MobilePhone.co.in

The Telecom Regulatory Authority in India has recently reported that in the month of July this year, 17 million new mobile phone users were added. With this big figure of 17 million, now the total number of mobile subscribers in India has reached 652.42 million as per the TRAI reports. The recent figures clearly indicates that mobile phone market in India is growing at a fast pace and large number of subscribers are added every month.

In June this year, the total telephone subscribers in the country including mobile phone as well as landline were 671.69 million and this figure rose to 688.38 by July end.  With the addition of large number of subscribers in July, the teledensity which is the figure showing telephones per 100 people has reached 58.17%.

Bharti Airtel grabbed the first position showing the growth in the wireless category as it made an addition of 2.6 million subscribers. Next comes the Reliance Communications with new 2.5 million subscribers. Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Aircel and Tata Teleservices respectively added 2.4 million, 1.8 million, 1.6 million and 2.3 million new subscribers in the month of July.

There seems to be a ray of hope for all the mobile users who were fed of the unwanted and untimely telemarketing calls as chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), JS Sarma has recently stated that they are all set to issue the regulations for the unsolicited calls by this month end.

Thus all those people who in spite of having getting themselves registered at Do Not Call Registry were getting those pesky calls can now expect to get rid from them by September end this year. It was stated by Mr. Sarma that TRAI has conducted various open house discussions and consultations with various stakeholders and are in the process of finalising the rules for the unsolicited commercial calls. He stated that final regulation will be out during this month of September.

Once the guidelines on the unsolicited calls are out, they will immediately come into effect.

The Department of Telecom has formed a 9 member internal committee in order to examine the recommendations of TRAI on spectrum as the Telecom Minister, A Raja has decided to refer the matter to the EGoM. This committee will be headed by Chander Prakash, Member (Technology), Wireless Advisor and Telecom Commission.

The committee will examine the report on the Spectrum Management and Licensing Framework in details and then the report will be placed before the Telecom Commission.

The TRAI in its report which was submitted on 11^th of May suggested that one time fee from the telecom operators should be charged for the spectrum which is held beyond 6.2 MHz. It was also recommended that quantum of airwaves should be limited to 8Hz in most of the circles.

Diverse views has been given by the operators on TRAI report with the GSM players like Vodafone, Bharti and Idea opposing any move so as to charge the spectrum beyond 6.2MHz whereas the CDMA operators like RCom and other new players support TRAI.

In order to improve the services of telecom and to make the tariff plans easier to understand the telecom regulator, TRAI will now audit the Quality of telecom services quarterly instead of annually.

A senior TRAI official stated that “From July this year, we shall be doing quarterly audit. Till now, every three months the service providers submit data on defined parameters of Quality of Service but audit was done annually by TRAI.”

This step by TRAI will put the pressure on service providers so as to constantly upgrade their networks and swiftly render the complaints of subscribers.

TRAI is also planning to simplify the tariff plan literatures which are offered by the operators because the subscribers do not get the correct information regarding the hidden costs and the benefits of different plans.

Moreover a web based “Telecom Consumer Grievances Monitoring Systems” will also be launched by 15^th of July this year which will enable the customers to lodge their complaints and monitor their redressal on the web through internet.

It has been recently stated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India that the base of wireless subscriber has increased from 601.12 million in April to 617.53 million at the end of the May which shows a growth rate of 2.71%. The wireless teledensity at the end of May was 52.30%.

Among all the telecom operators, Bharti Airtel got the maximum net additions with 3 million new subscribers and the company was followed by Reliance Communications at 2.8 million, Vodafone at 2.6 million, Tata Teleservices at 2.4 million, Aircel at 1.6 million and Idea with 1.4 million new subscribers. The stated owned BSNL and MTNL had 1 million and 39,000 new subscribers respectively.

Of all the circles, A, B, C and metros, the maximum number of wireless subscribers were achieved by Circle B which was 6.3 million. Following circle B was Circle A which added 5.3 million subscribers then Circle C with 2.5 million and finally the metros which added 2.2 million subscribers.