ZTE may bag entire Rs 4,000 crore BSNL deal for supply of GSM equipment
Economic Times
Telecom gear maker ZTE may end up being the sole supplier of GSM equipment to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd even though the state-run company had decided to give out the contract of 15 million lines in 60:40 ratio to two different suppliers. ZTE would probably bag the Rs 4,000-crore deal since its competitive bidders - Huawei, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks - have declined to match the lowest price of $50 per line quoted by ZTE, said three people familiar with the development.

Quippo bids Rs 3,000 crore for Banglalink's tower business
Economic Times
SREI group-promoted Quippo has made a nearly Rs 3,000-crore bid for the tower business of Bangladesh's second-largest mobile operator, Banglalink, two persons familiar with the development said. Banglalink, a subsidiary of Egypt-based Orascom Telecom, owns about 5,200 towers. SREI group's Arun Kapur is leading the negotiation, a senior executive said. The deal has been structured such that Viom Networks, majority owned by Tata Teleservices and managed by the SREI group, will receive a tower management contract on the back of the acquisition. Acquisition of Banglalink's towers can help increase cash flow at Viom, which owns and manages 38,500 towers in India.

Bharti Airtel to pay Rs 700 crore for customs duty evasion
Hindu Business Line
Bharti Airtel has been asked to pay over Rs 700 crore for customs duty evasion under a Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) order issued last week by its Bangalore bench. The case alleges "undervaluation of the imported goods and non-inclusion of the value of software in the imported goods." "If Airtel wants to appeal, it will have to go to the Supreme Court as with all cases relating to classification and valuation issues," a government official said.

Don't have any NPA in telecom sector, says SBI
Zee News
State Bank of India on Thursday said it does not have any non-performing asset (NPA) in the telecom sector. "All the loans which we have given are to large well known corporates against their group guarantees...There is not a single NPA in the telecom sector and in the 2G sector in this bank or for any other banking system," Santosh Nayar, Deputy MD Corporate Banking of SBI said. "The only thing that happens is since they have invested money in the 2G rollouts, they would have taken money from other group businesses and those businesses could come under some sort of strain," he added.

Nokia's 10000 job cuts: India not to see 'significant impact'
Economic Times
Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia on Thursday said it will cut 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013 but its Indian operations are unlikely to see any "significant impact." "These planned reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength," Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop said in his statement. Nokia also announced changes in senior management following the resignation of three officials. Nokia said it will make reduction in portfolio related to non-core assets, including possible divestments. Elop also said the company will provide support to those employees who are at risk of losing their jobs.

Zylog Systems expects WiFi revenue to double this fiscal
Business Standard
Information Technology (IT) products, services and solutions provider Zylog Systems Ltd., is expecting a revenue growth in its Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) business from Rs 30 crore, last year, to Rs 65 crore this year along with doubling its retail customer base for the business, and a revenue of Rs 80 crore from their e-governance business, up from Rs 25 crore last year. The company is planning to invest around Rs 80 crore this financial year, in the WiFi business, said senior executives from the company. The company is present in India in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Middle East, Singapore, and Malaysia. It also has three customers in the e-governance segment.

US lawmakers against India's market access policy
Business Standard
The United States Congress has joined the battle against India's new Preferential Market Access rules for procurement of electronic goods announced earlier this year. On Tuesday, members of Congress from both the Democratic and Republican parties wrote to India's ambassador, Nirupama Rao, asking the Indian government to reconsider its PMA policy and its impact on the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. John Neuffer, Vice President of global policy at the Washington, DC-based Information Technology Industry Council, said this was a high priority for American companies because India is a critically important market. The ITIC cites studies showing India's information technology (IT) and telecom markets are expected to grow to nearly $300 billion by 2015. Further, India continues to be one of the fastest growing telecom markets despite the global economic slowdown, with the country's total telephone subscriber base growing five-fold in the past six years.

Department of Telecom to bargain with telcos for lowering reserve price
Economic Times
The telecom department (DoT) has offered to reduce the reserve price for airwaves in the upcoming sale if existing mobile phone companies agree to match the auction-determined price for their frequencies over the remaining life of their licences. This proposal forms a key part of a package the DoT is attempting to cobble together to reach a settlement with companies that have vigorously opposed sector regulator TRAI's controversial recommendations on pricing and refarming of spectrum. Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices are unhappy with the proposals. All telecom licences in the country are valid for 20 years, and unlike pure-play GSM operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, the dual technology companies have more than 10 years to go before their permits expire.

Vodafone issue: Supreme Court can end the debate on retroactive amendments
Economic Times
Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy is disheartened with the government for introducing tax laws on a retrospective basis. "It does not matter what the intentions are. Nobody can understand intentions; people can only read the laws and then act," Murthy said in an interview to Morgan Stanley Research. Regarding the retrospective amendment to the income-tax law to make it clear that the government always intended to tax overseas deals leading to change of control of assets in India such as Vodafone's acquisition of Hutchinson Essar in 2007, he said that if not Vodafone, some investor is bound to move the Supreme Court to challenge the validity of retrospective amendments. The court can lay down guiding principles on retrospective amendments. As regards investors, what is required is certainty and transparency in tax policy.

DiViNetworks Gets the Green Light From China Telecom
Business Review India
China Telecom's Guangzhou Institute approved DiViNetworks' solutions, following lab tests targeted at China Telecom's 10G international links. DiViNetworks is pioneering Virtual Capacity - the most cost-effective method for data capacity expansion. The thorough testing conducted by China Telecom demonstrated 30-50% capacity expansion with general Internet traffic, and 10X capacity expansion with video traffic. DiViNetworks' systems fully complied with high-availability, scalability and network integration requirements. Barak Avitbul, CEO of DiViNetworks, said, "The growing penetration of broadband is inhibited by the high prices of Internet connectivity and DiViNetworks can remove this barrier."

Tata Communications in talks to buy stake in Prizm Payments Services
Economic Times
Tata Communications is negotiating to buy a substantial stake in Chennai-based Prizm Payments Services in order to expand its payment services business. The Tata Group company has appointed the investment banking arm of Standard Chartered Bank to act as its advisor. Besides the Tata Group, private equity investors such as Apax Partners and Avendus are also expected to put in initial bids. A substantial stake in Prizm Payments will provide a subsidiary of Tata Communications, TCBIL (Tata Communications Banking InfraSolutions Ltd.) an opportunity to scale up its business.

SAP India unveils Mobile Solutions Center in Mumbai
telecomlead.com
SAP India has unveiled its Mobile Solutions Center (MSC) in Mumbai. The Mobile Solutions Center in Mumbai is SAP's third in the world and second in India. The first center was set up in Bangalore. With this new center, businesses can connect with SAP mobile industry experts to learn best practices and to develop or expand their mobile strategy. The company said that the new center is dedicated to help customers experience SAP's mobile innovations as well as understand how to integrate mobile solutions into their business strategy. SAP plans ten more Solutions Centers across the globe, including upcoming one in New Delhi.

Engineers unveil two-way wireless breakthrough
Phys.Org
Groundbreaking two-way wireless technology resulting in vastly superior voice and data services has been developed by a University of Waterloo engineering research team led by Amir K. Khandani, the Canada Research Chair in Wireless Systems. The new technology enables wireless signals to be sent and received at the same time on a single radio channel frequency. "This means wireless companies can increase the bandwidth of voice and data services by at least a factor of two by sending and receiving at the same time, and potentially by a much higher factor through better adaptive transmission and user management in existing networks," said Khandani.

Opera, the true underdog browser, releases version 12
Time Techland
When people refer to the five major web browsers, they're talking about Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. With under two percent market share according to most sources, Opera is by far the least major of the majors, if you're talking about sheer usage. The venerable Norwegian browser is one that's frequently among the first to add new stuff. On June 14, it released Opera 12, a new version for Windows, OS X and Linux, with some meaningful new features. Opera 12 also retains some unique features-most notably its Opera Turbo mode, which compresses web pages on the server side so they load more quickly over sluggish Internet connections.

Vodafone deploys internal social network
iT News
Vodafone has deployed salesforce.com's enterprise collaboration tool Chatter to 4500 of its business and retail sales staff to avoid unsanctioned use of Facebook and Yammer. Vodafone sales system specialist Murray Elliott said Vodafone's head office, management, sales and retail branch staff used the tool to collaborate on projects, post questions and answers and share information on products.

Licensing To Support The Mobile Broadband Revolution

GSMA

Traditionally, many governments imposed highly prescriptive operating and spectrum licences that required operators to supply only certain services and/or use specific technology (although other countries have not had separate operating and spectrum licences). Given the rapid pace of technological and market developments, restrictive licensing requirements will limit operators' ability to make the best use of their networks to supply services and risk delaying the investment required to introduce new broadband services. Detailed spectrum licences that are specific to one operator, type of service, network or technology also risk distorting competition if operators supplying competing services face different licence conditions. While, in the past, operators have been subject to extensive restrictions, many licensing authorities provide little guidance on their own approaches to forthcoming spectrum issues. This increases regulatory risk and deters operators from making the large investments required to deploy new technologies and services.