New Delhi, May 23 (IANS) The Telecom Commission, the highest policy-making forum in the communications ministry, will meet Thursday to take a call on the sector regulator's controversial recommendations on spectrum auction which have made the industry come up in arms.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended, among other proposals, a reserve price of Rs.3,622 crore for 1 MHz pan-India spectrum, which is around 10 times higher than the price at which 2G licences were allocated in 2008 under then Telecom Minister A. Raja.
The proposals have been highly criticised by the operators and independent analysts alike. Calling TRAI's recommendations a 'death knell' for the industry, the operators have also warned of a 100 percent hike in tariffs if the proposals are accepted.
According to a study conducted by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), telecom tariffs are expected to rise by 90 paise a minute in metros and 20-34 paise on an average across the country if the sector regulator's recommendations on spectrum pricing are accepted.
Following constant opposition from the industry, the Department of Telecom (DoT) had asked the regulator to review the recommendations. However, TRAI largely retained its proposals on high reserve price even in the revised paper.
The recommendation comes in the wake of the Feb 2 Supreme Court order cancelling 122 telecom licences issued in 2008.
Nokia Lumia 900 Now Available For £450 - Itproportal
Amazon is selling the Nokia Lumia 900, the Windows Phone handset that it announced at CES earlier this year, for only £450. That's around £120 more than the Nokia Lumia 800 and more than thrice the price of the Lumia 710.
If you buy the phone by tonight you will also qualify to pick a free set of Nokia Headphones made by Monster for free. The Lumia 900 has a 4.3in AMOLED ClearBlack glass touchscreen with a one-piece polycarbonate body that's 11.5mm thick and was introduced with the Lumia 800.
It runs on a single core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the MSM8255T, and is clocked at 1GHz. There's 512MB of RAM, 16GB onboard storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera capable of recording HD content plus a 1-megapixel front facing, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a microUSB port.
Other extra features include Nokia free extras like Nokia Drive & Maps and Nokia Music as well as Tango Video Calls, Office 365, Zune and Xbox Live.
Source : Amazon
New telecom policy seeks to remove roaming charges - Deccan Herald
The cabinet Thursday approved a new telecom policy that seeks to do away with roaming charges across the country and simplifies the licencing policy, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said Thursday.
Sibal said the new policy aims at free roaming facility throughout the country.
The minister said the new policy seeks to provide a predictable and stable policy regime for a period of nearly 10 years.
The new policy called National Telecom Policy-2012 will replace more than a decade old legislation.
“The policy envisions providing secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive socio-economic development.” according to an official statement released after the cabinet meeting.
“The main thrust of the Policy is on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the overall economy,” the statement said.
The policy will be operationalised by bringing out detailed guidelines, as may be considered appropriate, from time to time.
It will enable smooth implementation of the policies for providing an efficient telecommunication infrastructure taking into account the primary objective of maximising public good by empowering the people of India, the statement said.
“The policy will further enable taking suitable facilitatory measures to encourage existing service providers to rapidly migrate to the new regime in a uniformly liberalised environment with a level playing field,” it said.
The union cabinet also approved introduction of unified licence and authorised the Department of Telecommunications to finalise the new unified licensing regime with the approval of minister of communications and IT.
The thrust areas of the New Telecom Policy-2012 are:
• Increase rural teledensity from the current level of around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020
• Repositioning of Mobile phone as an instrument of empowerment
• Broadband -“'Broadband For All” at a minimum download speed of 2 Mbps
• Domestic Manufacturing - Making India a global hub
• Convergence of Network, Services and Devices
• Liberalisation of Spectrum - any Service in any Technology
• Simplification of Licensing regime - Unified Licensing, delinking of Spectrum from License, Online real time submission and processing
• Consumer Focus - Achieve One Nation - Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation - Free Roaming
• Resale of Services
• Voice over Internet Protocol
• Cloud Computing, Next Generation Network including IPV6
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