India Broadband

Aditya Birla’s Idea Cellular is one of the several smaller players in the Indian mobile market. The company is planning to issue an IPO.

The company has fixed the price band for its forthcoming initial public offer between Rs 65 and Rs 75 a share.

This share is likely to be listed on both National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Idea said that the float is being routed through a 100 per cent book-building, aggregating to Rs 2,125 crore. They would be opening up the issue on February 12.

Idea has also concluded a pre-IPO placement of Rs 375 crore to certain of its promoters, directors and certain high net worth individuals.

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications has said that they are collaborating with the US based Internet giants Yahoo! to bring the ability to communicate with their friends and relatives through mobile Yahoo! Messenger.

This service would be offered to all their customers throughout the country.

This Reliance’s Mobile Instant Messenger would be Yahoo’s first Wireless Village compliant implementation in Asia. This instant messaging solution has been developed by ACL Wireless for Reliance and Yahoo.

Reliance Communications would thus become the sole telecom service provider in the world to offer MIM across Java, BREW and WAP phones on a mobile operator network.

The subscribers to this service would get offline messages by SMS from their buddies on the Yahoo! Messenger service.

India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The country nearly doubled the number of mobile users last year and the numbers are not slowing down.

Sources reveal that the country saw addition of as many as 74 million new mobile telephone subscribers last year. Not surprising, India is attracting a lot of global mobile service providers including the UK based Vodafone.

The country had just around 75.94 million mobile users at the end of the year 2005. The number is now around 149.5 million subscribers at the end of December last year. These figures were revealed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.

One of the main reasons for this growth is low rates for mobile communication in India. India boasts of some of the lowest tariff charges for mobile users in the world.

As a result, mobile service providers are focusing on increasing revenues through value added services. The GSM operators in the country have just announced that they would soon launch mobile instant messaging facilities on their networks.

Such services are necessary to attract more users to achieve the target of 500 million telephones, both fixed and wireless, by 2010 set by the Indian government.

BEWARE OF SIFY INTERNET BROADBAND SERVICE PROVIDER

I have a Sifybroadband 256 kbps and have found mostly good speeds. I renewed every month package ( 256Kbps 500MB download) which according to the price list was Rs 380/- all inclusive for Taxes.

However, the Local Cable Operator charged me Rs 471/-claiming Rs 90/- as maintenance charges per month for last 03 months.

The bill never mentions nor gives details breakup of items. This additional collection was not mentioned nor updated anywhere by SIFY.

Also, prices vary from location to location with multiple cable vendor/francise within same region. Other cable operator in my region does not charge for Maintainence charges.

If I pay with my credit cards the charges are not taken into account.

SIFY IS “CHEATING CUSTOMERS” FOR HIDDDEN COST INVOLVED NOT MENTIONED DURING RENEWALS ON MONTHLY BASIS.

The charges for providing internet services are to be

borne by the service provider and not by the Customer

One solution is by providing profit margins to cable

operator rather billing valuable customer for repair

cost

There is no communication nor information available from sify for changes in operation/maintanence cost policy for all broadband internet subscribers.

I mailed customer care at Sify – and they replied that the cable operator could charge whatever he wants over and above the rate mentioned by Sify.. which means that Sify leaves us at the mercy of the cable operator, and leaves us to be fleeced by him!

Naturally, these maintenance charges problem came up only at renewal, and there were no maintenance charges initially!

Whatever relationship for cable operator with sify,

the service and charges needs to be fixed by sify as

Internet service provider mentioning all details for

the cost involved

I believe sify should prescribe cable maintenance charges upfront and not wash their hands off, and the charges must be mentioned in their rate list.

All Broadband users should be aware of hidden cost by SIFY broadband which is unjustified as compare to bandwidth usage charge on a daily basis.

I am rather disappointed and feel cheated, but naturally I am stuck, especially after having paid the initial connection charges of Rs 3000/. excluding NIC cost.

There are other broadband cable providers in this area, and I want to go in for TATA Broadband so as to get ride off “operation/maintanence” being charged by my Cable operator and at lower price as compared to sify broadband.

Awaiting for positive response and feedback for closure from sify only.

IOL Broadband has confirmed that they are now going to work with government owned telecom company BSNL to launch its IPTV services in India.

They have already started the trials of this service on the BSNL Broadband network in Bangalore.

This collaboration was confirmed in a notification sent to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

BSNL is one of the largest broadband service providers in the country with around seven lakh broadband ADSL subscribers all over India. They recently upgraded their network to provide speeds of up to 2 mbps to their customers.

IOL Broadband added that they have also signed a revenue sharing agreement for its IPTV Service with Anytime. Anytime is a consortium of major Hollywood Studios including Disney, FOX, Warner, and Universal. This would allow them to broadcast unreleased movies on IPTV services.