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Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently released its data which states that in the month of October this year a total number of 18.98 million subscribers were added.  As per the data Bharti Airtel stood at the first position for grabbing the largest number of subscribers with 3 million.

After Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar grabbed the second position whereas Unitech stood at the third position for having the largest number of added subscribers. The state owned telecom operators BSNL and MTNL grabbed the major combined share of 82.3%.

The month of October witnessed a growth of 2.76 % as compared to the previous month. The base of mobile subscriber in September this year was 687.71 million which rose to 706.69 million in October. The data by TRAI also revealed that the teledensity of wireless increased to over 59.52 %.

As compared to mobile phones, the landline subscribers in the country witnessed a drop as in September it was 35.57 million whereas in October it became 35.43 million.

If telecom regulator TRAI gets its way, all mobile phone thefts will become a thing of the pus and thieves will soon lose business. The regulator had issued the proposal for the blocking of international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number of stolen handsets. For their part, telecom operators have expressed agreement for the technical feasibility of the proposal.

If the measure is approved by parliament and implemented, all stolen mobile phones will be automatically blocked. Thiees will nolonger be able to use them, much less sell and traffic k them.

The creation of a central data base of IMEI  numbers of stolen phones has already been suggested by mobile operators. They said that the data can be shared by service providers. The IMEI is a unique 15-digit code which comes with every cellular phone device. It is the phone’s ID, so to speak. If the number is blocked, the phone will no longer be usable. There is also the proposal to legislate measures against cloning of IMEI numbers.

The TRAI has denied the request of all the mobile companies, in which they have demanded that they should be paid by the subscriber to shift from one network from another when they are using the mobile portability. The TRAI has also scolded the companies for charging high cost on short code number like 1900 which is ben created to enable the portability of numbers and asked the companies to treat those messages as normal SMS.

The TRAI has examined the request raised by the service providers and find out that there is no extra work is required for the operator to transfer from one network to other and the only requirement for the subscriber is to clear the dues before transferring to another network. So, now you need not to pay extra charges for the mobile portability service while you are switching from one network to another.

The telecom regulator Trai has urged about the cancellation of 69 licenses for not fixing out its services within given one year after the grant of spectrum. Again the whole attention goes towards the current chief vigilance commissioner and former secretary in the department of telecommunications, Mr. PJ Thomas. Thomas got hold of the CVC this year in September and was serving in the department of telecommunications so to take actions against the violation of the rolling out norms.

The three officials were given the responsibility to look upon when the conditions laid for the licenses were bounded regarded to the rollout of the services. If they found that the performance was not good then they could take actions by charging them the heavy penalties or could do the cancellation. According to the reports the member-technology in the Telecom Commission, AK Srivastava and DoT secretary was the officials who were holding the responsibility to take action.

The Chairman of TRAI, J S Sharma has recently stated that the regulation to solve the problem of unsolicited calls as well as messages will come out by 15^th of November this year. As per Mr. Sharma,   the complete process of consultation is finished and TRAI is in the final stages for the formulation of the regulation which will be out by 15^th of November.

He also stated that in some of the telecom circles, the regulators are also testing the technicalities which are related to the regulation which is proposed.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has also tried various attempts in the past to get rid from the problem of these pesky calls and messages but they were not successful in getting any desired results.   A Do Not Call registry was launched by telecom regulators 3 years ago but it was not able to give the expected results.

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.

A proposal of changing the mobile numbers from 10 to 11 digits has been recently rejected by Telecom Authority of India and they have stated that the present scheme of 10 digit numbering will be continued so as to avoid the inconvenience to the users.

A twp pronged strategy was also recommended by TRAI stating that migration to “Integrated Numbering Scheme” should be done by India for the Fixed Land Line and Mobile Services by the December 31^st this year.

As per the recommendation, both the fixed line as well as mobile will have a 10 digit number.  As per TRAI this would help to have enough numbers to provide expansion of the services for the next 30 to 40 years. Extension of number portability to the fixed lines will also be facilitated by the recommended integrated numbering system. In order to make the intra circle calls from the fixed lines to the mobile phones will have a prefix of “0” until the integrated scheme is implemented.

All the mobile phone users who wish to change their service provider without changing their existing mobile number, there is good news from them as the chairman of TRAI, JS Sharma has recently announced that the mobile portability will becomes effective by 31^st of October this year. He stated that “There will be no further delay in the implementation of MNP”.

The deadline for the implementation of MNP has been extended several times in the past. The service was supposed to be launched by December, 2009 in all the Metros and other telecom circles areas like AP, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Later on this deadline was extended till 31^st of March, 2010 which was further extended to 30^th June, 2010. Now failing to meet the deadline of 30^th June, 2010, the TRAI has finally announced that MNP services will be available to GSM as well as CDMA subscribers across all telecom circles by October, 31^st this year.

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.