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Tag: EDGE

  • L’Oréal India gets EDGE Move certification for gender equality at the workplace

    L’Oréal India gets EDGE Move certification for gender equality at the workplace

    MUMBAI: L’Oréal India has been awarded the prestigious EDGE (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality) Certification for the third time. It is also the only FMCG Company and one of the five organisations in India to be accredited with the advanced MOVE level of certification.

    The EDGE assessment is the leading business certification for gender equality in the workplace that is universally applicable across industries and countries. EDGE MOVE is the second level certification awarded to the company that has already implemented a framework for change, achieved significant milestones and further commits to sharpen its action plan on gender equality policies and practices.

    This certification recognizes L’Oréal India’s leadership and commitment to create, benchmark, and support gender equity throughout the workplace and in particular its policies for ‘equal pay for equal work’, building a flexible work culture and parity in recruitment, promotions and leadership trainings.  The company maintains a high gender equality standard, passing regularly through audit certifications and gender pay gap assessments.

    L’Oréal India was awarded the EDGE Certification after a rigorous audit by EDGE, which included a comprehensive review of the company’s gender policies and practices, detailed analysis of company statistics from the entire workforce, and evaluation of the employee experience in terms of career development opportunities at the company.

    L’Oréal India director – human resources Roshni Wadhwa said, “L’Oréal India has a long-standing commitment to gender equality and this reaffirms our position as an equal opportunity employer in India. Our partnership with EDGE has helped us measure our progress regularly as well as offer an attractive work environment to our employees. L’Oréal India will continue its efforts to retain a strong gender balance at all levels and drive new benchmarks for gender equality in the workplace.”

    EDGE Certification  co-founder Aniela Unguresan said, “Through its re-certification at the EDGE Move level, L’Oréal India is accelerating its journey towards gender balance. In addition to improving the effectiveness of its policies and practices to ensure equitable career flows for men and women, the company has significantly strengthened its proactive management of gender pay equity. L’Oréal India is also showing a percentage of women in management position that is almost 3 times higher than the national median of companies operating in India. We warmly congratulate L’Oréal India on these significant achievements.”

  • Bharti launches 3G services in Seychelles

    Bharti launches 3G services in Seychelles

    MUMBAI: Bharti has become the first Indian telecom service provider to launch 3G services. Telecom Seychelles, a subsidiary of Bharti Global, has launched 3G operations in Seychelles.

    The company, which has been providing telecom services in Seychelles since 1998 under the Airtel brand, has made significant investments for rolling out state-of-the-art 3G services. Telecom Seychelles is also the first telecom operator to launch 3G services in the island nation.

    Bharti Enterprises chairman and group MD Sunil Bharti Mittal says, “This is a proud moment for Bharti and the Indian telecom industry. This launch demonstrates that Indian telecom industry is ready to introduce world-class 3G services. Our 3G operations in Seychelles will provide us with valuable experience, which will be extremely beneficial for rollout of our 3G services in India.”

    Customers in Seychelles will get access to a host of 3G services on the Airtel network. High speed web navigation – both on mobile through WAP and on laptop through Airtel 3G data card, Video calls – see and talk to each other on 3G handsets that have two cameras, sending and receiving large MMS messages are some of the many benefits customer will get.

    A programme was initiated to upgrade the existing Airtel network in Seychelles. The upgrade included commissioning of Ericsson’s new MSC/Media gateway/BSC/RNC /IN and new 3G Node B’s. All existing RBS 200 base stations with the latest 2206 BTSs have been enabled with EDGE to give the island nation a robust and futuristic telecom infrastructure.

  • Cell users worldwide prefer GSM: study

    Cell users worldwide prefer GSM: study

    MUMBAI: The subscriber results from Informa Telecoms and Media’s World Cellular Information Service for 1Q 2006, 3G Americas reports that cell phone users across the globe choose GSM 10 to one over any other wireless mobile technology.

    According to the study, the customer base for the GSM family of technologies which include, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA — grew by nearly 120 million additional subscribers in 1Q 2006 alone, compared to the total net growth of CDMA of about 12 million customers.

    Today, the 1.85 billion users of the GSM family of technologies make up more than 81 per cent of the wireless mobile market worldwide, with total subscribers of CDMA at less than 300 million and a 13 per cent market share. There were 57 million customers using UMTS services at the close of 1Q 2006.

    The results also indicate that from Q1 ’05 to Q1 ’06, the GSM family of technologies showed continued growth throughout the Western Hemisphere, adding nearly 95 million new customers — 3.5 times as many as CDMA – and approaching a quarter of a billion customers in this region alone.

    CDMA’s customer base in the region grew to a total of 169 million in the same time period with 27 million new customers and market share declining to 34.6 per cent, along with CDMA to 11.6 per cent. By contrast, the growing market share for GSM reached 47.8 per cent. Latin America and the Caribbean once again nearly doubled their GSM customer base in these 12 months, growing from 77 million customers in March 2005 to 150 million by March 2006.

    In this region, more than 19 million GSM users were added, versus 2 million for CDMA. GSM now has nearly 150 million customers in Latin America and the Caribbean and over a 58 per cent share of market, indicating that it is the no.1 technology for wireless mobile services.

    In the US and Canada, GSM operators reported exceptional growth, with 4.8 million new customers added in the 1Q 2006 for a customer base of 84 million.

    3G Americas president Chris Pearson said, “The majority of wireless customers are selecting GSM service for the value and variety of products and services that are supported by a global eco-system of manufacturers, encouraged by open technology standards versus proprietary standards.”

    “In addition, carriers throughout the Americas and worldwide continue to choose EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA as leading next generation technologies for wireless data services for many compelling reasons, such as spectral efficiency, global roaming, economies of scale, handset availability, as well as the potential for increased revenues from 3G services,” he added.

    According to a release, the growth of GSM is evident in the number of carriers upgrading or changing their technology platforms in the industry for a variety of strategic business reasons. These include veteran CDMA operators such as Telstra in Australia, and KT Freetel and SK Telecom in Korea who are deploying UMTS/HSPDA. Chinook Wireless (Montana) made a similar announcement to deploy GSM/EDGE to ‘enable their subscribers to benefit from higher performing network service with increased coverage, higher voice quality and advanced digital data services like multimedia messaging and Internet browsing.’ To date, at least 11 operators have announced CDMA to GSM migrations or dual technology deployments.

    Globally, the GSM family of technologies continues its rapid evolution to 3G high-speed wireless data. EDGE is commercially offered by 133 operators across 80 countries, including 31 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are 81 additional EDGE networks planned or in deployment. Currently, there are 105 UMTS networks in service across 50 countries, with 59 more planned or in deployment. HSDPA, which is an enhanced version of UMTS for high speed mobile broadband, was launched first in the world by Cingular Wireless in 16 markets in December 2005.

    Now, five months later, HSDPA is commercial on 22 networks and 73 additional operators have networks planned, in deployment, or in trial. Rogers Wireless of Canada will deploy HSDPA before year end 2006; T-Mobile USA has announced plans to do the same when spectrum resources are acquired. It is expected that nearly all UMTS operators will deploy HSDPA, essentially a software upgrade to UMTS, resulting in a significant increase in data capacity and offering operators a much-reduced network cost for data services.

    Additionally, through its level of scale, GSM serves emerging markets, providing a sub $30 GSM cost handset to the market and reducing typical capital expenditure for deploying a GSM network to a quarter of that required for CDMA, according to the GSM Association.

    This data is based on figures from Informa Telecoms & Media, which provides business intelligence and strategic services to the global telecoms and media markets.