A free roaming plan has been put forwarded by Vodafone to the mobile customers in Kerala who are frequently travelling towards the neighboring states like Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.

This plan can be regarded as operator’s first plan to make the incoming calls free while the customers from Kerala where on roaming, so they can rejoice the plan.

To enjoy the free roaming option Vodafone India has launched a 21 rs bonus card for Kerala’s customers when they are visit to states like Karnataka & Tamil Nadu, this card will make their incoming call free but their outgoing calls will be charged at 1.2 p/sec. 30 days is the estimated time for this tariff plan.

There is a simple activation procedure for this new tariff plan for Vodafone’s customer in Kerala i.e. by sending sms to “BONUS R21″ to 144.

One & only reason behind the introduction of such plan is to keep the Kerala’s customer hassle free since they move to this states like Tamil Nadu & Kerala for daily business purposes.

New plans for 4G customers may soon get introduced from major telco company named as Bharti Airtel. The plan is to start a voice calling facilities for Airtel’s 4G Subscribers in their 4G network deployed circles.

Its been a speculation that Airtel may use NSN to deploy voice calling facilities on their existing GSM network.

Already Airtel is offering the 4G/LTE data services to locations like Pune, Bangalore & Kolkata.

As per Airtel by using NSN equipments, Airtel will shift their customers to GSM network platform to enjoy voice mails & voice calling feature & at the same time customers also can take advantage of 4G data feature on their 4G smart phone.

Airtel’s CTO and Director Jagbir Singh told in a statement that “The solution will enable our 4G customers to enjoy high-quality voice services on GSM network and ultra-fast data services on TD-LTE platform – thereby allowing them to have a unified experience on a 4G handset.”

Thorsten Robrecht NSN’s head of Mobile Broadband portfolio management  “This achievement of enabling world-first voice call fallback from TD-LTE to GSM in live network is yet another milestone in our efforts to strengthen the commercialisation and deployment of TD-LTE technology globally.”

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Recently quite a number of subscribers have been port out from different service providers & data of around 80.06 million figure has been released by Trai.

Northen & Western fallens into the MNP-I zone where Rajasthan tops the list with 7.59 million, 6.94 million figure followed from Gujrat end, Southern & Eastern India drops into MNP-II zone where Karnataka receives most no of MNP requests i.e. 9.90 million & 7.40 million MNP subscriber figure in Andhra Pradesh.

2.94 million is the number of subscribers who has already submitted MNP applications in December 2012.

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Recently in a meeting headed by Mr. P Chidambaram in EGoM (Empowered Group of Ministers) decided to reduce the CDMA auction of 800 MHz band by 50 percent.

The price will be 4,500 crore for 25 MHz spectrum in 800 MHz band if it is approved by the cabinet.

Already EGoM has decided to lower the reserve price of CDMA spectrum by 30% in circles like Delhi, Mumbai, Karnataka, and Rajasthan. Similarly the price of 900 MHz band is almost twice that of 1800 MHz band which will be conducted in circles like Delhi, Mumbai, and Karnataka.

Again the Govt. has fixed the base price of 800 MHz band spectrum 1.3 times higher than 1800 MHz band spectrum in the auction happened in November 2012 which failed to attract bidders. The pan-India base price for 5 MHz of spectrum in 1800 MHz band was fixed at Rs 14,000 crore.

The November auction earned almost 9,700 crore out  of 40,000 crore as expected by the government.

Similarly  lot of companies who are operating in CDMA band are now suffering. If we take MTS who has over 16 million subscribers. Out of which 1.7 million are that of its data services.

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To improve 3G network facility over the pan India basis tel-co operators  has sought to install 29,700 towers dedicatedly for 3G network by the end of 2014.

As per latest data from IT & Communication department Minister Milind Deora who told to install nearly  16,526 & 13,174 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) for deploying 3G services in the year 2012-13 & 2013-14.

Deora has informed to the Parliament about the installation of 96,212 BTSs in the 610 districts of the country to provide adequate 3G services to the respective subscribers.

The proposed plan for 3G BTS installation in the year 2012-2013 by different operators are 4,026 3G BTS in Karnataka, 1,715 BTS in Tamil Nadu, 1,703 in Bihar, 1,488 in Delhi, 1,085 in Mumbai & 1,004 in Rajasthan & among others.

The proposed plan for 3G BTS installation in the year 2013-2014 by different operators are 1,399 3G BTS in Mumbai, 2,740 in Delhi, 1,550 in Andhra Pradesh & among others.

As per latest data obtained currently Tamil Nadu possess 9,350 no, of BTSs & occupying the top position in the county, next Delhi with 8,405 BTSs, Maharashtra with Mumbai possess 8,377 BTSs.

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Kapil Sibal Telecom Minister announced about the introduction of new nationwide Mobile Number Portability (MNP) where the subscribers can easily roam from one state to another state.

Kapil Sibal on a meeting told that DoT has made a broad agenda for next three months from December 2012 to February 2013 following the ‘’ National Telecom Policy 2012’’

For this new telecom policy some new initiatives need to be taken into consideration i.e. spectrum assignment and pricing should be approved, unified licenses regime, M&A guidelines, finalization of guidelines for spectrum sharing, creation of fund for R&D and manufacturing and of course, MNP on a nationwide basis to be completed by February 2013 added by Mr. Sibal.

Right now a subscriber can switch operator only in a particular circle.

Again in India total number of Telecom circles is 22.

75.14 million Subscribers have submitted their requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number in the month of October 2012 as per TRAI.

In the month of September 2012, total number of subscribers who have submitted their request for MNP stood at 5.36 million.

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1,500 crore rupees subsidy provided by Govt. of India to BSNL for the land-line deployment in rural areas.

Already as per TRAI’s recommendation to provide Rs 2,700 crore to BSNL for this huge operation, but the amount will be given in two parts one in the year 2011-12 of around Rs 1,500 crore & rest amount in the year 2012-13, since these kind of rural operations would generate revenues in a longer period of time.

Again BSNL has asked around Rs 2,580 crore for rural operations. The amount will be paid out under Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund.

R Chandrasekhar, Chairman and Secretary (Telecom) commission’s have forwarded the recommendations to DoT.

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Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL), a telecom service operator beneath the MTS brand, has proclaimed new assistance of its data service ‘MBlaze’ for its prepaid customers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

SSTL, whose 21 licenses have been cancelled by the Supreme Court, has launch two new offers where in users who reimburse three months tariff in advance will get 3GB and 5GB free data adjacent to with a data card.

“MTS is dedicated to its data focused-voice facilitate approach. We have begin these propositions which can be availed of by prepaid consumers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,” SSTL Chief Operating Officer (Karnataka and Tamil Nadu), Suresh S. Kumar, said in a statement.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has in its Karnataka Circle proclaimed a alteration in the tariff of promotional offer ‘New Karnataka Mitra Scheme’

With the new plan, now the Cost of the Plan Voucher for New Karnataka Mitra is Rs.29 and is valid to both 2G & 3G New Karnataka Mitra Scheme.
Now BSNL is contributing the new SIM for the ‘New Karnataka Mitra Scheme’ at Rs.20 for a 2G SIM & Rs.59 for the 3G SIM. With the SIM BSNL will go on to bid firstly free talk value 50 minutes of local calls which will bear a validity of 30 days. Also customers will obtain 100 SMS/month.

Note:-

Plan Voucher -29 has to be activated through CTOP UP only.

1. 50 Minutes free talk time is only for Local calls to any network and metering is done at 60 sec pulse rate for this free usage of 50 minutes . Freebies to be used within 30 days from the date of use of Plan Voucher.

Voice Tariff per second comes as a part of the scheme.

1. The customers can choose the 5 Friends and Family numbers by sending  SMS FFE<space>1stnumber<space> 2ndnumber<space>3rdnumber<space>4th number<space>5th number to 53733 .
2. The customers can change the Friends and Family numbers by sending SMS FFM<space>1stnumber<space> 2ndnumber<space>3rdnumber<space>4th number<space>5th number to 53733 . M ,indicates modification.Rs.10 per change per number will be charged.

Initial validity will be 180 days , after the expiry of validity the customers have to use Plan Voucher costing Rs.29 for further extension. Similarly the customers who wish to migrate to New Karnataka Mitra Scheme also can use the Plan Voucher costing Rs.29.

Existing Karnataka Mitra customers, in case recharge with plan voucher-29 for extending validity, they will be migrated to New Karnataka Mitra plan & they have re-register F&F numbers once again.