The Indian mobile market has recently experienced a series of 3G tariff cuts. 3G adoption in India has been underwhelming so far, with optimistic estimates stating that there are currently 39 million 3G subscribers. However, we believe that the actual number of active 3G subscribers is approximately 25 million. The latest round of price competition has been sparked by Airtel’s decision to cut its 3G tariffs by up to 70%. Airtel was not the first operator to reduce its tariffs, with BSNL and Aircel previously reducing their prices. However, the scale of Airtel’s tariff cut has forced other operators to react, and Vodafone, Idea, and Reliance Communications (RCom) have all made similar 3G price reductions.
Ovum believes that the price cuts will have a positive impact on the affordability and adoption of 3G services in India. While they will also have a net positive effect on the top-line revenue growth of 3G operators in the short to medium term, their impact on margins will take time to determine. However, as 3G adoption increases, operators may face challenges from their limited spectrum holdings. If additional 3G spectrum is not made available, there is a risk that the 3G network could encounter the same quality issues that have negatively affected 2G services in India.
3G has suffered from perceptions of limited incremental value over EDGE
A year and a half after the launch of services, 3G adoption in India continues to be underwhelming. It is clear that subscribers have not been attracted by the 3G value proposition. A lot of this has to do with operators’ premium pricing of 3G services. In our November 2010 report 3G in India: Operator Launch Strategies, we predicted that Indian operators would adopt a voice-centric strategy for 3G services and price data at a premium. This was due to the significant capacity constraints on 2G networks, and the need to “ration” the use of 3G. Up until now, most operators had priced 3G with the “10 paisa per 10kb” tariff, which worked out to approximately INR17 ($0.30) per MB. When one considers that monthly ARPU is approximately INR150 ($2.70), it isn’t difficult to understand why 3G adoption has been slow. In an attempt to increase adoption, operators offered data packages and bundles, but the damage had already been done. The slow adoption of 3G has been further exacerbated by poor user experience due to the lack of true nationwide coverage from any single operator, and the patchy coverage even within licensed circles.
New 3G plans include prepaid and “snacking” options
While Airtel was not the first operator to cut its 3G tariffs, it was the first to cut them on such a significant scale. Airtel’s new plans have reduced its postpaid tariffs by up to 40%, and its prepaid plans by up to 70%. Under its new tariff structure, a 2GB plan that previously cost INR650 ($11.70) per month now costs INR450 ($8.10). However, the new 3G tariffs are still more than double those of a similar EDGE service, which is available for approximately INR200 ($3.60) per month. Ovum does not believe that these tariff cuts will be as damaging as the price wars that previously occurred in India as competitive intensity in the market has eased in recent years.
Airtel has also introduced “snacking” and postpaid add-on options as part of its revised 3G proposition. The operator now offers entry-level prepaid 3G data offers starting from INR10 ($0.18) for 30 minutes of usage. These options extend to a 10GB data bundle for INR1,500 ($26.90) that is valid for 30 days.
As well as its “snacking” options, Airtel offers “Smartbytes” add-on bundles that complement its existing monthly postpaid plans. Airtel’s Smartbytes options range from INR80 ($1.40) to INR300 ($5.40), and must be used up with existing monthly allowances. These types of options were necessary additions to make 3G more affordable for the average user, and to add flexibility for postpaid users that do not want to exceed their monthly allowances.
Airtel will be best positioned after this round of price cuts
Different operators have various motivations for making price cuts. Airtel’s decision to reduce its 3G tariffs has more to do with the launch of LTE and the positioning of its services than with the competition in the market. Airtel is positioning LTE as a premium service, and has indicated that it will look to migrate all of its high-end subscribers to the new technology. This strategy has made rebalancing its 3G proposition a necessity. We believe that this will leave Airtel in the best position to provide a comprehensive offering across all pricing tiers and service levels. If its LTE strategy is successful, it will have a positive cascading effect that will rebalance traffic flows across all of its networks and boost its margins.
Airtel’s aggressive tariff reductions have forced Vodafone, Idea, and RCom to follow suit or risk losing their premium subscribers to Airtel. While BSNL and Aircel tested the waters with their limited cuts, they have also had to respond to Airtel’s move with significant reductions. The reduced 3G tariffs are far better suited to enticing users to upgrade to 3G, and we believe that Airtel’s move and the competitive responses that are sure to come will have a positive impact on 3G adoption in India over the next six months.
B4bn floor for 3G bids - TMCnet
B4bn floor for 3G bids
Jun 13, 2012 (Bangkok Post - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The reserve price for the third-generation (3G) licence auction will likely start at more than 4 billion baht for each of the nine five-megahertz bandwidth slots of the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum, says the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).Vice-chairman Settapong Malisuwan said the price benchmark should closely equal that of the old figure, set by the NBTC's predecessor, of 12.8 billion baht for a licence containing 15 MHz of bandwidth.
The NBTC's 2100-megahertz committee approved the draft 3G licence auction framework for the international standard 2.1-GHz spectrum.
Under the draft, the regulator will divide the existing bandwidth of the 2.1-GHz spectrum into nine slots, each containing 5 MHz of bandwidth.
The new information memorandum (IM) scrapped the key conditions of the old framework's "N -1" approach, which would have made available a number of licences equal to the number of bidders minus one, for competition.
"An exact reserve price with a new draft of the information memorandum for the 3G auction will definitely be released by the committee this month," said Col Settapong, who also chairs the NBTC's telecom committee.
The draft will then be submitted to the NBTC's telecom committee for consideration before being passed to the board for approval.
The NBTC will hold a public hearing on the draft within 30 days after receiving approval by the board.
Finally, Col Settapong said the IM for the 3G auction will be released on the NBTC website before being published in the Royal Gazette by August as planned.
"A 3G licence auction should be on the schedule by the fourth quarter," he said.
The event will feature simultaneous ascending-bid auctions. Each participant can get maximum bandwidth of 20 MHz under a bandwidth cap restriction, said Col Settapong.
In another development, the NBTC telecom committee yesterday acknowledged a draft regulation for type-3 communications satellite service providers that have their own networks.
Thaicom Plc, the satellite arm of InTouch, is seen as the sole company that can apply for a licence to provide service as a network service provider.
The committee has yet to complete drafts for the two other satellite licence types _ one for satellite signal uplink-downlink service providers and the other for satellite bandwidth resellers.
The panel expects to complete a draft by next month.
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Here she comes! Cheryl Cole announces dates for her FIRST solo UK tour - Daily Mirror
Cheryl fans may struggle to contain their excitement after it was announced the singer will embark on her first solo UK arena tour.
It's been a good week for Cheryl who wowed Wembley at the Summertime Ball and her new single Call Me Name when straight to No.1 within hours of release on iTunes, clocking up record breaking sales.
Now it has been confirmed that the Fight For This Love singer will tour the country and Ireland for the first time as a solo artist.
Cheryl will play eight shows in October, including the O2 Arena and a homecoming at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle.
She opened as a special guest for the Black Eyed Peas European tour in 2010 and played four sold-out arena tours as part of Girls Aloud.
She's one of the most exciting performers in music and will be performing songs from previous albums 3 Words and Messy Little Raindrops, as well as new material from the much awaited A Million Lights which will be released June 18.
There will plenty of surprises in store for fans who can purchase tickets from 9am on June 15 at Live Nation.
Can't wait until October to get your Cheryl fix? Read more below.
"Cheryl Cole is losing her touch": Desperate star adds nothing to the nation and it's time she went away: Read Mirror Online's guest columnist Fleet Street Fox brutal opinion on Cheryl.
Cheryl Cole pointless and unworthy of Prince Harry? She’s the perfect modern day celebrity and would blow Kate Middleton out of the water: Sunday Mirror celebrity columnist Dean Piper bit back at the Fox with his praising verdict of Queen Chez.
CHERYL COLE TOUR
6 Oct Capital FM Arena, Nottingham
7 Oct 02, London
9 Oct Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield
11 Oct Echo Arena, Liverpool
12 Oct LG Arena, Brimingham
13 Oct Manchester Arena,
15 Oct SECC, Glasgow
17 Oct Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle
O2 deploys cloud based sales platform to run natively in Force.com - IT World
June 12, 2012, 4:05 PM — O2 has integrated CloudSense's Order Management stack into O2 Business' Salesforce.com platform in a bid to increase efficiency and bolster its customer relationship capabilities.
The sales and service cloud-based platform has been deployed within O2's Joined-Up Business operations, which is a division that aims to help companies connect their IT, staff and customers through communications products.
Ricky Mortimer, e-enablement programme manager at O2 Business, spoke to Computerworld UK and explained why it decided to opt for a public cloud offering over an on-premise deployment.
"Given the business challenge we have around managing this increasing portfolio of products [through O2 Joined-Up Business], whilst trying to drive down costs, cloud allows us to implement without large up front CAPEX costs and gives us a quick time to market," said Mortimer.
O2 has integrated CloudSense's Order Management stack into its Salesforce.com platform, which includes applications such as CS ClickApprove, CS Configurator and CS Orchestrator. These enable O2 to manage its products, quote customers, carry out electronic approval for contracts and enable end-to-end fulfilment in the cloud.
"We were using Salesforce at the time for lead-to-opportunity management - so pure sales pipeline stuff. We looked at how we could take that lead-to-opportunity and extend it all the way through to lead-to-cash," said Mortimer.
"The target was to do that in a way that would leverage the Force.com environment and run everything natively inside that platform."
Mortimer said that moving from lead-to-opportunity to lead-to-cash would enable O2 to develop a fully cloud-based CRM platform.
He said: "Our strategy is to get a full CRM system in place, 100% in the cloud, integrated into O2's systems via our service orientated architecture."
By running applications natively inside the Force.com platform, O2 was able to use Salesforce's other cloud services, such as Chatter, mobile and native security features.
O2 selected CloudSense over one other shortlisted company, an American-based firm called ChikPea, due to its "track record and proven experience of delivery".
Prior to this deployment O2 had been using a combination of manual processes and Microsoft Office products, but over the past 12 months has managed to get 800 users on the new sales and service platform. It plans to increase this to 3,500 users over the next 18 months.
Although Mortimer couldn't provide specifics about efficiency or cost targets, he did say that O2 Business will "grow and diversify its portfolio of products without increasing its operating costs".
He also stated that although the thought of cloud made many within the business "go pale in the face", the platform is running to service levels beyond what Mortimer was able to agree with Salesforce's commercial team.
"There were a number of concerns around cloud, not just the security element. This is business-critical activity and uptime is essential - this was clearly a big leap of faith," said Mortimer.
He added: "I tried to demand high service levels from Salesforce, but wasn't able to agree targets with the commercial team.
"However, we are actually operating to levels much higher than what I attempted to agree - we are operating at beyond 99.9% uptime.
"We have been using it for the best part of a year now and we haven't had an outage yet, which isn't what you expect from new platforms and new technology. Typically what you would be looking at is hundreds of minutes of downtime and how you would reduce that."
O2 also recently announced that it has signed a five-year managed services deal with China-based services provider Huawei. It will be transferring 118 staff to work for Huawei's managed services business, where under the agreement, Huawei will be charged with planning, implementing and managing Telefonica's core transmission, mobile access and network in the UK.
Lenovo turns mobile broadband operator for 3G-equipped ThinkPads - zdnet.co.uk
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