India Broadband

UK based mobile service provider Vodafone Group Plc has said that they are not going to pay “over the top” for the Hutchison’s stake in Hutch.

The company just managed to beat forecasts for customer sign-ups and crossed the 200 million user mark.

Chief Executive Arun Sarin said that the final decision in their battle for gaining a majority stake in Hutch is still sometime away.

There are at least four companies interested in Hutchison’s stake in Indian mobile service provider Hutch. Reliance, Hinduja Group, Essar and Vodafone have all shown their interests.

Sarin said in a statement on this battle: “(This asset is) very strategically aligned with what we have been saying to shareholders … We will participate fully, but we are not going to go over the top. We have twin financial criteria (for acquisitions), which we have highlighted. We will be using these criteria in determining what the ceiling price is.”

Bharti Airtel is the largest private telephony company in the Indian market. They provide both landline and mobile services in addition to broadband services.

The company has said in a statement that its investments in the mobile phone market would reach four billion dollars in the two years ending 2008.

Most of these investments have been made in improving their network in countryside regions.

A company spokesperson said: “Bharti Airtel has invested about two billion dollars in the financial year 2006-2007 and plans a similar investment in 2007-2008.”

Bharti Airtel wants to improve their reach in the rural regions in India. The company is also asking the government to get BSNL and MTNL to “share its infrastructure with private operators.”

TRAI has some exciting news for the mobile phone users in the country. The regulatory body has announced that they are slashing the mobile roaming tariffs by up to 56 per cent.

They have also now scrapped the rental for roaming services. This would be good news for those customers who travel a lot within the country.

This new tariff order would be applicable from February 15. TRAI Chairman Nripendra Misra said in a statement that the new ruling would reduce roaming tariffs from 22 to 56 per cent as compared with the current market rates.

TRAI has also said that the incoming SMS would be free while roaming for the mobile users in the country.

They have also scrapped the 15 per cent on air-time while roaming and separate PSTN charge.

Misra added: “TRAI would closely monitor market developments on roaming and if perceptible competition evolves in the market, it would revisit the issue and even consider forbearing roaming tariffs.”

TRAI said that they had to come out with this ruling because the service providers in the country were not doing enough for their customers.

The government of India has asked Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Latest News about Google to blur sensitive images of its military bases and buildings that can be seen with its mapping application, Google Earth, a source of concern to top Indian officials since at least 2005.

Google has reportedly agreed to show fuzzy, low-resolution pictures of certain building installations after talks with the officials.

India is not alone in its concerns. Over the last few years, the search engine has received various requests from other governments for similar considerations.

Czech-based car manufacturer Skoda Auto has somewhat confirmed that they would launch their Skoda Fabia car in India later this year.

This would be the company’s first volume generating model. They already sell Octavia, Laura and Superb in the Indian market.

Skoda said that this new car would adhere to the small car norms as specified by the union budget. The company wants to benefit from tax cuts on these models to price them competitively.

Shashank Vaid, Senior Manager – Marketing, Skoda India said in a statement on their plans: “We will be launching the new Fabia in the Indian market in the second half of this year but the launch date is yet to finalized”.

The car to be launched in the Indian market would be the same model Skoda would display at the Geneva Motor show in March this year.

Skoda would launch it in both diesel and petrol versions. The Fabia will be available in 1.2 liter petrol and a 1.4 liter diesel. Experts believe that this car should be very fuel efficient considering the company is going to power it with a 3-cylinder engine.

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.