[by Cerius Shah]
— Mittal belives that new players will take atleast 12 months to build their network and gasp for air within 24 months, making it an unviable solution to enter a market which will be increasinly looking to consolidate. According to this BS report, Mittal believes that new players shouldn’t be allocated spectrum since it doesn’t help big telco’s grow bigger. We had earlier reported or Arun Sarin’s comments to the same effect, citing that the mobile market would become a two player market and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) would look to acquire new players for their spectrum.
— The DoT has decided to impose spectrum transfer fees on the sale of telecom licenses. According to this ET report, the transfer fee will be decided by TRAI, and will be payable by either the buyer, seller or both. The M&A guidelines are expected to be in place by mid-2008, around the same time many players with letters of intent (LOI) will be allocated spectrum.
— Tata Communications, which recently got itself a new pair of clothes, has formed a network services partnership in China. Srinivasa Addepalli, VP Corporate strategy, refused to reveal the partners name to ET. According to me, this is a network handshake, where VSNL will peer with a Chinese telco and offer better broadband ROI to its enterprise customers desiring low latency traffic in the SAARC region.
— The BK-Modi backed Spice Corp Ltd (SCL) unveiled a Rs 800 (approx $20) phone at the World Mobile Congress, Barcelona. The screenless, voice-only, phone (photo) is a low learning curve instrument that will announce digits when dialled. A Braille version will be simultaneously released along with the phone which is expected to launch in April this year. Currently telcos are involved in ramping up MoU and gaining market share where penetration is around 24% of total population. Spice has previously had other handset-led initiatives including the Spice D-88 Dual Mode (GSM & CDMA) phone, currently retailing at approximately Rs 7000 ($175).
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