Consumer Blog » Telecom news

Telecom companies fined for not verifying customer ID

Pegu — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:13:41 +0000

Recent reports says that, many Telecom companies have been fined by DOT! In order to inflate their subscriber numbers, most probably, telecom operators are pushing their field marketing agents so much that they are compromising on a serious security issue of verifying customer identity details. Here is the news :

NEW DELHI: The Government has imposed a penalty of a little over Rs 42 crore on the mobile operators for SIM cards bought on fake identity so far, which refers to defaulting on subscriber verification norms.

A Department of Telecom official said the total amount of penalty imposed for SIM cars brought on fake identities on various operators so far is Rs 42.77 crore from June 2008-November 2009.

In 2008-09 alone, DoT had slapped a penalty of Rs 32 crore on the operators for failing to adhere to the subscriber verification norms.

DoT has imposed a penalty of Rs 7.38 crore on the service providers operating in J&K and in Assam, the penalty is Rs 1.76 crore from April-July.

The major defaulting operators are BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone, Tatas, Dishnet group, MTNL, Spice Communications, Reliance Telecom, BPL, HFCL Infotel, Sistema-Shyam, said the official.

Fake SIM cards have been used by the terrorists/insurgent groups. The minimum financial penalty is Rs 1,000 per violation of subscriber verification. With the mobile subscriber base growing very fast, this figure is expected to swell further.

Earlier in April, DoT introduced a graded penalty system under which operators pay Rs 50,000 per subscriber if more than 20 per cent of their user base is without valid identity documents.

Source : Economic Times.

MTNL offers half paise call per second!

Pegu — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:44:12 +0000

So, is it another good news for mobile customers ?

Public sector mobile service provider in Delhi and Mumbai has announced a 1 second call rate of half paisa to its own network and 1 paisa to other network! This makes 30 paise per minute to its own network and 60 paise to another network!

Most probably, this will start some more price war among other operators. Then customers would be really benefited. But now a days, it is frequently observed call disconnect, network congestion in almost all operators. Instead of decreasing prices alone, mobile service providers should try to increase quality of service of mobile networks too.

Here is the news:-

NEW DELHI: State-owned telecom MTNL on Tuesday raised the bar for competitive tariffs by announcing a half paise-per-second plan for mobile calls on its 2G as well as 3G network in Delhi and Mumbai circles. For calls made to other networks, the tariff is 1 paise-per-second, MTNL chairman and managing director RSP Sinha said.
Under the per second billing plans which will become effective from December 2, subscribers will pay one paise per second for local and STD calls across the country on all networks, he said. MTNL, which also offers 3G services, will also offer video calls at one paise per second across the country. It has also slashed the local SMS rate to 25 paise per SMS, although the STD SMS rates remain Re 1 per SMS. Source.

SMS cost is now 1 paise! RCOM gift to Mobile users

Pegu — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:46:04 +0000

Recently RCOM has announced SMS cost to be 1 paise only! This is the most logical pricing for SMS, according to me, as SMS does not use up any channel allocated for voice channels.

Reliance Mobile customers can avail of two revolutionary SMS tariff plans:
o One Paise per SMS with subscription fees of Rs. 11 a month.
o Unlimited SMS’s @ Re. 1 per day
The new SMS tariff plans are add-on plans and are applicable for all Reliance Mobile customers irrespective of CDMA or GSM network as well as prepaid and postpaid customers.

I hope, other operators too follow suit. This will be very helpful to users for exchanging messages.

Here is the news :

NEW DELHI: Reliance Communications (RCOM) on Friday cut texting (SMS) charges to 1 paise per message, upping the ante in an ongoing tariff war that has eaten into the revenues and profits of all telecom service providers. Subscribers of the country’s second-largest telecom firm can now text at 1 paise per SMS on buying a Rs 11 monthly voucher, or by opting for an unlimited SMS plan by paying Re 1 a day, RCOM’s president Mahesh Prasad said in a conference call with reporters. The scheme is available to the company’s subscribers on both GSM and CDMA platforms. Source.

Highspeed internet on your mobile phone

Pegu — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:33:53 +0000

Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) plans to integrate its voice service with the internet. They plan to introduce new smart phones along with other mobile phone manufacturers like ZTE, Fly, Samsung, Huawei. These phones will be configured specially to carry high speed data.

According to the news, SSTL has upgraded their BTS ( Base Transmission Station) to enable to achieve 3.1mbps download speed on handsets. They hope to increase their ARPU ( Average Revenue Per user) by this kind of integrated service.

KOLKATA: At a time when the continuing tariff war is slated to hit revenues and bottomlines of telecom companies, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) plans to integrate its voice service with the internet to drive average revenue per user (ARPU). The company, which operates CDMA telecom services under the MTS brand, plans to offer mobile broadband services on cellphones and a host of services around it. Source.

This is an interesting development. Most probably, we will get an indication how 3G charges and schemes would be offered by other GSM players when they start 3G services in India.