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No Roaming for WLL-Mobile

Finally ... some sense of sanity and justice in India's burgeoning Telecom market. Hope this sounds as a rap on the knuckle for Reliance which has been openly flouting the terms of its license for the WLL service much to the chargin of Cellular operators

Telecom tribunal TDSAT on Saturday pulled up the government for its inaction to stop WLL service providers from giving mobile facility beyond their territory, and said distinction between cellular services and limited mobile services had to be there despite the advent of technology. The TDSAT, in a majority judgement, reiterated the guidelines which said basic service operators could provide WLL service on a mobile handheld sets but with condition that their range would not exceed the local call area.

The Times of India

Trai to start work on number portability: Baijal

If this becomes a reality (as I apparently aleady is in certain other countries), it would help the consumer switch cellular providers without having to change his number ! A rather interesting prospect - given the overall price competition in the market.

Many a time, I find myself unable to take advantage of the best priced deal in the market since hundreds of people know my mobile number and I cannot imaging having to intimate all of them of the change !

The Economic Times

TDSAT okays Mobility for Basic Telecom providers

After much waiting, the TDSAT has said that Basic service providers are allowed to provide limited mobility services with a single SDCA (short distance calling area) and that no handover of calls between SDCA's is possbile

While this decision is indeed good news to the ears of the consumer as well as WLL providers (eg., Tata, Reliance etc), the Cellular operators would have issues to raise, the most logical one being that of License fee paid by them and the governments frequent change in policies with the intention of changing the competitive landscape

The judgement for now gives both sides a little bit to cheer about, however, at the end of the day, it would be the Basic / WLL service providers who would be cheering the judgement

For the COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), is it destination Supreme court next ?

From The Economic times

The Editorial in The Economic Times believes that the judgement has not really settled anything given its objective of trying to everyone something to cheer about !

Bharti launches SMS on fixed line phones

SMS on Fixed landline phones ! Indeed a very interesting concept. Prima facie this feature has the potential to alter the Indian communication landscape (provided the usability aspect is handled)

From the report, it is not clear if one would also be able to receive messages on the landline phones

From The Economic Times

Hutch, MSN tie-up for mobile 'messenger', Hotmail

A growing tendency to offer hitherto web-based services on Mobile phones is seen in the Indian Mobile market. While at first glance this seems to be a very natural progression, the true utility of such services remains to be seen

Using SMS for accessing such services is rather cumbersome. Mobile phone handset manufacturers need to come up with creative solutions that simplify usage of SMS, not just for M2M messaging but also for content based services and utilities like Mail & Instant messaging

From The Economic Times

The GSM Vs CDMA war

While the GSM Vs CDMA battle for the air-waves is still on in India, people across the globe seem to be rather uninamously indicating their choice for GSM phones over CDMA. A whoppong 41 million users chose GSM out out the 51 million total users who have gone mobile globally in the Q1 2003.

The global GSM subscriber base is at nearly 900m and projected to exceed the 1bn mark by ‘04, according to EMC. By comparison, the worldwide CDMA subscribers is at a modest 156m. The massive global deployment of GSM technology across 70 countries is likely to result in continued industry support for bulk of all R&D activity in the digital wireless communications realm.
While CDMA retains its traditional grip across the US, Japan and south Korean mobile markets, GSM is catching up in north America, the cradle of CDMA wireless communications. So much so, a chunky 28% of new mobile connections sold in the US were GSM, a sharp rise from 17% in ‘02

The Economic Times

Mobiles to overtake Landlines in Delhi

Wow ! This would be a different kind of Independence day for the citizens of the Indian Capital - Delhi ! Independence from Wires !
The Economic Times