China Getting Ready to Launch TD-SCDMA

China's Ministry of Information has been driving the testing of TD-SCDMA - the Chinese proposed standard for 3G for over a year now. It is understood that China Mobile that had earlier tested and trialled its TD-SCDMA based network in Xiamen has now extended its coverage to another 10 cities including Beijing and Shanghai, which were the cities allocated to China Netcom and China Telecom for testing their respective networks. It is understood that the license to operate networks based on the home grown standard will be allocated a year before WCDMA is licensed.
(Feb 12, 2007)

 

India Set to Become the Second Largest Mobile Market

The wireless phone subscriber base in India has already crossed the 100 million mark and is projected to hit over 250 million by 2010. The explosion in numbers will continue, driven by the expansion of mobile networks and bouncing Indian economy Though the ARPU is likely to fall year after year (USD 5.65 IN 2010 - reported by In-Stat) yet the operators will continue to make profits. India expereinces one of the lowest ARPUs in the world, which can be attributed to low tariff structure, largely influenced by intense competition. The Indian mobile scene is dominated by Bharti Airtel (GSM), BSNL (GSM & CDMA), Reliance (CDMA & GSM(, Hutchison (GSM), and Idea Cellular (GSM). These operators together address more than 85% of the mobile market in India. (Feb 12, 2007)

 

Vodafone – A Challenge to Indian Incumbents

The global mobile giant, Vodafone has acquired 67% stake of Hutchison Telecom International Limited (HTIL) in the Indian mobile Hutchison Essar at a cost of USD 11.1 billion and a net debt of USD 2.0 billion. This will leave Essar, a minority share holder. Vodafone has also said that it would make an offer to Essar to buy its stake at the equivalent price per share it has agreed with HTIL.

Vodafone in a separate statement has said that it will sell 5.6 per cent stake in Indian telco Bharti Airtel back to promoters for $1.6 billion, however, it will retain the remaining 4.4 per cent stake as financial investment. More importantly, Vodafone and Bharti have reached an infrastructure sharing agreement.

The transaction relating to the purchase of equity in Hutchison Essar is expected to close in the second quarter of calendar year 2007 and is conditional on Indian regulatory approval. In the race for Hutch, Vodafone has beaten players like Reliance Communications, the Hindujas (along with Russia's Altimo and Qatar Telecom) and Essar itself. (Feb 14, 2007)

 

Arun Scares UMTS Operators to Unite

Operators need to pull together more efficiently to avoid the threat posed by WiMAX, according to Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, speaking at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday and asked them to put their weight behind Long Term Evolution (LTE) so that they can together effectively manage the threat of WiMax. He cautioned that the adoption of WiMax on the world stage is faster than that was anticipated. He added "The GSMA needs to influence the ecosystem. LTE is still at the standards stage, while WiMAX is a commercial reality," said Sarin.

Arun also felt that while WiMAX - "the elephant in the room," - may well be a commercial reality in some markets, it is still some distance away from being "prime time." Commenting on operators like Sprint that support multiple networks, "I think they just like to have a multiple network strategy, maybe one day someone explain it to me," quipped Sarin. "LTE offers better backwards compatibility," he said, but added that if the technology did not start moving along faster, Vodafone would be forced into considering compatibility with the OFDM technology.

GSM Association chairman Craig Ehrlich said "I would take issue that WiMAX is the elephant in the front room. You could have said that about CDMA - which is great technology - but now you could argue that it has become niche. As an organisation we have no position on it. We accept that some of our member operators will adopt it. But we're gearing up on our own mobile broadband evolution path." (Feb 14, 2007)

 

Yahoo Hungry to Lead Mobile Advertising Market

Yahoo unveiled its plans at the 3GSM to lead the mobile advertising market by being a middle man between the advertisers and the operators. It announced a deal to bring a number of its big-name advertising partners – including Hilton's Embassy Suites, Infiniti, Intel, Nissan, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble Asia Pacific and Singapore Airlines to its mobile internet site on a global basis. Yahoo has officially announced it: it has launched its mobile display ad options on Yahoo's Mobile web service (at m.yahoo.com) in 19 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas. These ads will be sold on on CPM basis, but could be CPC or CPA in future.
(Feb 14, 2007)

 

Chinese Mobile Operators Courting New Subscribers

Beijing Mobile's announcement to charge the calling party only was followed by a similar announcement from Beijing Unicom. Beijing subscribers will now no longer pay for the mobile in-coming calls. It is learnt that some of the operators in the provinces have been offering this now for quite sometimes. The key driver for this change in practice is to build subscribers numbers before China Telecom and China Netcom enter the mobile market with their 3G offerings – which is of course subject to Ministry of Information Industry issuing 3G licenses to these fixed line operators.(Feb 15, 2007)