Just Tech 2.0.

Fly Mobile was recently launched in India. Here is an excellent review of Fly Mobiles with pictures.

Convergence.In has an excellent report on the emergence of Asian telecom giants.
Should the western telcos wake up ? Vodafone already has by buying out Warburg Pincus in Bharti ;-)

Bharti-Airtel today kick started a tariff war in the local call segment for mobiles. After Hutch reduced their tariffs to 30 paise/minute, Airtel reduced to 15 paise/minute. In my experience, Airtel is probably the best GSM network in India and it can easily command a premium but this time looks like Mittal has a big and a different game plan. One of his best moves was to outsource telecom network management to Ericsson.

Sources said Airtel’s new offer will be available to post-paid users under its Celebration 299 plan and Airtel Talktime 299 plan. For the pre-paid category, new users recharging with Rs 350 voucher can make calls for 15 paise per minute without paying any extra charge for 60 days. Similarly, those opting for Innowest, 222 and 456 plans can make calls at the new rate for three months. Existing pre-paid customers will have to pay Rs 49 per month to convert to the new scheme.

This is the lowest rate offered by any mobile operator since the launch of cellular services in India.

TRAI has directed all the mobile service operators to cut premium SMS rates. What is a premium SMS anyway ? SMS sent to TV contests, or CNBC Guess the Sensex contest or ICICI Bank personal Loan or Win a civic with your lowest unique bid on Airtel network etc are all categorized as premium SMSs. They typically cost between Rs5 through Rs7 per SMS. While your regular SMS costs just Rs0.01.

Why premium SMS sucks ? Because after being chared Rs5.0/SMS the companies don’t even have the goddamn courtesy to notify that you have not won the prize and the cost for them to send this ordinary SMS is just Rs0.01. TRAI has done a good job in notifying mobile operators that the amount they charge to consumers doesn’t justify the servcie they offer. TRAI also argues their is no IUC(Interconnection Usage Charges) on SMS and hence mobile operators don’t have any right to charge such a steep premium.

Late 2003 marked the beginning of a new era in the Indian home entertainment market with the introduction of Dish TV(DTH) by Zee group. It took almost 3 years for the Tata Sky venture to kick off.

Tata Sky Dish TV is offering 55 channels in over 300 Indian cities. It is not yet available globally.

Features: Some of the cool features are, Parental control, search and scan bar(while you are watching one channel, you can search or scan what's going on, on the other), TV Guide. Though Tata's have aggressively priced at just Rs200/month for a bouquet of 55 channels, it still lacks some features provided by Zee's Dish TV. For example, Tata Sky does not have exclusive audio channels nor movies on demand. (They say it will be available soon). Zee has priced it around Rs300/Month(depending on package) and I am willing to pay more for the content I am getting. For Dalal Street followers, Tata Sky is currently not offering CNBC India :(

Installation: You need to buy their receiver which costs Rs3000 + Rs1000 installation charges. People looking for multi-room installations have the advantage of having just one Dish installed but they still have to BUY the receiver @ Rs3000 but the subscription cost for additional rooms(upto 4) is just Rs100/month.

For more information, contact Tata Sky
From MTNL/BSNL lines: 1-901-425-6633
From other lines: Western India: 020 - 6600 6633
Northern India: 0172 - 6600 6633
Southern & Eastern India: 040 - 6600 6633

Airtel Broadband has slashed the rates to just Rs250/Month on its 256KBPs DSL in Bangalore and Karnataka. You are limited to 400MB of download limit. Additional download beyond the limit will cost Rs1.40/MB. This package is well suited for light users and hopefully in the next quarter the same amount can buy more bandwidth and speed :-)

In the age of VoIP and Convergence, it doesn't make any sense when we talk about national long distance(STD) or International long distance(ISD). Why ? Consider my friend Raj who owns a small company and has clients located in the US. He has to frequently call his clients for which he relied on his cell phone ISD pack for important meetings and GTalk for the not so important ones.

Earlier this year Raj decided to BUY a Vonage phone with a CA number and bills are taken care by one of his regular clients. He gets to use an American phone sitting within the comforrts of his office in Bangalore or Mumbai wherever he goes. All he needs is his phone, his VoIP adapter and a broadband connection of atleast 256KBPs speed. Having a US number & a Bangalore number for business is more of presitge than anything else. If this trend continues then area codes 510 and 408 of CA will be very soon exhausted and half of the phones will be located outside the US.

Also you have range of VoIP handsets to suit your needs. Some can be plugegd into your computers USB, some work like your cordless and some like your cell phone, provided you have a wifi or fonero network hot spot to access.

I really hope Indian broadband service providers aggressively push broadband packs to their customers with higher bandwidths and let soem new innovation in telecom and web-services rise from the east.

Their are rumors that Reliance will come with 1MBPs, 4MBps broadband roll out. However this piece of interesting post tells that Reliance Broadband is looking for a wi-max based rollout.

It does make sense to go for a wi-max based rollout as it is wireless technology capable of delivering high speeds and can also help Reliance India Mobile for data related services(Skype-VoIP, Visual Radio, Bollywood Songs, etc)

Resource sharing is in place in few other countries, but a system like this one is probably the first time in the world. 6 telecom giants are sharing the same tower - Airtel, Hutch, Idea, MTNL, Tata Tele Sevices and Reliance. The tower has 12 GSM, 6 CDMA and 6 Microwave antennas all working absolutely fine. This special tower is designed and certified by IIT-Delhi.

Their are few more towers that I know off, Two on Delhi High Court shared by Airtel, Hutch and Idea and the second one by Reliance, Tata Tele and MTNL. One more in Rajokri shared by 4 operators Airtel, Hutch, Idea and Tata Tele Services Ltd.

The concept of branding and retailing has caught every faction of the Indian consumer market. After Bangalore based Mobile NXT, Pantaloon quietly ventured setting up ConvergeM mobile retail chain under the brand name M Bazaar, M Port and Gen M. It is now Essar groups turn to enter cell retailing. Essar also holds 35% stake in Hutch.

Esaar Telecom has done due dilligence in association with KSA technopark and is willing to invest upto Rs3000 crores in 3 years. The company is planning to setup 1,000-2,000 sq ft stores, which will be one-stop shops for customers’ mobile needs. They will offer telecom handsets, connections, recharge vouchers, mobile accessories, after sales services, facilities for bill payment, gaming, mobile entertainment options, repairs and refurbishment.

All these stores means an end to your local mobile retailer. After adding currency to my mobile, if I want the latest Halo-2 game do I need to look for the game retailer ? Doesn’t make sense. Companies such as Essar with deep pockets should have plans to scale up their operation to the size of BestBuy or CircuitCity which is so essential for the Indian consumer.

Seattle based company Melodeo has developed the technology to offer content such as Audio, Video, Podcast and other media from social networking sites on to your cell phone.

The popularity of portable digital music players such Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod helped spur the creation of podcasts by media companies and individuals. These clips are often free on the Internet, but Melodeo hopes users will pay for the convenience of having the clips on their cellphones.

Tata Indicom has launched a terrific offer for its potential customers. For Rs14,500 you get a brand new MotoRazr v3C with Bluetooth headset. The plan is also topped with Zero monthly rental plan for 999 days(3 Years), No CLIP charges as well, 10,000 free local minutes to any Tata Indicom phone and 1,000 SMSs to anywhere in India.

Tata Indicom is also offering a MotoRazr V3C Twin Pack deal at Rs25,000 only. You get two MotoRazr V3c handsets with 2 Bluetooth headsets. Free unlimited lifetime local calls and SMSs between these two MotoRazrs.

The MOTORAZR V3c has a 1.3 mega pixel camera, enables Internet downloads and supports MP3 ring tones with 72 polyphonic speaker sound.

Get in touch with your Tata Indicom True Value Hub with Proof of identity as Tata's are extremely cautious before they connect you :-)

After helping Mumbaiites find a ride share via sms and reduce the pollution and traffic to keep Mumbai green, its now time to have soem fun with solar powered internet.

Enter Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide 'last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun. The founders are veterans of Sun Microsystems and plan to start their pilot runs in India very soon.

MESN(Mumbai Environmental and Social Network) came up with the idea to introduce hooking carpool drivers and ride seekers minutes before they decide to head out :) Check out what Broadband & Convergence India is writing about carpool on demand available in Mumbai.

Sunil Mittal is known throught the world because of his unique business model. He was applauded by IBM CEO in the business leadership forum in China. This is the second such deal Bharti has signed with IBM, earlier one valued at $750 Million for 10 years. The current deal manily involves network services and management and is valued at $100 million.

This will let Bharti Telecom concentrate on Marketing and provide excellent customer service so essential in the Indian market.

It is very well known fact that Hutchinson Essar is now considered as a shady telecom operator, after a series of bad deals in the last few months. Essar group is particularly upset with Hutchinson management after Orascom bought stake in Hutchinson Whampooa which gave it a 10% indirect stake in India.

BPL Mobile is one of the leading service providers in Mumbai but lately has been losing customers rapidly. BPL was supposed to be merged into Hutch Essar, but due to series of Intra-Circle restrictions like spectrum and others by DOT, the merger faced lot of hurdles. Essar decided to exercise its right(Hutch as well as essar had the option) to KILL the BPL inclusion into Hutch Essar after DOT failed to complete the approval proces by midnight of July31st. Growing unrest between Hutch and Essar executives has now taken the battle to the court of law. Meanwhile Hutch is offering key BPL Mumbai executives to join Hutch.

Everybody knows that in the era of mega corporations BPL Mobile can't just operate in Mumbai. Does Essar have any plans to run BPL Mumbai or SELL it ? Keep your fingures crossed until the court and DOT verdict.

10,000 Indians have given their final verdict in Awaaz consumer awards 2006. Awaaz consumer award is basically rating of consumer goods and services by interested Indians across the length and breadth of India. Airtel was voted the best mobile service provider while BSNL bagged the best land line service provider. Everbody knows which is the favorite mobile handset for an Indian - Yep, its NOKIA!

MTNL has started negotiating with Star, Zee and Sony for its soon to be launched IPTV service in Delhi and Mumbai. Along the lines of Triband Broadband, you will now get a setup box that basically is your interface to the TV world through broadband. MTNL triband broadband is terrible. No offence.

Triple Play basically is Voice(Phone), Data(Internet) and Video(TV). I am not sure what other value added features MTNL is planning to provide. Check out the Hype & Hurdles surrounding IPTV in India.

Some of the value added features that I will look for before subscribing to Triple Play are
a. Record and Playback
b. Total recording/storing capacity offered. (Gigs or Hours)
c. Video on Demand
d. Gaming
e. JukeBox
f. VCD/DVD compatability

If someone from MTNL is reading this post, kindly answer the questions as it will help our readers understand and get excited about these services which they have never seen before.

Airtel has introduced a limited time offer for Blackberry users in Karnataka. Get BB service for Rs19/day. They are also offering unlimited Blackberry and Internet usage for Rs6999/year. Sounds like a deal ? OK. send an e-mail Blackberrykk@bharti.com

VoIP telephony major, AnyUser Telecom slashed ISD call rates again to the US and Canada. The calls will now cost Rs0.99/Minute. Earlier last month they had slashed the rates.

VoIP calls that you essentially route through your internet broadband connection are headed towards a Free regime ;-) Just to update you quicky, late last month Reliance had cut the prices but they are no where close to Bharti-Airtel tariffs, which offers VCC - Virtual Calling Card as low as Rs3.50/Minute to US/Canada/Malaysia/Hong Kong/Singapore Mobile & Land Phone on a calling card of Rs500 denomination.