Telecom Roundup: Rural Discount; Do Not Call Update; Spectrum Revenue; Monitoring

The Great Indian Subscriber Grab continues: the Hindu reports that mobile operators are offering all rural subscribers a discount of Rs. 125 (Rs. 50 upfront, and Rs. 75 as talktime); this is largely possible because the Access Deficit charge has been removed. In the first phase of implementation, 50 million subscribers will get a discount of Rs. 125 each (outlay of Rs. 625 crore). Even then, the operators benefit since they don’t have to pay Rs. 700 crore as ADC, which was, incidentally, levied on all mobile connections – urban and rural. And with all these discounts being offered, Sunil Mittal complains about low ARPUs.

— If you’re wondering about what action has been taken regarding unsolicited calls (which still plague some of us) here’s a response from the government, on what action has been taken so far: 5064 telemarketers have been issued warning letters, 157 telemarketers have been charged Rs. 500 each, 98 registered telemarketers lines have been disconnected, 435 unregistered telemarketers lines have been disconnected. So how easy is it for telemarketers to get new lines?

— The government collected Rs. 3015 crores in revenue from spectrum charges in 2007-08, up from Rs. 2090 in 2006-07

— The government is setting up a Centre for Communication Security Research and Monitoring to help security agencies intercept mobile phone calls, and analyse billing records, reports Cellular News. The centre will copies of select Call Data Records (CDRs) in a permanent archive. Apparently the BlackBerry issue is yet to be resolved, and government is not yet able to monitor BlackBerry calls and text messages. Frankly, I think the government should require a court order to be able to track numbers – complete freedom can lead to misuse, and there should be checks and balances.

Comments have been disabled for this post