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Tag: telecom

  • Pak telecom giant to use Verimatrix Video for its digital network

    Pak telecom giant to use Verimatrix Video for its digital network

    NEW DELHI: Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) has been deployed by the Pakistani telecommunications provider WorldCall Telecom for DVB to secure its digital cable (DVB-C) network and to support the transition to broadcast-hybrid service delivery.

     

    VCAS for DVB replaces WorldCall’s current security system, according to a Verimatrix release quoted by European site telecompaper.com.

     

    VCAS for DVB is designed to secure WorldCall’s linear content library and associated revenue for broadcast services over its DVB-C network, including WorldCall Cable TV services, which offers a diverse mix of drama, thriller, action, romance, news and documentaries over 300 channels.

     

    The service is managed via redundant head-ends in Karachi and Lahore and six regional headends in other cities of Pakistan. It is delivered using SandMartin BVA3006 HD set top boxes.

     

    The Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel) will also be using the Verimatrix solution for supporting the transition to broadcast-hybrid service delivery.

     

    The cardless VCAS system supports future network expansion, including the addition of more advanced and flexible services, such as over-the-top (OTT) video delivery. 

  • Former telecom secretary Chandrashekhar becomes Nasscom president

    Former telecom secretary Chandrashekhar becomes Nasscom president

    NEW DELHI: Former telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar took over as Nasscom, a body representing the $108 billion Indian IT-BPM industry, president on 6 January.

     

    He succeeds Som Mittal, who served as the president from 2007-13.

     

    “I feel privileged and look forward to leading Nasscom in its next journey of achieving the vision and aspiration of $300 billion revenues by 2020. The opportunities are very vast at this particular juncture and exciting times lie ahead for the industry,” Chandrashekhar, under whom a government IT department was set up for the first time, said.

     

    He said the future looks positive for the Indian IT-BPM industry as the sector is evolving dramatically in terms of scale, complexity and innovation.

     

    “Going forward, enabling radical transformation of key sectors in India through the use of ICT to increase access, enhance efficiency and enable innovation in the sector are going to be some of our priority focus areas,” he added. “The rapidly accelerating trend of innovation and entrepreneurship in the ICT sector impacts several domains and provides clear indicators that the journey has begun.”

     

    He said the Indian IT-BPM industry, which is primarily export-driven, is at an inflexion point as business models shift from traditional labour-based onsite-offshore model to cloud-based and off premise solutions.

     

    Chandrashekhar was the chairman of Telecom commission and secretary of the Department of Telecom till March, last year. He held a variety of key assignments with many of them relating to the ICT sector, both at the Centre as well as state level.

  • Telecom spectrum auction further delayed

    Telecom spectrum auction further delayed

    NEW DELHI: The spectrum auction which has been put off from time to time will begin on 3 February 2014. The Department of Telecom (DoT) had been asked to give clarifications to a number of questions from mobile phone companies like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India on spectrum usage charges, option of withdrawing from auction and availability of contiguous spectrum but there is still no clarity on these issues.

    According to a notice issued today, the DoT will now give clarifications on the concerns raised by service providers on 2 January. The department has also extended the last date for operators to submit their applications to bid in the auction to 15 January.

    While DoT will announce the pre-qualification of bidders by 25 January, bidders will also be given an option to withdraw their applications, according to the changes in the auction schedule. Service providers had objected to DoT’s move to remove the option of withdrawing their bids, as was allowed in the last auction.

    Operators will now be allowed to withdraw their bids by 27 January and the final list of bidders will be announced on 29 January. A mock auction will be conducted over 30 and 31 January.

    Leading operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India had warned DoT in a pre-bid conference held last week that they could stay away from the upcoming bandwidth auctions if the government continued with the present cascading spectrum usage charge (SUC) regime, instead of moving to a flat fee structure of 3 per cent.

    The government levies SUC between 3-8 per cent of revenue earned by telecom companies from telecom services, depending on the quantum of airwaves held.

    The telecom department is set to auction 403 Mhz in 1800 Mhz and 46 Mhz in the 900 Mhz bands in the next round of auctions, beginning 23 January. The government aims to raise Rs 40,874.5 crore from spectrum revenue this fiscal year ending 31 March 2014, including one-time spectrum fee, and has its hopes pinned on this round to raise funds to limit its budget deficit.

    Operators stayed away from the last two rounds held in November 2012 and March 2013 citing very high reserve prices and low spectrum availability. The government has set the reserve price in 1800 Mhz at Rs 1,765 per unit for pan-India airwaves, 25 per cent lower than the last auctions.

    DoT also lowered the reserve price for Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles in 900 Mhz band by 53 per cent from last auctions to Rs 360 crore, Rs 328 crore and Rs 125 crore respectively.

  • TRAI extends CAF deadline to 15 December

    TRAI extends CAF deadline to 15 December

    MUMBAI: The multi system operators (MSOs) have time till 15 December to submit Consumer Application Forms (CAFs). The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) principal advisor N Parameswaran has shown forbearance and given the MSOs another 15 days to submit 100 per cent CAFs. The earlier deadline to submit CAFs was today, 20 November.

     

    The extension comes after Parameswaran’s meeting with the national MSOs held today in New Delhi. Though the MSOs had their concerns to address, in the meeting that lasted for one and a half hours, TRAI concentrated on two key issues — one, meeting the deadline for submitting CAFs for phase II by 15 December, and another, implementing gross billing from December for phase I.

     

    The meeting was attended by Hathway Cable and Datacom, Siti Cable, InCable, DEN Network, Digicable and GTPL.

     

    “We spoke at length on the issues that each MSO faces in order to comply with the deadline,” says a MSO on request of anonymity. “With LCOs not cooperating with us for submitting duly filled CAFs, and also the ongoing court cases that LCOs have filed to ensure the consumer stays under them, achieving the deadline is difficult,” he says.

     

    “The regulator will show leniency in states like Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat that face problems, but in others it will not act as a Santa Claus if the deadline is not met,” says IndusInd Media and Communications Limited MD Ravi Mansukhani.

    According to Mansukhani, the bills are being generated by the MSOs, but the LCOs are not delivering them to the subscribers. “The TRAI has asked us to ensure that the bills should reach the subscribers by December. The regulator has asked us to either convince the LCO to deliver the bills to subscribers or to send them directly to each subscriber,” says Mansukhani.

     

    About 30 to 90 per cent CAFs have been collected so far. “The regulator has taken an average of this figure, which is around 50 per cent, and has said it is not enough. We have been asked to comply with this final deadline,” he mentions.

     

    The MSOs spoke at length on improving their relations with LCOs. “We want each party to realise and reap the benefits of digitisation,” states a MSO.

     

    The MSOs also raised logistic issues they were facing for collecting CAFs. “Unlike phase I which involved the big five players, phase II has several small players involved as well. And this is creating hindrance,” opines Mansukhani.

     

    The MSOs only have a few days to convince the LCOs to get ahead with both CAFs and billing. “It is a tough task, but we will have to give our best,” concludes Mansukhani.

     

    Seems like a difficult Christmas for the MSOs if they fail to meet deadlines.

  • TRAI gives DTH players more time

    TRAI gives DTH players more time

    MUMBAI: The DTH players now have time until 5 December to furnish their views on the supplementary consultation paper on ‘Issues related to new DTH licences.’ The earlier deadline set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for submitting views and comments was 25 November.

     

    It was on 14 November that the consultation paper was released by the TRAI.  The date  extension  has been given in keeping with the request of the stakeholders.  The regulator though has made it clear that no further extensions will be entertained.

     

    It is to be noted that the supplementary consultation paper was released as a follow up to the consultation paper it had issued on 1 October on issue/extension of DTH licences at the behest of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B).

     

    The points raised in the supplementary consultation paper were:   Cross-holdings and control between a DTH licencee, broadcasting entities and TV channel distribution entities; Interoperability of DTH STBs; Licence fee and Migration fee.

     

    Stakeholders can send the comments in electronic form to TRAI advisor Wasi Ahmad.

  • M&A Guidelines to be finalised by EGoM later this month

    M&A Guidelines to be finalised by EGoM later this month

    NEW DELHI: The much-awaited Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Guidelines has got further delayed and now the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Telecom is expected to discuss it on 22 November.

     

    The GoM will also study the roadmap for the third round of spectrum auction. “Besides auction related matters, the department of telecom will place before them the M&A guidelines as recommended by the Telecom Commission,” a Telecom Ministry official said.

     

    Inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission has suggested about 25 per cent higher base price compared to the amount recommended by sectoral regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for radio waves used for mobile phone services for the proposed auction.

     

    The Telecom Commission had only forwarded its view on two sets of airwaves used by GSM players like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

     

    The official said DoT has written today to TRAI to suggest a base price for CDMA spectrum used by players like Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications in 15 days.

    TRAI had recommended against auction of CDMA spectrum at present and suggested studying whether a part of these airwaves can be used for extended GSM services.

     

    The official said DoT is working on other details for auction of all three sets of spectrum in third round which is expected to start in January.

     

    Telecom Commission has recommended to allow companies to acquire another operator in a manner that market share of the resultant entity does not exceed 50 per cent.

     

    EGoM will have to decide on spectrum related issues that entity formed as result of consolidation of companies should be allowed to keep.

     

  • Best Innovations in Telecom, Internet, Media and Edutainment (TIME) recognized in 4th Aegis Graham Bell Awards 2013 in New Delhi

    Best Innovations in Telecom, Internet, Media and Edutainment (TIME) recognized in 4th Aegis Graham Bell Awards 2013 in New Delhi

    NEW DELHI : Aegis Graham Bell Awards 2013 India’s largest and the only award in field of TIME (Telecom, Internet, Media and Edutainment) was held on 25th October at NDMC Convention center in New Delhi. The awards honored the best innovations in the field of TIME. This award was initiated by Aegis School of Business and Telecom & Convergence India, supported by COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), mUniversity as Powered partner, Ontario Canada as International Partner and PwC is the Knowledge Partner for validating the awards.

    On this august occasion, Mr. Rajan Mathews, Deputy General, Cellular Operator Association of India (COAI) delivered the welcome speech at the award. Mr. Sivarama Krishnan, (Exec. Dir. PwC India) explained about the rigorous and transparent methodology and selection criteria used by PWC. He spoke about the decision matrix being used to validate awards on various parameters and evaluation by prominent jury members based on the presentation given by the participating companies.

    At Aegis Graham Bell Awards mUniversity launched India’s first MOOC(Massive Open Online Course). mUniversity’s online-interactive-education marketplace was made available for enterprises, academicia, government and for learners, www.muniversity.mobi.

    TIME industries, media, academician and government’s eminent personalities graced the occasion with their presence.

    Aegis Graham Bell Awards intends to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the fields of Telecom, Internet, Media & Edutainment, and provides recognition for path-breaking contributions by the awardees. This initiative is also intended to honor the best brains that can be groomed as leaders and scholars. This year we received over 140 nominations from over 80 companies in two jury rounds, and the nominations were evaluated by jury consisting of eminent personalities and PwC – the Knowledge Partner to validate the awards.

    This initiative was also supported by Flytxt, ZohoCorp, ISIDentsu, Tikona Digital Services, Aegis TV, Freshersworld.com, Wimax Forum, mUniveristy, Telecom Era, Telecom Lead, General Daily, Digital Terminal, Telecom Talk, Telecom Watch, Offeradda, Techadda, Vijaychowk.com, My Mobile, Walking Media, Telecom Uncovered, Communication Today, TelecomBlogs, Telecom India Daily, CIOL, PCQuest, & Light Reading India.

  • EU welcomes India’s decision to open telecom to FDI, concern about in-house testing

    EU welcomes India’s decision to open telecom to FDI, concern about in-house testing

    NEW DELHI: The European Union has noted with satisfaction India’s recent decision not to use security as justification for domestic manufacturing preference policies in telecom and electronic goods; and not to extend restrictive measures to private procurement (e.g. of telecom operators as licensees for radio spectrum).

     

    The EU has also supported India’s decision to open up the telecom sector to foreign direct investment (foreign ownership had been limited to 74 per cent).

     

    During a meeting of the EU-India Joint ICT Working Group met in Brussels, EU expressed concerns about mandatory ‘in country’ testing and certification of telecom network elements by Indian labs and demanded that mutual recognition for example under the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA) should be accepted. India has also mandated compulsory registration of 15 groups of consumer electronics products in order to comply with Indian product safety standards.

     

    It was decided at the meeting that two sub-groups will be established: one on Market Access and ICT Manufacturing (lead: EU) and another on internet security (lead: India) which should focus on matters of network and information security and provide input to EU-India Cyber Security Consultations.

     

    Both sides highlighted the crucial role ICT research and innovation can play in tackling the economic and societal challenges of our time, and agreed to deepen cooperation in this area. Interest was expressed particularly in the areas of e-Infrastructures, High Performance Computing, Cloud Computing, Wireless Broadband Communications, Internet of Things, and Electronics. Cooperation was proposed, inter alia on standardisation and interoperability matters, for which follow-up is envisaged.

     

    The Indian delegation was referred to the High Level Dialogue on Migration and Mobility as the “one-stop shop” where concerns regarding the ease of mobility of Indian IT professionals could be addressed.

     

    India’s request for “data adequacy status” under the EU data protection legislation (which is of high importance for Indian services and business process outsourcing businesses), will need to be addressed to an expert group of national data protection authorities, which is ready to meet with Indian representatives in order to advance the dialogue.

     

    The EU delegation was led by Gerard de Graaf, Director, DG Connect, and the Indian side by Raj Kumar Goyal, Joint Secretary for International Cooperation in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, within the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

     

    DigitalEurope had hosted the EU-India ICT Industry Dialogue, where leading industry experts from Europe and India met with delegations of the Government of India (Department of Electronics and Information Technology) and of the EU (European Commission – DG Connect and European External Action Service). There was a unanimous call by both Indian and European participants for global approaches and global solutions.

  • Vuclip to power video of Airtel VAS entertainment store

    Vuclip to power video of Airtel VAS entertainment store

    NEW DELHI: Vuclip is powering the video section of the Re 1 Entertainment Store at telecom major Bharti Airtel.

    The mobile entertainment store of Airtel offers services including music, games, photos and videos.

    According to the mobile VAS deal, Vuclip is the mobile video media partner responsible for the technology, product, analytics, and content aggregation engine for the video section of the Airtel Entertainment Store.

    Launched on 16 August, the Airtel entertainment store has garnered more than 10 million consumers accessing the site.

    Airtel India CEO – Data N Rajaram said the Re 1 video initiative is the beginning of Airtel’s effort to bring video to the masses. In the entertainment store’s initial weeks, it has received an overwhelming response in terms of new user acquisition as well as engagement.  

    Airtel entertainment store offers more than 250,000 videos that runs on Vuclip’s dynamic adaptive transcoding technology that streams video on a real-time basis without buffering on any device and on any network.

    Mobile VAS is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2017 from $161 billion in 2012. Recently, Aircel and Techzone have tied up for offering mobile video download called as Video store@ Re 1 to Aircel subscribers. Aircel’s Video store@ Re1 will offer a library of 20,000 + videos to its subscribers at Re 1/video. Apart from viewing and downloading the users will also be able to share the videos with their friends via Facebook and Twitter.

  • Broadband base up in July, with monthly growth at rate of 0.33%

    Broadband base up in July, with monthly growth at rate of 0.33%

    NEW DELHI: The total Broadband subscriber base in the country has increased from 15.19 million at the end of June 2013 to 15.24 million at the end of July 2013. This is a monthly growth of 0.33 per cent. The yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 3.79 per cent during the last one year (July 2012 to July 2013).

    The top five internet service providers in terms of market share (based on subscriber base) are: BSNL (9.97 million), Bharti Airtel (1.43 million), MTNL (1.10 million), Hathway (0.37 million) and You Broadband (0.32 million).

    According to the latest telecom subscription data as on 31 July 2013 released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, there are 161 internet service providers (ISPs) which are providing broadband services in the country. Out of these, 121 ISPs (having 98.48 per cent market share) have provided broadband subscription data for the month of July 2013, for the rest of the ISPs data from previous month has been retained.

    Meanwhile, Indian rural telecom has faced downturn – despite service providers’ special packages – as mobile user base declined by two million in July 2013. TRAI said net mobile additions declined 0.57 per cent or by 2 million to 349.09 million from 351.10 million in June.

    In July – according to TRAI data – Indian urban mobile user base increased by 3.52 million or 0.67 per cent to 525.78 million from 522.27 million in June.

    The share of urban wireless subscribers has increased from 59.80 per cent to 60.10 per cent whereas share of rural wireless subscribers has decreased from 40.20 per cent to 39.90 per cent.

    TRAI statistics says total wireless subscriber base increased from 873.36 million in June to 874.88 million in July 2013, registering a monthly growth of 0.17 per cent. The overall wireless Teledensity in India has reached 71.13 per cent in July from 71.08 per cent of previous month. Wireless subscription in urban areas increased to 525.78 million in July.

    The urban wireless teledensity has increased from 139.16 to 139.87 whereas rural teledensity has decreased from 41.14 per cent to 40.88 per cent.

    Wireline subscriber base declined from 29.73 million in June 2013 to 29.58 million in July. The net reduction in wireline subscriber base was 0.15 million at the rate of 0.50 per cent.

    The share of urban subscribers has decreased from 78.11 per cent to 78.0 per cent whereas share of rural subscribers has increased from 21.89 per cent to 22.0 per cent. The overall wireline Teledensity has decreased from 2.42 per cent in June 2013 to 2.40 per cent in July 2013, with urban and rural Teledensity being 6.14 per cent and 0.76 per cent respectively.

    BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators hold 78.65 per cent of the Wireline market share.