Uninor the Norweigan Telecom service provider has appointed a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) named as Yogesh Malik who will soon step into action.

Brekke also commented that Yogesh Malik started hic career as a CEO in Uninor in the year 2011,“He has played an instrumental role in establishing Uninor as the most affordable mobile operator. His focus on operational efficiency and innovations that benefit the mass market has contributed to making Uninor India’s fastest growing service provider.”

“Taking responsibility for our Indian operations was always meant to be temporary, but with all the challenges that we faced, my period in India became longer than intended,” as per comment came from MD, Mr. Brekke.

655.59 million is  the 2G mobile subscriber base &  1.97 million is the figure by which user base has fall & 8 millions users get decreased by the Uninor operator as per data released by the industrial body COAI.

657.56 million is the subcriber figure released in the last month i.e. Jan’2013.

 Again after closing down operations in several circles like Mumbai our new operator named as Uninor which is currently operating in six circles & have currently subscriber base of 31.77 million after losing 8.34 million subcribers.

 As per statement released by Uninor “The loss of subscription in February also reflects the scale Uninor was able to build within three years in the circles it was compelled to close down.”

Currently 1.2 lakh new subscribers has been added by Uninor in their recent operating circles.

Besides Aircel having 60.87 million subscriber figure after losing 0.69 million users, Videocon having 2.06 million subscriber base after letting off 0.19 million users, state-owned BSNL-MTNL having 4.91 million user base after losing 0.20 million.

 Vodafone has surprisingly added 2.18 million new users & puuting their user base to 149.88 million, Bharti Airtel also following the same path by including 2.42 million pushing the base to 186.62 million, Idea Cellular also added 2.85 million users & taking their base to 119.25 million.

 A new recharge soon to be initated from Uninor’s end i.e, better known as ”Rocket Recharge”. This new recharge pack will comence in six operating circles like Uttar Pradesh East & West, Maharastra and Goa, Bihar Jharkhand, Gujarat and Andra Pradesh within next 30 days. The maeans of Rocket Recharge is to provide exact solution of different recharges available to customers generated from automated system.

 Amaresh Kumar, Chief Product Officer of Uninor commented that “The system analyses usage pattern of customers and recommends an ideal recharge amount with freebies such as extra talk time, SMSes or a discounted VAS service.”

Circle Business Head (Andhra Pradesh), Satish Kannan said “Rocket Recharge has received good response from over 7.35 lakh subscribers in the pilot launch.”

 Amaresh Kumar, Chief Product Officer of Uninor  replied that“The system analyses usage pattern of customers and recommends an ideal recharge amount with freebies such as extra talk time, SMSes or a discounted VAS service.”

Already Alcatel-Lucent has won a huge contract of 1 billion USD for RCOM for 7 years  managed services in India & now it has won contract for managed and transformation services to Telewings Communications Private Limited a total own unit of Telenor Company operating in India, but this service for Alcatel-Lucent will be operating in 3 circles like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh covering over 250 million subscribers.

Key Facts:

• Telewings will benefit from Alcatel-Lucent’s proven experience and delivery model, ensuring customers have the highest quality network experience possible.
• Alcatel-Lucent will leverage its global managed services expertise and tools to deliver network transformation services focusing on improved customer experience management and operational efficiency.
• Bell Labs, the research organization within Alcatel-Lucent, will provide expertise on network and business modeling to achieve Telewing’s transformational objectives.
• Alcatel-Lucent will deploy established standards-based network performance tools and expertise to improve and transform existing networks.
• As a leader in transformation and managed services, Alcatel-Lucent has a proven track record of supporting customers through highly skilled and experienced local presence, along with the benefit of a company with global scale.

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Recently all the telco operators has hiked their voice tariff as well as GPRS tariff like Airtel, Vodafone & Idea has reduced the 2G data tariff by Rs 98, Uninor has reduced  6GB to 3GB data & the price stands at Rs 90, Earlier Tata Docomo was providing 6GB data at STV 95 & right now the tariff has revised to 3GB for STV 98. Most notably Govt. based telco operator BSNL also reduced the 2G data usage from 2GB to 1.25GB at STV 98.

There were some major changes in this 2G data plans introduced by these telco operators.

1. For Rs 95-99, 650 MB in 21 days ( earlier it was 1 GB for 30 days).

2.For Rs 123-126, 1 GB in 30 days.

3. For Rs 145-149, 1.25 GB in 30 days, earlier it was  1.5GB or 30 days.

4. For Rs 198, 2 GB + Unlimited @ 40kbps for 30 days which was earlier priced at Rs 149.

Likewise 45 percent more data is being offered only by BSNL on home & roaming network.

Norwegian biggie operator named as Telenor has put forward a letter for reducing the GSM Spectrum prices on the upcoming auction to be held by Communication & Information Ministry. As the Telenor is operating under name Uninor brand & in their letter to the ministry the company had told that it will impossible to take part in the auction with such high prices.

As per some reports Telenor/ Uninor has asked the Govt. to reduce the price of GSM Spectrum for rhe auction similar to that of CDMA spectrum. Likely Govt. has reduced CDMA Spectrum auction by 50 percent that of GSM Spectrum auction by 30 percent after such a terrific response from those operators participated in the last auction in November 2012. The Govt. has set the base price to Rs 14,000 for 5 Mhz in the last auction, especially the price were considerably high for the Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Karnataka circles.

Sigve Brekke Executive Vice-President and Head of Asia Operations for Telenor told to the Govt. that if the prices set for the GSM Spectrum is so high then this cost will put the telecom operators out of auction.

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COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India) one organization which tracks subscriber database of GSM operators. Recently, Operators have subscriber base of around 657.16 million already given away 6.62 million i.e. down by 1 percent from November month.

There were quite several reasons behind such reduction of subscriber base. One of them is inactive SIMs disconnection & another is customer verification of SIM on every new connection.

The number of subscriber lost by Vodafone is 3.28 m, Airtel is 1.7 m, Idea is 0.19m & Aircel is 1.97 m. On the other hand Uninor is on the profitable side by adding up 0.91 m subscribers due to the cheaper tariff plans.

Rajan Mathews COAI director told that “GSM customer numbers continue to drop as there has been a visible reduction in growth adds since there’s been no relaxation in DoT’s tough customer verification rules, coupled with the weeding out of idle customers being undertaken by all GSM carriers’’.

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The much unexpected controversial 2G spectrum scam which resulted into cancellations of several operator’s license like MTS, Videocon, Tata Teleservices Ltd. & Telenor in India. Recently, Supreme Court has given order to MTS India & Videocon to continue offering services in Mumbai circle.

The date has been extended to 4^th February 2013 for the service provider. Actually their license last date was 18^th January 2013.

Again the DoT has filed a petition against Supreme Court for the Operators like MTS India (all circles) & Uninor (Mumbai circles) to extend their date till next spectrum auction to be held in March 2013.

Already as per Supreme Court’s order two brand telco operators named as MTS India under Russian Sistema Teleservices & Uninor under brand name Telenor will run their GSM service in India especially in Mumbai circle where it permits have been revoked  beyond January 18 deadline.

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TRAI has recently ordered a notice against those operators who has failed to win spectrum in some circles & also the operators need to inform the mobile users within 10 days.

The operators who are facing this terrible situation are Uninor, SSTL, Videocon, and TTSL. Recently, Uninor on Monday inform its mobile customers regarding closing its operations in Kolkata & West-Bengal.

In a statement TRAI has told to operators to file a compliance report within 15 days regarding closing down its operations.

Likewise 2 well known operators i.e. Uninor & MTS has to inform its subscriber within days before discontinuation of its services.

But Tata Teleservices has informed to TRAI regarding its closing in operation in circles like Assam, North-East, Jammu & Kashmir within January 18^th 2013.

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Recently the Telco watch dog of India TRAI has issued a strict guidelines for all tel-co operators to maintain high quality standards in their wireless services.

Already TRAI has recommended all Wireless Service Providers to set up a test consisting of servers & test probes in those geographical locations where the providers possess licenses as per Wireless Data Services Regulations, 2012.

TRAI has recommended Wireless Service Providers to maintain following benchmarks like: activation or provision of data services, download/upload data transmission successful attempts from a test server, as per tariff plans maintain download speed from the test server, average Throughput for Packet data from a test server for all tariff plans, latency for data services from a test server, PDP Context Activation Success Rate and data Drop rate.

Lastly, the Wireless Service Providers must mention all the tariff plans & the kinds of data services available as per circles in their websites.

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