Recently Trai has issued a notice about the telecom operators percentage contribution to the billing disputes by Aircel, Vodafone, Idea, BSNL and MTS which varies between 0.11 percent and 2.42 percent. Of which lowest score is 2.42 percent scored by Aircel’s Maharashtra.

Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Kolkata, Karnataka, Punjab and Rajasthan were most of the disputed regions where Aircel postpaid bill has dropped from 0.11 to 0.25 percent.

Jammu and Kashmir, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa also face the same billing dispute but only to the prepaid segment customers. In terms of percentage Aircel has contributed almost 0.11 to 2.42 percent in the above following circles.

Gujarat, Haryana and Karnataka were facing off the same problem i.e. non-compliant billing benchmark for Idea postpaid subscribers.

As per Trai’s new report, Aircel & Idea were the two telco operators could not resolve  the billing benchmark issue.

Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (East) were some circles where Vodafone does not meet Trai’s billing benchmark expectation not fulfilled by the company in terms of postpaid segment. In prepaid segment company faces 0.24 percent bill disputes in Bihar circle.

Recently as per news launched by the regulator lot of customers is saying that a call is being answered nowadays in more than one minute from the so-called operators like Aircel, BSNL, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Uninor and Vodafone.

Recently Trai has recomended FDD technology for Govt before deploying 700 MHz 4G premium services in India & must be followed from diferent telecom operators end.

 Globaly FDD-LTE is the most predominant technology, but in India some operators have launched 4G services via. TD-LTE technology. Of which Bharti Airtel has deployed 4G services via TD-LTE technology & soon Videocon another telco operator will deploy 4G services via FDD-LTE technology.

Again Trai has recomended all Indian operators to use 700 MHz spectrum band (698-806 MHz) with FDD based 2×45 MHz frequency arrangement.

On 19th August 2011 Trai has issued IMT, ‘Advanced Mobile Wireless Broadband Services’ Consultation paper to know the stakeholders view & make the way for IMT.

 Trai commented by saying that “Some of these issues, which were mainly regulatory in nature, got covered in the recommendation on ‘Auction of Spectrum’ dated 23rd April, 2012.”

 As we know that Videocon Mobile Services a part of $4 billion Videocon Group, has made a bold decision to make roaming free on pan india basis by making incoming calls free. To avail this benefit, customers have to make a special recharge.

Earlier if the customers was on roaming then for local call the rate will be Re 1 per minute, std call the rate will be Rs 1.5 per minute, Local & STD roaming SMS charges will be Rs 3.45, 10paise per 10kb is the data consumption.  

2.06 million is the current subscriber base by February month as per COAI & offering services in seven circles.

One Nation, One Rate Policy has to be already followed by Aircel in January 2013 for Voice, SMS and Data as a one rate in home circles & roaming.

“We aim at being a country free of any physical or geographical boundaries, and in pursuance of the visionary recommendations as underlined in the National Telecom Policy 2012, we reiterate our commitment towards ‘One Nation – Free Roaming’. To extend the benefits of freedom of movement across our network, we have introduced this offering where our subscribers roaming across Videocon Network will stand to benefit from free incoming calls. There are no strings attached to the proposition, no STVs/recharges required,” as per Director & CEO Videocon Mobile Services, Arvind Bali.

New special tariff plan is available for Delhi/NCR at Rs 39 & 30 days validity& already available in different denomination for different circle.

   Single Phone number like 100 or 108 to be used in India for emergency purposes like dialing police or fire or ambulance as per recent public comments.

100 for police, 101 for fire, 102 for ambulance and 108 for emergency disaster management were the current emergency numbers used in India.

911 in USA, 999 in UK and 000 in Australia were the single digit emergency numbers used in ths different countries.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is already consulting based on the research paper of Universal Single Number Based Integrated Emergency Communication and Response System (IECRS) to finalize 100 or 108 as an emergency number.

 If we take 100 as a suitable candidate for emergency number then we want to know its importance since this number is used nationwide for calling the police related services.

Similarly, if we choose 108 as a suitable candidate for emergency number position then it also possess some strong importance like EMRI ( Emergency Management and Research Institute) across more than ten states is being used.

 Primary or secondary access numbers should be there as per Trai’s thinking policy as like IECRS in the country on the lines of other countries.

”112 in Australia (in addition to 000) &  112 in UK (in addition to 999) were some of the secondary emergency numbers exists,Calls from this number are again routed to primary response numbers in these countries,” as per Trai comments.

Few questions still arises towards Trai’s end like inactive SIMs or handsets without SIMs can be used to dial an emergency number & for IECRS implementation how funding cost will be provided.

Recently no penalty has been imposed to telco operators on the MNP issue when subscribers want to switch from one operator to other the request get rejects & in most of the cases service providers are not following the rules & already Parliament has informed about this matter today.

 As per Telecommunications Mobile Number Portability (Fourth Amendment) regulations, held in Sep’2012 under which operators will be imposed to financial dis-incentives for unjustified rejection of porting requests.

Bharti Airtel (37,16,966), Vodafone (27,63,957), Idea/Spice (21,05,882), Tata TeleServices Limited (GSM) (8,74,468), Aircel (8,21,917), Reliance Communication Limited (GSM) (8,00,567) among others were the data available between November 2010 and February 25, 2013 where users have raised port out complaints.

A new regulations has been passed on Telco Operators by Trai to implement or run the telco towers on Hybrid Power a mixture of renewable energy and grid power & and as per directive 20 % of all telco towers in urban areas & 50 % of all telco towers in rural areas should run on this new technology by 2015.

Again most of the towers has amost huge quantity of diesel consumption, so 75 percent of rural teco towers & 33 percent of urban telco towers to be switched to hybrid power mode at the end of 2020.

 Again as per Trai’s new protective & control measures every telco products, equipments & servicea should be certified under named Green Passport by 2015 run by body controlled under DoT named as Telecommunication Engineering Centre which verifies all matters related to telco field operations.

 Trai also passed on a serious comment “All service providers should declare to TRAI, the carbon footprint of their network operations. The declaration of the carbon footprints should be done twice in a year.”

Again there is warfare between some major telco operatos like Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Docomo & Reliance in terms of Mobile User complaints mostly in terms of billing, VAS Chargeable issues, tariff issues.

As per Milind Deora our honourable Minister of State for Communication and IT has passed out an information received from Trai that almost 2,419 complaints were registered during the current financial year 2012-13 related mostly to billing & tariff complaints related to overcharging.

Mobile User Complaints is normally considered  as the biggest black mark in the history of telecom industry.

If we talk about the number of user complaints received by Trai was mostly from Airtel (745) followed by Vodafone (505), then Tata Docomo (345), Rcom (329), Idea Cellular (194), Bharat Sanchar Nigma Ltd (BSNL) (122), MTNL (36) and all others (143). 

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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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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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One of the most innovative brand under Tata Teleservices Ltd. has recently launched 3 unique postpaid sms packs for their GSM & CDMA subscribers. The SMS Packs are like:

1. SMS Value (29) – Usage (600 Local + National per month)

2.SMS Value (49) – Usage (1500 Local + National per month)

3.SMS Value (69) – Usage (3000 Local + National per month)

By announcing this new attractive offers Tata Docomo is really expanding its portfolio differentiated offerings—be it
products or services. It is in continuation of our promise to bring forth value for money plans that suit the various needs of our customers.Yatish Mehrotra, Hub Head-South, Tata DOCOMO said this SMS service is an of our maxim of providing a refreshing experience to Tata DOCOMO postpay customers across Karnataka circle.

As per current TRAI regulation, post 100 SMS in a day, all SMS will be charged at base rate.

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