News - Telecom

• Bharti offers Rs 2,650 cr for pan-India GSM spectrum (The Hindu Business Line 11th Dec 2007) With the Ministry of Communications in no mood to relax the subscriber-linked spectrum allocation criteria any further, GSM operator Bharti Airtel on Monday fired a fresh salvo and told the Government that it was willing to participate in an auction.
  The company has offered Rs 2,650 crore as the initial bid amount for 4.4 Mhz of pan-India GSM spectrum. This amount is Rs 1,000 crore higher than what the Government has asked Reliance Communication to pay for country-wide GSM licence. Industry sources indicated that other GSM operators and new players in favour of auction may put in counter bids over the next few days, which could force the Government to take a re-look at the option to auction spectrum instead of allocating it based on the number of subscribers.
• Ericsson declines Nokia portion in BSNL deal (The Hindu Business Line 11th Dec 2007)
  Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s controversial GSM project has run into more trouble.
  Swedish major Ericsson has decided against accepting the entire contract of 22.5 million GSM lines from the State owned company. Ericsson, being the lowest bidder, was given the full contract after the second lowest bidder — Nokia Siemens — walked out of the project citing pricing issues.
  Ericsson has now decided to take up only 60 per cent of the contract as was planned initially. This means that BSNL will have to find another vendor to set up the balance 40 per cent of the network.
• GSM user base up by 5.8 mn November (Business Standard 11th Dec 2007)With the addition of 5.8 million susbcribers in November 2007, the country's GSM mobile subscriber base has crossed 165.8 million registering a 3.64% growth on the 160 million in October 2007. According to the latest statistics released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), of the four metros, Chennai recorded the highest growth in GSM susbcriber base. The susbcriber base in Chennai grew by 3.87% in November when compared with that at the end of October 2007 with the addition of about 1.8 lakh susbcribers. In Delhi, the subscriber base grew by 2.6% while the growth was 2.8% and 2.5% for Kolkata and Mumbai respectively, the COAI report said.
• RTIL plans website to identify locations for telecom towers (Live mint.com 11th Dec 2007) In an effort to easily identify locations for the telecom towers it plans to set up, Reliance Telecom Infrastructure Ltd (RTIL), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications Ltd, will soon launch a website that will serve as a medium to link site owners with the company, according to executives at Reliance Communications familiar with the development who did not wish to be identified.
  Tower sites are required by telecom tower companies such as RTIL to set up either ground-based towers or rooftops towers in private or commercial buildings.
  The owners of land, apartments, houses or commercial buildings lease out space for towers to tower companies for between eight and 10 years. RTIL’s website, www.btssite.relianceada.com will be the first of its kind in the world, claim the executives. It will be launched in a few days, they add.