Year of Competition ended:- 2009

Year 2009 was filled with price war starting with, 1 paise calls by TATA DOCOMO. Then SMS War started.

Trends and Hits of 2009

1)War of Minutes VS seconds.
Tata Docomo leaded the way with its 1 paise per second plan to set a trend.
Tata DOCOMO Prepaid plan details..
Pulse Rate --> 1 sec
Price of Pack (Rs.) --> Rs.49
Validity --> Lifetime
Free Airtime on Pack (Rs.) --> 5
Currenty they are offering a promotion if you get the TATA DOCOMO prepaid, you will get free 100 SMSes per day (first 3 SMSes will be charged) and all the STD calls will be charged 1p/sec.

then all the Operators started moving in TATA Docomo's way towards the game.
Vodafone and Airtel entered will same plan but different prices for calls between same operator - 1paise and different operator 1.2 paise.then Reliance came up with diferent idea of pay per second, pay per minute and pay per call

2)India added 500 Million subscribers:-

India Officially Scaled the 500 Million Telecom Subscriber Base.Thiru A. Raja, Telecom Minister has congratulated the industry in joining hands with Government in crossing the 500 million connection mark well before the timeline set by the Government of India.

Delivering the Keynote Address at the Curtain Raiser Ceremony of ‘India Telecom 2009’ here today, Thiru A. Raja said, “About three years back we envisioned to achieve 500 million connections by the end of 2010. The conducive Government policies and the zeal of industry in this sector have helped to put the name of Indian telecom sector on the world map as we have crossed the milestone of 500 million connections in the month of September 2009 and achieved an over all teledensity of 44%”.

With the current pace of growth in mobile sector, the nation is well poised to achieve 500 million wireless connections in December 2009 which will coincide with this event India Telecom 2009. The Ceremony was organized by FICCI in association with Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, he said.

Thiru A. Raja further said, “The consistent efforts both by the Government and the industry have helped in reducing the high imbalance of rural urban divide ratio from 1:10 to 1:5 in a short span of 3 years and the rural teledensity jumped from 4.5% to 19%. To further give impetus to telecom infrastructure in rural areas, USO Funds are being leveraged extensively. 6500 mobile towers out of 7500 towers of phase-I with subsidy support from USOF have already started radiating.

USOF is also coming with various schemes including laying of dark fibre in a big way for creating adequate backhaul infrastructure in rural area. I am happy that the privatesector has started participating in rural sector in a much bigger way and they now account for 80% of the rural telecom market. I am sure that the continued participation by the privatesector will help us in achieving the Government target of 40% rural teledensity well before the set timeline of 2014”.

Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Shri Sachin Pilot, also spoke on the occasion.

Disappointments & Flops of 2009:-

3G:- India Still waiting for it

One of the main catalysts for growth would be the launch of 3G and WiMAX spectrum, expected to take place by mid-January. 3G, or third generation telecom services, would result in addition or more subscribers as they would bring in a host of data-enabled services to the industry, and growth would come in from both voice and data.

MNP:- Delayed till March 31 for Metros and A circle(reason MTNL and BSNL is not ready with it.)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today announced that Mobile Number Portability (MNP) will initially start in the country with metros and category ‘A’ circles from 31st March 2009.
TRAI also issued new guidelines and regulations on Mobile Number Portability. The MNP allows the subscribers to retain their existing mobile telephone number when they move from one Access Provider to another irrespective of the mobile technology or from one cellular mobile technology to another of the same Access Provider, in a licensed service area.
The facility of retention of existing mobile telephone number despite moving to a new telecom service provider helps the subscriber maintain contacts with his friends/clientele.

Salient features of the MNP are as follows:
• MNP facility shall be available only within a given licensed service area.
• A subscriber holding a mobile number is eligible to make a porting request only after 90 days of the date of activation of his mobile connection. If a number is already ported once, the number can again be ported only after 90 days from the date of the previous porting.
• The subscriber who wishes to port his mobile number should approach the Recipient operator (the operator to whom the subscriber wants to port his number). The Subscriber may be required to pay porting charges, if any, to the Recipient Operator.
• The subscriber making the porting request is required to have cleared all the bills issued prior to the date of porting request. He shall give an undertaking that he has already paid all billed dues to the Donor Operator as on the date of the request for porting and that he shall pay dues to the Donor Operator pertaining to the mobile number till its eventual porting and that he understands and agrees that in event of non-payment of any such dues to the Donor Operator, the ported mobile number shall be liable to be disconnected by the Recipient Operator.
• A subscriber may withdraw his porting request within 24 hours of its submission to the Recipient Operator. However, the porting charges shall not be refundable.
• The regulation envisage a maximum time period of 4 days for the completion of porting process in all licensed service areas except in the case of J&K, Assam and North East licensed service areas where the maximum time allowed is 12 days. However, efforts will be made to further reduce the porting period.
• Access Providers are required to implement All Call Query method.
• The Originating operator shall be responsible to route the call to correct terminating network.

According to the TRAI the introduction of MNP in India will helps in increasing competition between the service providers and acts as a catalyst for the service providers to improve their quality of service.
Through these MNP regulations, the TRAI is laying down the basic business process framework for implementation of MNP in the country.