Spice Digital has tied up with its sister concern Spice i2i (previously MediaRing), and plans to launch Internet Telephony service S-Unno, Spice Group Chairman BK Modi has said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

In September last year, the Spice Group had acquired around 20% stake in MediaRing, a Singapore Stock Exchange listed company, for $41.76 million. At the time of the acquisition, MediaNama had pointed out the possibility of MediaRing’s Internet Telephony business being leveraged by Spice Digital and the leveraging of enterprise/carrier services. …Continue Reading

3G spectrum was allocated to telecom operators by India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) today, Business Standard reports quoting unnamed DoT sources. The allocation appears to have been done according to plan, and Dow Jones Newswires reports that Tata Teleservices as has confirmed receiving the spectrum in nine circles. Allocations of spectrum were due today, following the end of the 3G auction on May 19th, wherein three slots of spectrum per circle were allocated across 7 telecom operators. DoT modified the terms for the Universal Access Service License (UASL) and Cellular Mobile Telephony Service (CMTS) license today to allow these telecom operators to use 3G spectrum for 20 years from 1st September 2010 onwards, or until the end of the term of their existing license, whichever is earlier.

Of the telecom operators, Aircel, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications won spectrum in 13 circles,  Idea Cellular in eleven, Tata Teleservices and Vodafone in nine, and S Tel in three circles.

License Fee …Continue Reading

Vodafone Plans To Sell Minority Stake In China Mobile
Vodafone planse to sell its 3.2% stake in China Mobile, as it is estimated to be undervalued by 40% due to its array of minority stakes in other companies. The stake sale could raise GBP 4bn.[Guardian]

Saudi Telecom To Establish Presence In India

Achieved through associations with Saudi Telecom’s affiliates in Bahrain (VIVA) and India (Aircel) Saudi Telecom has announced the launch of Points of Presence in India and seven other countries. [India Express]

PTI Chairman And Vice-Chairman Elected – Vineet Jain, MP Veerendrakumar

Vineet Jain, MD of Times of India group, has been elected as the chairman of the board of directors of the Press Trust of India. MP Veerendrakumar, chairman and managing director of Mathrubhumi Group, was elected vice-chairman. [DNA India]

Bharti Airtel Seeks Bids For Tower To Be Set Up In Africa: Report

After acquiring African assets of Zain Telecom in February, Bharti Airtel starts the process of giving orders of setting up new telecom towers in countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, according to sources. [Business Standard]

Also read: Airtel In Africa: Pre-rebranding Focus, CAPEX, Partners, Interconnect, Competition

500 New Base Stations To Be Rolled Out In Naxal-Affected Districts

Ministry of Communications has asked BSNL to roll out 500 new base stations across 31 naxal-affected districts in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The districts being covered include Dantewada, Dhanbad and Singhbum. [The Hindu Business Line]

Also read: Indian Government Asks Telecom Operators To Sharpen Location Awareness; LBS

MSIDC Gets A New MD – Mr Amit Chatterjee

Amit Chatterjee, General Manager for the Visual Studio Test and Lab Management team at Microsoft India Development Centre, since 22 years, has been appointed as the Managin Director, succeeding Srini Koppolu. [The Hindu Business Line]

GQ India & Facebook To Conduct Men Of The Year Voting In India

GQ India and Facebook have come together for the Men of the Year voting in India. Users can use their facebook account to vote for the most stylish man of the year. [Best Media Info]

BIG Street Gets A New National Head – Ashwin Padmanabhan

Ashwin Padmanabhan, former Station Head of the Delhi Operations of 92.7 BIG FM, has been elevated to the post National Head, BIG Street, by Reliance Broadcast Networks Ltd. Following BIG FM’s YoY increase of revenues by 28% and listenership by 30%, under him.

StratosHear, which was earlier focusing on providing audio advertising on mobile caller ringback tones, has now become the seventh company to launch a mobile advertising network in India, after InMobi, Admob, ZestAds, Mobisolv, Navteq Media Solutions and most recently, NetworkPlay. (Also see: advertising networks in India). A competitor in the Ringback Tone advertising, OnMobile Global, said on its earnings conference call a couple of quarters ago that the segment is slow to take off because there’s reticence from telecom operators to launch ads on ringback tones. …Continue Reading

In the month of July, IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation), which manages the online rail ticketing for the Indian Railways, handled around 9.92 million transactions, of which 7.92 million were successful – a total of 79.8%. IRCTC reported an 11.84% rise in the number of total transactions over the month of July, where it reported 8.87 million transactions, with 78.04% of them (6.92 million) successful. 2 Million failed transactions is a fairly substantive number, and IRCTC does need to improve its conversion rate. At this scale, a 20.2% failure rate is much too high.

Payment Gateway specific information: …Continue Reading

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Videcon Telecommunications, one of the new telecom operators in India, and a fully owned subsidiary of electronics major Videocon, is planning to raise around Rs. 15,000 crores by selling 26% stake in the company, reports Business Standard.

By the end of July 2010, Videocon had a connection / subscriber base of just 2.78 million, according to data released by the GSM association COAI. Videocon offers services in Tamil Nadu, (including Chennai), Punjab, Haryana, Mumbai, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, UP East, UP West and Himachal Pradesh, but is struggling to garner subscribers in a multi-SIM environment. Recently they launched a new ISD tariff which allows users to call US or Canada for just 1 paisa per second; the pack costs Rs. 57 and has a 30 day validity. This offer has been introduced in all the circles in which service is offered except in Mumbai. In March of this year the company had launched services in Coimbatore under the brand Videocon Mobile Service, becoming the 14^th telecom operator to do so.

Recently, there were reports of some of the new telecom operators looking to return their prized licenses to the DoT, given the inability to scale in India’s competitive telecom market.

Anurag Gupta, Managing Director at DGM India, the largest online performance advertising network in India writes about his top Digital Media Trends and Bets for 2011-2013. He blogs at http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com.

After showing promise of exponential growth for almost a decade, I strongly believe that finally internet in India is on the threshold of inflection. In this scenario what will be the big trends & bets over next 3 years? List of my Top 10 is given below.

1. Mobile broadband:  With close to 70,000 crore having been paid by the Telecom companies to the government for the 3G licenses, the telecom operators will like to monetize by giving great value packages to their users for accessing internet through their mobile devices.  We see Aircel & Docomo already doing this.  I am sure that this will lead to a surge in number of users connecting to the internet through their mobile phone which will be aided by the fact that almost all modern mobile handsets have the capability to access the internet.

2. Continued interest in Social Media: The stats released by Comscore for July 2010 revealed that more than 33 million Internet users in India visited social networking sites, representing a whopping 84% of the total Internet audience visiting social media sites. This was a growth of 43% over a 12 month period; contrast this with a mere 13% growth in the total internet users. I feel that Social media is here to stay and will have continued interest. …Continue Reading