MobiGyaan

Roti, Kapda aur Makaan AUR Mobile Phone

Mobile phones have grown up and have evolved into something that does a lot more than just making phone calls. People have started living around it. The last 10 years saw a revolution in how we communicate and how much we depend upon this little gadget. Listening to music, clicking pictures, watching movies, chit-chatting, social-networking, web browsing, and what not!

Budget Proposals 2011-12 impacting Telecom Industry

The telecom services play an integral role in the socio-economic development for a nation. It is a fundamental support system needed for rapid growth and modernization of various sectors of the economy. In India, it is one of fastest growing sectors and has greatly contributed in bridging the urban-rural gap. The sector is growing at an accelerating speed in the recent years. VAS industry is likely to grow significantly. Relevance of content, revenue sharing, compatibility across OS platforms, and pricing are some of the challenges faced by VAS companies in India. 3G is likely to give a significant push to the overall VAS business. The budget is likely to impact and influence the telecom client's business and plans for next financial year in the following way:

1. Full exemption of the countervailing duty (CVD) of 4% on accessories, parts and components imported for the manufacture of mobile phones has been extended for the full year. This will help in keeping the cost of handsets low especially when telecom operators are focusing on increasing penetration in rural areas.
2. The Budget plans to provide rural broadband connectivity to 2.5 m Panchayats in the country in the next three years and also plans to provide optical fiber connectivity to all 1,500 institutions of Higher Learning and Research through the National Knowledge Network (NKN) program. The expansion of rural broadband connectivity would help boost broadband penetration in the country.
3. Linking of wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) to the consumer price index for agricultural labour, would result in increased disposable income in the hands of rural population. This will in turn help enhancing ARPU in rural area.
4. The Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) has been increased from 18% to 18.5%. The increased MAT rate would marginally impact the bottom-line of telecom operators. However, reduction in the surcharge on corporate tax of domestic companies from 7.5% to 5% may marginally compensate.
5. Reduction of the foreign dividend tax to 15% would benefit telecom companies repatriating profits from its foreign operations e.g. Bharti Airtel.
6. Receipts from 'Other Comm. Services' such as license fess, spectrum usage charges etc are budgeted at Rs 29,648.33 crore in FY12, which is nearly double over FY10 level. Govt may have factored implementation of TRAI pricing proposals on 2G spectrum, which could be negative for incumbents like Idea, Rcom.

This articles is written by Badri Sanjeevi. He is the Chief Operating Officer at Mauj Mobile and Mobango – a part of People Group, which owns interactive websites such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com, Makaan.com and Astrolife.com. The Company is funded by Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital.

As COO, Badri leads the Mauj Mobile and Mobango teams on their strategic growth path, both in domestic and international markets, addressing telecom operators, media companies, agencies and brands as primary customers.

Image Credit

Implementation of MNP can effect profitability of telcos in the short term: ICRA

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) was introduced in Haryana in December 2010 and thereafter will be introduced across India in January 2011, a move that is expected to further intensify competition in the already crowded mobile services market. In ICRA’s opinion, with implementation of MNP, subscribers would get a wider choice and would be able to switch between service providers easily, thereby compelling service providers to offer competitive pricing plans and offer higher service quality to attract and retain subscribers.

In ICRA’s view, direct fallout of implementation of MNP would be an increase in customer churn. Change in mobile number has been a major deterrent in switching service operators in the past, especially for high usage customers; however, with the implementation of MNP, customers would be able to easily switch from one service provider to another without changing their mobile number. Moreover, ICRA expects, the low porting charges (maximum of Rs. 19 per porting to be paid by the subscriber) and low porting time (7 days for all circles except Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East where the maximum time period for completing the porting process would be 15 days) to drive the adoption of MNP in India. Increase in the churn is expected to increase the customer acquisition and retention costs of operators, which coupled with competitive tariff plans and falling average revenue per user (ARPUs) is expected to result in a decline in the operating margins of the telecom operators especially in the short term. Under such a scenario, telecom operators with stronger financial profile would be better placed to cope with the increasing competitive intensity.

In ICRA’s view, as all telecom operators in the market quickly react to match competitor pricing, tariff may not be a differentiating factor in the choice of operator. Hence, the quality of service and customer experience will play an important role in a customer’s choice for an operator rather than pricing. ICRA expects that customer retention, especially in the high paying post-paid segment, would become the focus area for operators, as these contribute significantly to revenues, even if they form a small portion of an operators overall subscriber base. Operators would have to increasingly focus on offering differentiated services and improving quality of service (in terms of better customer care and improved network and coverage) in order to attract and retain customers. Offering differentiated services like third generation (3G) services would also be important for retention of high usage high ARPU customers.

The implementation of MNP would be beneficial for mobile subscribers, as it would provide them with a wider choice (in terms of pricing plans, services, etc.), flexibility to change service operators without losing their mobile number and most likely an improvement in the quality of services offered by operators. However, for mobile service operators, the churn that invariably follows MNP implementation represents both a threat and an opportunity. Post the implementation of MNP, some carriers are likely to witness the erosion of their customer base and consequently a decline in profitability, however, for some other operators, MNP can provide an attractive opportunity to gain market share and target high ARPU customers.

Thus, MNP would result in higher competitive intensity that would be reflected in an increase in churn, pressure on ARPUs and margins in the short term and telecom operators would have to increase their focus on improving service quality and offering differentiated services in order to attract and retain subscribers in the long term. ICRA believes that, operators with superior quality of service would be the clear winners, while those with less than satisfactory service quality would stand to lose the maximum by way of subscriber churn.

Also Read :
All you want to Know about Mobile Number Portability

Tata DOCOMO Japan Trip : NTT DOCOMO Future Station was amazing

Last month I visited a different planet, surprised??? Even I was, Japan, the land of rising Sun is out of the world, its heaven for tech lovers.

My journey began from Vadodara on 8th December.



I reached New Delhi Airport at 3 PM and the flight to Tokyo was at 9 PM. I had ample time so took some snaps at IGI Airport.










In-flight Pics








Day 1
We reached Narita Airport at 08:00 hours (Japanese Time) after about 7 hours 30 minutes journey.














Our Car



On the Way Pics [Narita Airport - Hotel Hilton, Tokyo]













We had to reach NTT DOCOMO HQ by 14:45 after having our lunch, to my surprise our lunch arrangements were made in an Indian restaurant 'Bombay Club'







After having lunch we had some free time which we spent in taking photographs :)




We reached NTT DOCOMO HQ on time and our meeting was scheduled at 15:00 hours, we were welcomed by Yuuji Yamamoto, Deputy Managing Director of Global Business Department, NTT DOCOMO, after this we were explained how Osaifu Keitai (Mobile Wallet) works, by Frontier Services Department. After this we were taken to a field trip to experience how Osaifu Keitai works.

Presentation room on 41st floor







[Samsung Galaxy S in my hand. No Nokias in Japan, the finnish company left the Japanese mobile market about 2 years back]

For live demo of Osaifu Keitai, we went to a Deparmental store, Railway station and McDonalds. You just need to tap your phone on the sensor to make the payments or get your mobile recharged, Amazing!!!





The Osaifu Keitai Presentation and field trip increased my thirst to know more about  Japanese Mobile Technology, to quench my thirst I had to wait for one whole night, but the wait was worth it.


Day 2
After breakfast at Hilton, we left for NTT DOCOMO HQ to see 'Presentation on latest services' by Customer Relations Department. After this we went to NTT DOCOMO's Future Station, yeah baby FUTURE STATION, we were shown to amazing videos alongwith other presentations and demos.

Here is a brief tour of NTT DOCOMO's Future Station







Projector Phone















Sound Leaf Phone [Just touch the device on your bone to hear the sound]



Solar charger for mobiles



Mobile made from wood











After the Mind Blowing Future Station tour, we visited to NTT DOCOMO's Smart Phone Lounge for seeing various handsets and tablets offered by NTT DOCOMO.









Lynx 3D Mobile





Samsung Galaxy Tab



After the NTT DOCOMO Smartphone Lounge tour, we visited a Japanese temple and Electronics Heaven, Akihabara also known as Akiba.









For dinner on day 2 we visited Kem Kem Maharaja, one of the finest Indian restaurants in Tokyo.


Japanese Adventure ended here. Thank you Tata Teleservices for the Japan trip and NTT DOCOMO for great hospitality and the wonderful, out of the world, experience. These guys made the trip more fun - Harshal from Tata Teleservices, Murat, Keisuke and other guys from NTT DOCOMO, Varun from Fonearena, Kris Swaminathan, Ashwin Chauhan, Yoganandh, Tarun from Telecomtalk and Vivek Gupta, Thank you guys.

Going the 3G Way? You might need to think again

While the 3G Launch of Major operators in India is just a couple of weeks away, we've got some bad news on 3G here. Once it's here, more than one crore people are speculated to use 3G and so are their brains to get damaged. Though the rest of the world has been exposed to these stronger radiations for years now, for India, it is now a new threat for us.

Recent reports reveal that the population using 3G Services is likely to be affected by cancer and neuro-phsychiatric problems in the next two years due to exposure to harmful radiations, which are 20-15 percent stronger, with 3G coming in.

Children below the age of 16 are the most vulnerable to this and are prone to brain cancer five times more than the adults, recent studies by the Electircal Engineering Department at Indian Institute of Technology reveal. And, children will be the most fascinated by video calling as soon as it's here, which leaves the worst choice for our Indian kids.

They run the risk of developing neuro-psychiatric problems, including headache, memory loss, diz ziness, tremors, muscle spas ms, numbness, altered reflexes, muscle and joint pain, depression, and sleep disturbance. More severe reactions include seizures, paralysis, psychosis and stroke, says the study.

The results of the study have been presented to the Telecom Department and no word from them have been received yet.

Source

Mobile eCommerce can turn fortunes for telecom operators : Deloitte

TeleMarketing - What's Your Take ?

Trust the Tata folks when they say they commit; and surely they deliver at all the times, without fail. This time, they have released a Press Statement for Tata Teleservices on Unsolicited Voice Calls, in which Mr. AG Rao, TTL’s Chief Technology Officer and Enterprise Business Head said, "It is rather unfortunate that the debate is not aligned to understanding difference between disturbance and nuisance of a telemarketers’ voice calls, vis-à-vis spam e-mail or spam SMS".

The plethora of calls a Mobile User receives on a daily basis by telemarketing companies, most of the times, act as an intrusiveness in their personal lives. Sure, they not only are the sole source of creation of spam, but they also create disturbance which is uncalled for, as against information sharing. For most of us, text & email marketing are acceptable, as we do not reatc to it instantly, but telemarketing through voice calls from credit-cards/insurance companies create nuisance, leading to violation of personal space for subscribers. It's high time, that telecom services understand that it definitely is not on the grounds of 'information sharing' that, this Spam Tele-Marketing can be called for. 

There is altogether a different point of view too. Tele-Marketers feel that there's a "National Do Not Disturb" (NDND) Registry, by help of which, these numbers can be blocked by just sending a sms. They feel that Communication & Selling through Media is not justifiable to be put a stop, on basis of the whose who of our society. For the innumerable stock investors / farmers / bankers, surely receive information with the help of which a lot of information reaches them.

As of now, We all agree that there is a big dis-agreement on the Future of Unsolicited Voice Calls.

However, an intelligent take on the issue would be, to mandatorily implement a proper methodology for registration in the DND Register. Further, definitive steps to be taken so that Spam Calls/ SMS be rather made differentiable and the nuisance can be addressed at every level with everyone. Let's hope so, Tata takes an initiative & educates the world about how to go for it.

DoT releases 3G Spectrum to Bidders

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has allotted 3G Spectrum for commercial use as per timelines mentioned under Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) and in the Letter of Intent issued, once the bid amounts were submitted. The deserving telecom services who have won the bids for 3G are AirTel, Aircel, Vodafone, S Tel, Reliance, Idea Cellular and Tata Cellular Services; and the winners for BWA spectrum were Aircel, Augere, Tikona, Qualcomm, Infotel and Bharti. The bids were submitted in an electronic process conducted by DoT. 

It has been mutually beneficial, for both the bidders & DoT as the timeline was strictly adhered to, the expected revenue generated & assigning of spectrums concluded on the due date. Quite an accomplishment of sorts for all concerned !! More so, when the bid and the spectrum allotment process has been conducted sincerely by having utmost transparency in satisfying all the stakeholders across India. 

1. High Value added service offering with probably very high reliability.
2. Ability to use features such as Video-Streaming & Higher Internet access speed.
3. Enabling data downloads in a higher & quicker manner.

Vodafone WAP Connections in 3G Era?

Indian mobile subscribers are welcoming 3G data connections in the country but unfortunately one of India’s leading mobile operator, Vodafone, is still stuck in the WAP era. While most other mobile operators are now offering cheap full-fledged data plans, Vodafone is only offering its crippled ‘Vodafone Live’ in comparable price range & offers its more advanced ‘Vodafone Mobile Connect’ at very expensive prices.

Price War for Data Plans

Recently the price war between mobile operators in India extended from voice to data plans with players such as Bharti Airtel & Tata DoCoMo launching new GPRS plans offering sufficient data in less than Rs.100 per month. For example, Airtel now offers 2GB plans for Rs.98/month while Tata DoCoMo offers 2GB plan for as low as Rs.48/month & 6GB plan for Rs.98/month. Other operators such as Aircel, Reliance & Idea also offer similar data plans to its subscribers.