You are browsing the archives of Mobile.

The August event of Mobile Monday Mumbai was held yesterday to discuss the consultation paper released by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on mobile value added services (VAS) recently. WATBlog was at the event to see what the esteemed panelists had to say about TRAI’s recommendation on regulating and licensing mobile value added services and other services to be provided via 3G and Next Generation Network (NGN).

The mobile and mobile VAS industry has been a popular topic on WATBlog for quite some time. While looking for some new news in the sector, I had a sense of feeling underfed on information about the business of mobile communication. This led me to find and list some interesting posts on the mobile industry and mobile advertising. This post lists 25 of the ones which I found most interesting and value adding.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today released recommendations on what could change the future of Internet Telephony in India. According to the recommendations released, the regulator claims that the Indian Government should remove all restrictions that have been imposed over Internet Telephony in India.

Mahanagar Telphone Nigam Limited (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigal Limited (BSNL) have come up with more aggressive pricing for their broadband offerings, starting from August 15, 2008. Yes, MTNL has cut its broadband charges by almost 50% in its bid to boost its user base in Delhi and NCR.

iPhone 3G - This is undoubtedly the only gadget, ever released by any company in the market, that has managed to generate so much hype that users all over the world are desperately awaiting the launch of the phone in their respective countries.

So, amidst all the speculations in the market, how much is the iPhone actually worth?

In this release, Airtel claims it has 2,60,000 subscribers for its mobile commerce services. Airtel now plans to use the eCogNito end-to-end mobile commerce platform by XIUS-bcgi. This will be on a pilot basis under a memorandum of understanding between the two companies.
Sunny DeWakar, president of XIUS-bcgi’s eCogNito division,
“Our eCogNito solution offers Mobile Network [...]

Orkut has quietly launched a feature that will take the orkut platform beyond the web and into people hands i.e. sms for your scraps. I personally feel this feature has come too late for the early adoptor segment which already seems to have moved on to things like facebook, twitter and the even more enthusiastic ones are feasting on friendfeed which kind of aggregates your social graph.

It seems that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecom (DoT) are all pumped up with their workings, so much so, that all the activity in the telecom market just refuses to die down. Barely a week after DoT released the guidelines for the auction of 3G spectrum in India, allowing even international players to participate, TRAI has now released guideline recommendations for allowing Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in the Indian Telecom Market.

Ubona is a Bangalore based company which has developed a patent-pending technology in voice recognition. The system recognizes what the user is saying and taking it as an input, triggers a real life application. Ubona has been invested in by Network 18.

The 3G scenario in India seems to be heating up big time. First, it was RCom trying to push the envelope for an early 3G rollout for the CDMA technology, which later got shelved because of the GSM market. Then came the announcements from Vodafone and Airtel to launch Apple’s iPhone 3G very soon. Not even a month after that, Airtel started promoting the launch of HTC Touch Diamond (touted as the iPhone killer) on televisions and print all over the country.

The mobile technology is advancing by leaps and bounds. A host of new features are being introduced into your average mobile phones. A simple mobile with a color screen, which was not possible for less that Rs. 10,000 is now made available for a mere Rs. 3000. Other features too have seen plethora of improvements in the recent years. One can find that manufacturers are trying to add more and more ‘computer’-istic features to a mobile phone.

Tata Sky plans to stay on top of the competition by riding the same tie-ups train. Apparently, Tata Sky has now planned to tie up with Sony Pictures and Fox News Corp for content in order to enhance its pay-per-view portfolio. The tie-up entitles Tata Sky to receive content such as movies and telecast of special events through their channels.

Here comes the opportunity of finally going paperless, as far as bus tickets are concerned. Thanks to Ticketvala.com, all you need to do is pay for it online and get the ticket delivered straight to your mobile.

DoT’s recently announced 3G policy comes as a ray of hope, bringing the technology even more closer to reality. However, not everyone is happy in the telecom land. It seems that the major GSM players will get to dance in the sun, while the CDMA operators wait in the dark alleys. Preferential treatment by DoT?

It all started with RBI suddenly realizing the importance & wide array of applications of mobile banking and planned to start working on operative norms! According to their draft, banks are supposed to get explicit written permissions from their customers and one time registrations to be done to take care of all formalities.