BSNL’s $6-b GSM contract:-Ericsson, Huawei shortlisted

equipment major Ericsson and Chinese manufacturer of telecom gear Huawei have been shortlisted by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for its mega 93-million-line cellular project. The project size is estimated to be around $6 billion, making it the single largest contract in the world.

While Ericsson has been shortlisted for North and East zones, Huawei has qualified for West, East and South zones. Other bidders, including ZTE, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Lucent, have been disqualified on technical grounds. Some of the vendors disqualified, including Nokia Siemens, have supplied equipment to BSNL earlier

Quoting prices

With only one vendor having qualified from three zones, the financial bids submitted by the qualified companies may have lost their relevance. Since there is no second qualified bidder in North, West and South, BSNL will have to give the contract at the price quoted by Ericsson and Huawei respectively. The project envisages both GSM and 3G network rollout.

However, BSNL cannot award the contracts immediately since the Ministry of Home Affairs is yet to give its clearance from the security point of view.

The Ministry had raised concerns regarding some of the foreign vendors, especially about Huawei from China. A committee was set up by the Ministry to evaluate the background of the bidders before the contracts are awarded. This committee is yet to submit its report.

Seeking to open bids

Meanwhile, BSNL has written to the Department of Telecom seeking permission to open the bids submitted by Ericsson in the North zone even before the Ministry submits its report.

BSNL has told the DoT that it was facing acute shortage of GSM capacity and since Ericsson was already an established vendor on its network, the contract for the North zone should be awarded to the Swedish company for this region.

The project is part of a major expansion plan aimed at giving BSNL enough capacity to expand its subscriber base. While private operators have been adding over 2.5 million new users a month, BSNL is adding just over a million.

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Nokia N97 Review

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General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 - American version
	Announced	2008, November
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2009, June

Size	Dimensions	117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm, 88 cc
	Weight	150 g

Display	Type	TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches
		- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate - Full QWERTY keyboard - Handwriting recognition

Sound	Alert types	Vibration; MP3 ringtones
	Speakerphone	Yes, with stereo speakers
		- 3.5 mm audio jack

Memory	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Detailed, max 30 days
	Internal	32 GB storage, 128 MB RAM
	Card slot	microSD (TransFlash), up to 16GB

Data	GPRS	Class 32
	HSCSD	Yes
	EDGE	Class 32
	3G	HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, v2.0 microUSB

Camera	Primary	5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash, video light
	Video	Yes, VGA@30fps
	Secondary	Yes, VGA@15fps

Features	OS	Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
	CPU	ARM 11 434 MHz processor
	Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS, Visual radio; FM transmitter
	Games	Yes + downloadable
	Colors	White, Brown
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch
	Java	Yes, MIDP 2.0
		- Digital compass - MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+/MP4/M4V player - MPEG4/WMV/3gp/Flash video player - TV-out - Voice command/dial - Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF viewer) - Flash Lite 3 - T9

Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh (BP-4L)
	Stand-by	Up to 432 h (2G) / 408 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 9 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 6 h (3G)
	Music play	Up to 40 h

Misc	Price group

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Mobile TV will do good in Indian Market

Despite regulatory hurdles and spectrum issues, the world of television or TV on mobiles is making a promising start in India with players like UTV and National Geographic channel joining the increasing number of players like Reliance Communications, MTNL and BSNL.

While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has approved the access of TV on mobiles, service providers still cannot stream live TV channels on to the handset due to spectrum allocation from the Ministry of Information and Broadcast. However, since the regulations do not allow a direct transmission of TV channels, service providers as well as content providers have started using a technology called Unicast which provides content to end-user on a one-on-one basis. One handset pulls content from a central repository and transmits it through a wireless network.

Public service broadcaster Doordarshan currently offers limited mobile TV services in Delhi. However, the market has seen increased activities from various stakeholders including technology providers, network equipment vendors and mobile service providers.

For instance, UTV New Media — the digital arm of UTV — recently announced the launch of a music video channel on Mobile TV. Branded as UTV@play, this will provide users an exclusive mobile channel where they can access videos and music with a click of a button. With a catalogue of 15,000-20,000 songs, UTV with this launch is expecting to garner at lest 10,000 subscribers in the very first year. T N Prabhu, CEO, UTV New Media feels there are users who are interested in such content. “We have seen that users from India stream video’s from International sites. We are sure there is enough users who are looking for such content on the mobile handsets,” said Prabhu. The National Geographic channel, too, has joined the fray by launching Nat Geo Mobile.

With over 300 million mobile phone users in India, and an addition of almost 10 million users every month, mobile TV does hold a promise. Springboard Research, in a recent report, estimates that mobile TV services market in India could reach $360 million (around Rs 1,780 crore). The report says that in the first year of operation, mobile TV could reach a penetration level of 5 to 6 per cent (of the total mobile subscriber base) in India. If taken at the current subscriber base of 375 million, this would mean that India will have over 20 million mobile TV subscribers within the first year of the launch of service.

Reliance Communication, through its R-world has been providing mobile TV for quite some time now. “While its difficult to quantify the number of users, Reliance has revenues in a few lakhs every month through its mobile TV offering. We are currently offering 11 news channel. A user can watch TV on the handset with a lag of a few minutes as they are not transmitted live,” said Krishna Durbha, Head Business and Marketing, VAS Reliance Communications. But he believes that there are still lot of barriers.

Shiva Bayypunedi, director and founder of Apalya Technologies, provides technology support for mobile TV for service providers like MTNL, BSNL, Spice, UTV among others feels that the Indian mobile TV market is still very nascent. “Other than the spectrum issues, constrain in handset, standardisation of technology platform are some of the barriers for the growth of this segment. Moreover, India is still predominantly a prepaid market. In such a scenario getting the volumes is difficult,” adds Bayypunedi.

A Springboard research indicates that 50 per cent of respondents (base of 1,215 users) said they would be very interested in mobile TV, while another 34 per cent said they would be fairly interested in it if it were available and affordable. Besides, a high percentage (86 per cent) of those surveyed said they would be either among the first to try or would definitely try a new service if somebody showed them how to use it.

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Bharti Airtel Planning launch Virtual Phone.

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel is planning to launch "Virtual Phones", a technology that allows users to use as many as 10 different numbers from a single phone, reports the Financial Chronicle.

Developed by Bharti-owned Comviva Technologies, the application comes embedded with the SIM card and offers users to "opt" for his number whenever the user requires it. The user group will be password protected with each user having his own password to access his phone. Airtel is reportedly undertaking field trials of the service. Comviva, in co-operation with South African operator MTN, already has the service in South Africa. Airtel expects the technology to be operational in two months time and India might see the first services roll out in the rural areas of the country.

According to Airtel, no other operator in India has a similar technology currently and for the same reason, the implementation of this technology will provide Airtel an early head start in this segment.

The idea is to provide subscribers more value with just a single instrument. While there have been cases of one SIM using two numbers, if Airtel's plans bears fruits, it will be the first time that users will get as many as ten numbers from a single SIM and that too, with just one handset. Singapore's SingTel and UAE's Etisalat already have this system in place where users have been assigned two numbers on the same SIM card.

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Bharti & Alcatel-Lucent in JV

Alcatel-Lucent will hold 74 per cent and Bharti the rest.

Bharti Airtel and Alcatel-Lucent, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of fixed-line phone equipment, announced a joint venture to manage the Indian telecom major’s fixed-line and broadband internet businesses.
Alcatel-Lucent will hold 74 per cent in the venture and Bharti Airtel the remaining equity.
Bharti has also signed a five-year $500 million (about Rs 2,500 crore) managed services deal with the new company for five years.
Apart from managing the broadband and fixed-line network, the joint venture will also install the services in consumer premises and upgrade the network. The joint venture will also offer services such as high-speed internet and video conferencing.
Alcatel Lucent will run the joint venture. The bulk of the 4,000 staffers for the joint venture will come from Bharti Airtel and the rest from Alcatel-Lucent. The joint venture will not, however, entail an asset transfer from Bharti and the subscribers and their revenues will be on Bharti Airtel’s books.
This is the second India deal for Alcatel. Last year, it signed a 70:30 joint venture with Reliance Communications for managed services for CDMA and GSM networks, also a five-year $500 million and for five years.
This is the first joint venture that Bharti has signed for managed services. The telecom company has signed several other multi-million dollar outsourcing contracts with Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and IBM. Explaining the reason for the change Manoj Kohli CEO and joint managing director of Bharti Airtel, said: “Unlike in wireless where you have to just put in a passive network and subscribers can roll in, the broadband business is very different. You have to go to consumer homes, install the equipment, explain how it works and that requires a lot more engagement. We thought for such a business a joint venture would be a more effective structure.”
Kohli added that the deal would help Bharti Airtel save costs but he did not quantify the savings. Bharti has only three million broadband customers and fixed-line customers in 95 cities across India and finds the need to scale up the numbers, if the government's target of 20 million broadband subscribers is to be met by 2010 (India has 6.2 million subscribers).

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