India’s Essar Group has confirmed that they are going to remain a partner in Hutchison Essar. This comes after Vodafone was confirmed as the company that is going to buy Hutchison’s stake in the company.

Essar Group vice chairman Ravi Ruia said in a statement: “We are not going to exit the business. We will run it together.” Essar has a 33% stake in the company which is the fourth largest mobile service provider in India.

This statement was released after a marathon meeting between the Vodafone team and the Ruias.

Vodafone chief Arun Sarin added in a statement: “I know Ruias from long ago. I respect their partnership. They have created value in the business. We are now trying to iron out issues and will take the business forward together.”

Sarin added that he wanted the steel-to-shipping Essar Group to remain a partner in Hutchison Essar.

Vodafone’ acquisition of Hutchison’s stake in the company is expected to be complete by April this year.

Labels: essar, hutch

Labels: india, vodafone

UK based mobile service provider Vodafone Group Plc has said that they are not going to pay “over the top” for the Hutchison’s stake in Hutch.

The company just managed to beat forecasts for customer sign-ups and crossed the 200 million user mark.

Chief Executive Arun Sarin said that the final decision in their battle for gaining a majority stake in Hutch is still sometime away.

There are at least four companies interested in Hutchison’s stake in Indian mobile service provider Hutch. Reliance, Hinduja Group, Essar and Vodafone have all shown their interests.

Sarin said in a statement on this battle: “(This asset is) very strategically aligned with what we have been saying to shareholders … We will participate fully, but we are not going to go over the top. We have twin financial criteria (for acquisitions), which we have highlighted. We will be using these criteria in determining what the ceiling price is.”

Labels: india, telecom, vodafone

Aditya Birla’s Idea Cellular is one of the several smaller players in the Indian mobile market. The company is planning to issue an IPO.

The company has fixed the price band for its forthcoming initial public offer between Rs 65 and Rs 75 a share.

This share is likely to be listed on both National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Idea said that the float is being routed through a 100 per cent book-building, aggregating to Rs 2,125 crore. They would be opening up the issue on February 12.

Idea has also concluded a pre-IPO placement of Rs 375 crore to certain of its promoters, directors and certain high net worth individuals.

Labels: cellular, idea, india

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications has said that they are collaborating with the US based Internet giants Yahoo! to bring the ability to communicate with their friends and relatives through mobile Yahoo! Messenger.

This service would be offered to all their customers throughout the country.

This Reliance’s Mobile Instant Messenger would be Yahoo’s first Wireless Village compliant implementation in Asia. This instant messaging solution has been developed by ACL Wireless for Reliance and Yahoo.

Reliance Communications would thus become the sole telecom service provider in the world to offer MIM across Java, BREW and WAP phones on a mobile operator network.

The subscribers to this service would get offline messages by SMS from their buddies on the Yahoo! Messenger service.

Labels: communications, india, reliance, telecom

India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The country nearly doubled the number of mobile users last year and the numbers are not slowing down.

Sources reveal that the country saw addition of as many as 74 million new mobile telephone subscribers last year. Not surprising, India is attracting a lot of global mobile service providers including the UK based Vodafone.

The country had just around 75.94 million mobile users at the end of the year 2005. The number is now around 149.5 million subscribers at the end of December last year. These figures were revealed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.

One of the main reasons for this growth is low rates for mobile communication in India. India boasts of some of the lowest tariff charges for mobile users in the world.

As a result, mobile service providers are focusing on increasing revenues through value added services. The GSM operators in the country have just announced that they would soon launch mobile instant messaging facilities on their networks.

Such services are necessary to attract more users to achieve the target of 500 million telephones, both fixed and wireless, by 2010 set by the Indian government.

Labels: cellular, india, mobile

With the implementation of CAS in the metros in India, the DTH players are playing it aggressively in India. DISH TV recently announced their decision to slash their DTH prices by almost half.

Now, Tata Sky has an amazing new offer for new customers where they are offering 103 channels and all interactive services free of monthly rentals for six months.

This means that the customers can save around Rs. 1800 on rentals if they get a Tata Sky DTH connection now.

Customers having multiple television sets can save more. Even Reliance has said that they would enter the DTH market with their Blue Magic service by the middle of next year.

Tata Sky said that their ‘Free Television Viewing for 6 months’ promotion is valid only in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata between Dec 28, 2006 and Jan10, 2007. Customers would be required to pay the setup and installation fee which comes to around Rs. 4000 per television set.

Customers are also waiting to get their hands on the MTNL provided IPTV service.

Labels: dishtv, sky, tata

The Financial Times has said in a news report that U.S. private equity groups Blackstone and Carlyle are currently talking with Indian telecom giants Reliance Communications.

The two groups are planning to invest as much as USD 1 billion in a new unit, which would work on telecoms tower business for Reliance.

This new entity is rumored to be called TowerCo and it might also receive investments from Singapore state investment agency Temasek and American Tower.

The report also said that Reliance is spinning off its wireless tower business to separate the heavy cost of building telecoms infrastructure from the parent company.

Defense Public Sector Enterprise Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has said in a statement that they have received an order to supply two lakh set top boxes (STBs) to Wire and Wireless India Limited (WWIL).

WWIL is a unit of the Zee Group and these set top boxes might be provided to the customers of CAS Service.

These boxes would be loaded with embedded conditional access software. It would allow the subscriber of the service to pick the channels of his choice and view them through this system. The deliveries are expected to begin from next month.

BEL said in a statement that they are in a position to meet the high volume requirements of service providers such as WWIL.

Telecom giants Reliance Communications has now announced the availability of a STD call card, which allows the subscriber to make STD calls at night for free.

This card costs around Rs. 675 and comes with a calling value of Rs. 601. Reliance said that people buying this card would be able to make free calls to any Reliance phone anywhere in India between 11 pm and 6 am.

For other calls made during the daytime, consumers would be required to pay Rs. 1 per minute. Reliance added that they believe that this card would be popular amongst couples staying apart or students in hostel wanting to keep in touch with their families.

Reliance said that this card could be used all Reliance post-paid, pre-paid phones.