Reliance Communications announces quarterly results
Finally, the Anil Ambani controlled Reliance Infocomm thought it was time to declare results and bring some transperency. Blame it on the Indian government’s telecom policy or Ambani’s inherited busienss practice, it is still not very clear who holds how much in Reliance Infocomm with so many subsidiaries and cross holdings.
Anyway, lets take a closer look at the results. Results ? Where are they ??? Just this piece of release at the time this blog was written. I was really bent upon studying the numbers like Bharti-Airtel discloses(Indian GAAP and breakup of business segments) but I am disappointed. E-mails sent to ADA’s office were treated as though bloggers are like untouchables and the office thinks only newspapers as relevant media.
Reliance Communications had a revenue of Rs3250 crores and a net profit of Rs513 crores(No breakup given) for Q1 ending June-30 2006.. While Bharti-Airtel had revenues of Rs3856 crores and a net profit of Rs755 crores for the same period. Anyway, I personally recommend to avoid Reliance Communications until they really understand what corporate governance is or maybe they can hire services of N.R.Naryan Murthy 
Idea cellular to invest 2500 crores to expand to other circles.
Idea Cellular is planning all India footprint. Idea plans to apply for licenses in the remaining 12 circles, which are Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkatta amongst the Metros. Karnataka and Tamilnadu in Circle A. Punjab & West Bengal in Circle B. Bihar, Orissa, Assam, North East India and Jammu and Kashmir in Circle C. Idea is considering investing Rs2500 crores for these 12 circles through its holding company Aditya Birla Nuvo. This means we will have 5 telcos – Bharti-Airtel, Reliance, BSNL, Hutch and Idea operating all over India. As on today, Hutch and Idea appear to be the weaker telcos to offer complete bouquet consisting of mobile, landline, internet and triple play services.
Sanjeev Aga MD of Aditya Birla Nuvo said,
We are hopeful of getting licences in all circles and would start operations depending on the receipt of the approvals.
We will invest over Rs 2,500 crore to strengthen our existing network and extend our presence to new circles. We will invest in brand promotion to increase our visibility. More promotional activities will be seen in national TV and print, other than regional media houses
I had thought of consolidation in the Indian Mobile space with smaller operators who held less than 2 or 3 circles to sell out to others. Sure they sold, but to foreign entities. Sivsankran sold Aircel to Maxis and Spice sold 49% to Telekom Malaysia. Aircel has also applied for 8 more licenses in India.
Hutch lanuches Visual Radio – Improve your voice quality first, then Video
Hutch along with Radio Mirchi – India’s leading FM Radio provider, HP and Nokia has launched Visual Radio service in India. What is Visual Radio anyway ? It lets the user receive the local FM broadcast on his cell phone along with video being fed into it for users viewing pleasure. Hutch is the first operator to offer such a service in India.
It will be interesting to see the Quality of Service because Hutch cell phone users are so frustrated with their poor network infrastructure(Hutch works only indoors and the agents directly ask to have more connections in the locality if user needs an antenna which will act as a signal booster) atleast in Bangalore and Karnataka which is also evident by the poor addition of subscribers in the past quarter.
Bharti-Airtel profits rise 48 percent
Bharti-Airtel which recently crossed 25 million subscribers mark has reported outstanding quarterly profits for the quarter ending June-30th. Quarterly sales were up 53 percent compared to a year ago at Rs3860 crores and profits up 48 percent at Rs755 crores. Bharti also beat analysts expectations of 9% QoQ growth to achieve 13%. This was expected because of the strong addtions in subscribers. I will defer to analyze the results until we get Reliance Communications’ results on July-31st.
Reliance-Qualcomm roylaty issue deadlocked.
Reliance with support from IT minister Mr Maran is still insisting on lower royalties while the recently concluded board meeting of Qualcomm at San Deigo has affirmed that their will be no cut in royalties. The company release said that,
Qualcomm is committed to help the industry drive handset prices down and it involves multiple players and has nothing to do with negotiations on royalties with operators as they do not pay it.
So are Reliance ADAG officials now busy weighing options to rollover to GSM to deploy 3G ? Meanwhile, their is a good news that Reliance Communications will declare its quarterly results on July 31st.
15 years of IT & Telecommunications reforms in India
The day was July 24th, 1991, Dr.Manmohan Singh (current PM) then finance minister of India, read out his budget speech, opening the gates to foreign investors and liberalizing economic policies. Some of the major milestones achieved in the field of IT & Telecommunications are,
- 1991 – Private TV Channel gets the nod. Telephone subscriber base is at 4 Million.
- 1992 – ZEE TV is the first private channel operator in India. 0.41 Million homes with Cable TVs
- 1994 – Bids invited by Govt from private telecom operators to provide mobile services.
- 1995 – Government formulates Cable TV networks regulation act.
- 1996 – Private companies get into FM radio
- 1997 – TRAI comes into existence. Total TV homes in India reaches 60 Million
- 2001 – Government allows DTH. Permites 20% FDI in Telecom and 22 private FM stations launched. PC prices crash.
- 2002 – Mobile subscriber base is at 13 Million. Bandwidth prices are reduced by 25%.
- 2003 – Government issues DTH licenses and tables comprehensive Broadband and Convergence bill.
- 2004 – Zee becomes the first DTH services provider in India. Mobile phone subscribes base at 2.6 million.
- 2005 – Government clears FM Radio expansion. CDMA mobile service providers begin operations. Total mobile subscriber base around 80 Million
- 2006 – VoIP is legalized.Indian media and entertainment industry values at Rs35,300 crores($7.6 Billion). 65 Million cable and satellite TV homes. 110 Million TV homes. 8 Million DTH subscribers. FM radio licenses cross 300 mark. Mobile subscriber base at record level of 105 Million. ILD/ISD charges have come down to round Rs3.0/Minute via calling card. Check out for all the updates on Telecom and Mobile in India during 2006.
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