Terry Eaton thinks that 2006 is when broadcast television will eventually meet its maker. His essay, The Unbundled Awakening is a good read in how the video business might shake out in the year to come. via Doc Searls’s IT Garage.

11:21:21 PM    comment   

In a survey conducted by market research agency TNS across 15 countries, Indians have been found to be among the lowest MMS users.

The survey found only 1% of cellphone users - five out of 395 people surveyed - in Indian metros using MMS to send pictures daily. Only four respondents sent pictures at least once a week or month. Nearly a fifth of the respondents in India, or 69 people, did not have a camera phone.

MMS as a feature is not popular for mobil users anywhere, including some of the richest nations in the globe.

While the cost of sending picture messages was a major concern in China, India, South Korea and Germany, the Koreans also felt dissuaded because of the unusually long time to send picture messages. In the UK, on the other hand, the fact that photographs cannot be sent to all phones or networks was another reason inhibiting cellphone owners from using MMS to send or receive pictures.

Findings of this survey don’t seem to match with those of SmartTrust’s study which found Indians topping usage of photo sharing via MMS.

11:17:28 PM    comment   

Business Standard reports that Malaysian telco Maxis Communications Berhad may pay $280 million (Rs 1,265.32 crore) for a 26% stake in the C Sivasankaran-controlled Aircel Ltd.

At an enterprise value of $1.07 billion (Rs 4835.3 crore), the Malaysian company will be paying about $496 (around Rs 22,414) per subscriber for the deal. The valuation is much lower than the $1,000 (Rs 45,190) per subscriber that Vodafone paid for a 10 per cent stake in Bharti Televentures and the $570 (Rs 25,758) a subscriber paid by Essar for buying out BPL Telecom.

Sivasankaran refused to comment on the deal. This is the fourth time he has struck a deal to sell Aircel. His earlier moves were stalled because the department of telecommunications (DoT) refused to issue the necessary clearances.

In June last year, Sivasankaran had struck a deal with Hutchison Essar to sell the entire equity of the company for $362 million (Rs 1,635.9 crore). With a subscriber base of 850,000 at that time, Hutch was willing to pay around Rs 18,000 per subscriber. But the deal fell through because the DoT did not clear the acquisition.

In February this year, Sivasankaran signed an agreement with AFK Sistema of Russia to sell a 49 per cent stake for $450 million (Rs 2,033.5 crore).

This deal expired in March. However, the company was offering $546 per (Rs 24,674) subscriber [base ']Äì higher than the Maxis offer.

In June 2005, a group of US investors lead by Pequot Ventures had offered to buy 30 per cent in Aircel for $350 million (Rs 1,581.6 crore). The talks fell though.

The deal is expected to be signed on December 30.

Related: Aircel in talks with Malaysian telcos

11:08:38 PM    comment   

A month after Vodafone stepped into India through a stake in Bharti, its arch rival Orascom Telecom has got a foothold in the country.

The Cairo-based telecom major Orascom Telecom has picked up a 19.3% stake in the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecom, which holds a 42% stake in Hutchison Essar.

Orascom Telecom Chief Executive Officer Naguib Swiris, who announced that his aim was to emulate Vodafone by building a mobile empire, said the acquisition would help it to enter India.

[base ']ÄúWe have often expressed our keen interest to enter some of the largest and highest growth mobile markets in the world like India, Indonesia and Vietnam. The tieup with Hutchison Telecom presents Orascom Telecom with exposure to these markets,[base ']Äù a joint statement issued by the two companies on Wednesday quoted him as saying.

In addition to sending two representatives to the Hutchison Telecom board, Orascom is expected to have members on the board of Hutchison Essar, Hutchison Telecom[base ']Äôs joint venture in India with the Essar group. The Essar group holds 35% stake in the company.

Analysts said the Orasom-Hutchison would be a formidable force in the emerging markets including India. On a combined basis, Orascom and Hutchison Telecom control mobile operators in 15 countries representing an area covering 2 billion people. They together serve 40 million mobile subscribers as on September 30, 2005.

Orascom Telecom operates GSM networks in Algeria (under the brand name Djezzy), Pakistan (Mobilink), Egypt (MobiNil), Tunisia (Tunisiana), Iraq (IraQna), Bangladesh (Banglalink) and Zimbabwe (Telecel Zimbabwe). India Calling

Source: Business Standard

11:07:36 PM    comment   

The government is reconsidering the issue of merger between BSNL and MTNL on the basis of suggestions made by a financial consultant appointed by the Centre.

Since BSNL and MTNL had been owned by the government, a need was felt that merger between the two would give more operational synergy. While BSNL is fully owned by the government, MTNL is a listed company. Capital structure of both the companies are different.

Facts and figures on BSNL from its Chairman and MD, AK Sinha:

BSNL has a mobile subscriber base of 14 million nationally and the target is to increase it to 25 million by March 2006.

It is aiming to achieve a turnover of Rs 38,000 crore in the current financial year, higher by Rs 2,000 crore over the last fiscal.

In the year of 2004-05, BSNL invested Rs 2,269 crore in rural telephony, of which Rs 1,415 crore were invested in the Northeast states, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttaranchal.

The rate of surrender of fixed line connections was higher than the number of new lines given. However, there is demand for fixed line phones in the rural areas. The revenue per fixed line for the company was falling, but is compensated by the growth in mobile and broadband services. BSNL was also earning revenue from inter-connect charges and selling enterprise solutions.

The company has slammed the finance ministry[base ']Äôs recommendations that all government departments, ministries and officials be permitted to use the services of all private telecom operators.

Sinha said, “While on one hand BSNL has been used as a tool for implementing socially desirable but commercially non-feasible initiatives by the government, on the other, it has been denied the status of preferred service provider for the government sector.”

While highlighting that BSNL was a 100 per cent government-owned company, Sinha also pointed out that “all private telecom operators followed a policy of using their own telecom services for all communication across their various units".

Meanwhile, the staff of BSNL is planning to go on a nationwide strike on January 5, 2006 in protest against the government’s decision to allow 74% FDI in the telecom sector and against divestment of BSNL and state-level Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL). The employees of the public sector giant are demand ing a Navaratna status for BSNL.

“We are the biggest PSU with an authorised capital of Rs 10,000 crore and with a paid up capital of Rs 5,000 crore. The organisation has been consistently making profits for the last five years and also paid a dividend of Rs 975 crore last year,” he said.

11:03:19 PM    comment   

What is the profile of companies that Intel's India-specific fund will invest in?
The $ 250 million fund is one of the largest funds country-specific funds. Specifically, we would look at companies in the wireless and handheld area -- in broadband deployment, software design and services, hardware design and services and enterprise computing. Our investments will range from $0.5 million to $1 million at the low-end to as much as $10 million at the high-end.

10:44:13 PM    comment   

In a market such as India where ARPUs are below Rs 400 per month, virtually all the leading players have launched callback tune services to keep their cash registers ringing. Launched in India in June 2004 by BPL Mobile as My FX, callback tunes have quickly caught on. Airtel launched its version of the callback tune service barely a month later, while Hutch followed with Caller Tunes in September 2004. This year in March, Idea Cellular launched Dialer Tones. Already the service contributes 20% to Ideaâo[dot accent]s VAS revenues.

9:52:35 PM    comment   

...we will have to face broadband and IPTV though they are still far away. Streaming live television content on mobile may be very expensive now. But it is going to change. The moment our broadband breaks the bandwidth barrier and gets connected to households, things are going to change. Amidst all these innovations and new platforms, television will still be viewed as family entertainment. But larger and larger sections of people will start accessing other modes. So you need to prepare for that.

9:51:41 PM    comment