: INR 205 (down 6.82 %)

December Quarter: INR 220

Postpaid ARPU : ARPU for postpaid service fell 2.8 percent to INR 543
from INR 559,

Prepaid ARPU: Declined 6 percent to INR 181 from INR 192.

For CDMA services:
The blended ARPU per month went down to INR 99 from INR 111.

The postpaid ARPU for CDMA services was five times that of prepaid
ARPU, which Trai attributed to the declining importance of processing
fees on recharge vouchers purchased by prepaid subscribers.

Mobile Internet access: 117.82 million over their phones in March

Subscriber Base:

­India's total subscriber base of wireline and wireless services
reaches 429.72 million for quarter ending March 2009 as against 384.79
million for quarter ending December 2008, thus registering an increase
of 11.68% during the quarter

Total Mobile subscriber base - Wireless Subscriber Base: The
subscriber base for wireless services has increased from 346.89
million for quarter ending December 2008 to 391.76 million for quarter
ending March 2009 increased by 44.7 million in the quarter.

GSM subscribe Base:
The GSM-based subscriber base now stands at 315.7 million, an increase
of 2.9 percent over the 306.8 million in the previous month.

Airtel: Bharti Airtel retained its top position with 2.8 million new
subscribers added in June, making it the first operator to cross the
100-million subscriber base mark

Rural Wireless Subscriber Base:
Increased from 93.15 million for quarter ending December 2008 to
109.71 million for quarter ending March 2009, registering a growth of
17.77%.

Total Revenue: Total revenues for the telecom services sector in the
three months to March reached INR 404.45 billion, up 2.63 percent from
the previous quarter.

I hope that the above statistics were helpful to you. Keep reading my blog for further information.

JSK