Voice&Data Telecom Industry Awards

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New Delhi August 6, 2010: -The Indian telecom industry celebrated its achievements here late last evening by recognizing key industry players and companies that had excelled during 2009-10 by clocking revenues of US $ 63 billion (Rs. 296,343 crore) and achieving tele-density of over 50% in 2009-10. The telecom industry revenues comprises of telecom equipment revenue Rs. 136,833 crore and telecom services revenue of Rs.159,510 crore.

The DoT Secretary Mr PJ Thomas lauded the telecom industry and presented V&D Telecom awards. Among those honoured Tata Teleservices MD Anil Sardana was the Voice&Data Telecom Person of the Year and Bharti Chairman Sunil Mittal was the Global Telecom Leader for 2010. In Mr Mittal absence his award was received by Mr. Sanjay Kapoor, CEO of Bharti Airtel.

In his address, Telecom Secretary Mr PJ Thomas, the man responsible for setting the telecom policy, complimented the telecom industry for crossing the 650 million subscriber milestone. The industry now needs to offer connectivity to the remaining 500 million Indians, he said. With the conclusion of 3G auctions, the industry can now embark on providing data services thus powering the mobile devices.

Key industry players like Wipro, Bharti Airtel, Cisco and BSNL were honoured for being the leaders in more than one category.

Alluding to the challenges facing the industry, Mr Pradeep Gupta, Chairman & Managing Director, CyberMedia India said,“While the industry is gearing up to connect every single Indian, its profitability is under great strain. The industry also looks forward to clearer policy directions on security issues.”

Giving an overview of the Indian telecom industry Mr Prasanto K Roy, Chief Editor of CyberMedia Publications said,“The operators will need much more than magic to make money post 3G spectrum licensing. An early allocation of 3G spectrum, quick ramp up of data services and lower energy costs as a result of reliable utility supply can alone help the industry stay afloat.”

TheVoice&Data Telecom Person of the Year 2010award went to Mr Anil Sardana, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices, better known as the hero of the Indian mobile users by introducing “per second billing options” which created new opportunities for the mobile customers. In addition, he helped his company roll out GSM services in 14 of India's 22 telecom circles in just six months.

TheVoice&Data’s Global Telecom Leader awardwent to Mr Sunil Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel for building an incredibly successful business from scratch and setting new benchmarks for emerging markets worldwide following the acquisition of Zain Telecom. With the recent acquisition of Zain Telecom Bharti has access to Zain’s African mobile operations in 15 countries, with a total customer base of over 42 million.

To honour companies that launch with great ideas Voice & Data presented the Voice & DataEmerging Company of the Year Award to Matrix Cellularfor growing from a niche company to a name synonymous with international travel brand equity.

TheBest Telecom Innovatoraward from Voice&Data went toVamshi Krishna Reddy, co-founder of Apalya Technologies for bringing entertainment-on-the-go in the form of mobile TV service. Constant improvements by Mr Reddy enabled mobile broadband users to exploit TV and video-on-demand content-on-the-go and earned them hundreds of thousands of viewers during IPL.

Voice&Data’sGreen Company of the Yearaward went to Huawei and Ericsson—the two equipment vendors who sold equal number of green Base stations in India to help service providers to spend less on energy bills.

“The V&D Awards are as much about identifying the winners of tomorrow as they are about achievers of today. PwC's research and analysis enabled the jury awards take a balanced view of both the present as well as the future,”said Mr Sivarama Krishnan, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that played the Knowledge Partner role in the jury awards process.

The jury members included Mr A Sethuraman of Huawei, Mr Naresh Ajwani, Wttil Quippo, Mr Kunal Bajaj, Analysys Mason, Mr Rajat K Mukarji, Idea Cellular, Mr Satyen Gupta, British Telecom and Mr Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia India.

Mr Gowton Achaibar, Head of Operations - India & Sri Lanka, Ericsson India on being conferred the Green Telecom company of the year award said, “This recognition reinforces our conviction to drive adoption of telecom technologies that support sustainable development. We see our technology creating a more sustainable planet, transform industries and empower people, business and societies around the globe.”

Mr Mix Yang, CEO, Huawei said, “Under its vision of ‘Green communications, Green Huawei, Green world’, Huawei has invested heavily in development of green solutions. This recognition will encourage us in creating even more efficient and green technologies."

V&D100 award winning telecom companies in 2010

• Network Integration, Network Management Services and Telecom Software: WIPRO Infotech
• Test & Measurement: Agilent Technologies
• Telecom Cables: Sterlite Technologies
• Router, Switch, top Enterprise Equipment and Wireless LAN: Cisco
• Structured Cabling: Tyco Electronics
• Transmission and Broadband Equipment: Huawei
• Top Carrier Equipment and Mobile handsets: Nokia
• Network Security Services: HCL Comnet
• Wireless Infrastructure and 3G: Ericsson
• International Long Distance Services: Tata Communications.
• Top Broadband Service Provider (based on revenue): Reliance Communications
• Audio/Video Conferencing Company: Polycom
• Radio Trunking: Arya Omnitalk
• Telecom Turnkey Company: GTL
• WiMax: Aviat Networks
• Voice Solutions Company: AGC Networks
• Modems: ATRIE Technology
• Data Card: ZTE
• Telecom Towers: Indus Towers
• VAS: OnMobile.
• The Top Cellular Service Provider: Bharti Airtel.
• NLD and VSAT: Bharti Airtel
• Top Telecom Services Provider: Bharti Airtel
• Fixed Line Services and Broadband Services (based on subscribers), 3G Services: BSNL
• Network Storage: EMC
• Fixed Phones: Beetel Teletech
• Managed Services: Nokia Siemens Network

Notes to the Editors:

By using a high frequency digital power amplifier, Huawei improved by 45% the efficiency of power amplification in the base station, which is the first and most important step to achieving a green site solution. Based on the distributed design, Huawei base stations can be installed on the tower to reduce feeder loss. Power consumption is reduced by 20% with the same coverage for each station.

Ericsson developed TCO2, an approach that combines the carbon metrics of Life Cycle Assessment with the total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) accounting methodology. Using TCO2, operators can minimize carbon intensity while optimizing network-driven costs.

Summary of Voice & Data India Telecom Survey 2010

Trends 2010 

- 3G / BWA spectrum auctioned
- 3G launch by end-2010 (private ops.)
- 9 telcos paid $14.7bn spectrum license                
- Airtel, Vodafone, R.Com, MTNL/BSNL
- BSNL & MTNL only pan India 3G operators
- Govt earns $8.3bn from BWA spectrum
- Go Global: Bharti (Zain, Africa; Warid, BG)
- M-subscriber growth world highest in March
  - 20.31 mn new subscribers
- Tele-density crossed 50%
- Security concerns affected equipment imports
- Indian handset brands emerge
- Micromax, Karbonn, Spice etc.
- Operators # grew to 14
- MNP still distant – Oct 31? (Now MTNL and BSNL are not ready...)

Forecast 2010 

- Mobile device sales to cross 138 mn ; 17% of that will be 3G    (Gartner)

Forecast 2013

- Over 1.1bn m-subscribers
- Over Rs 345k crore / $73 bn  (telecom industry)
- 10 mn employed 

Fixed-line Phones 

- Rs 19K crore Revenue(-23%)
- Wireline teledensity 3% 
- BSNL still leads: 28 mn subs.  (-5.2%) 
- Private ops share still 15%
- PCOs down to 5.5 mn 

Wireless Phones 

- Subscribers +49%; Revenue +3.6%
- 14 operators; Airtel still #1
- ARPU falling
    - Tariff drops to all-time low: 1p/sec
    - Dynamic 'rebate on calls' (UNINOR)
    - 3G subscriber base 1.8 mn 

Long Distance 

  - NLD Revenue up only +14%
  - Tariffs down
  - Airtel #1
  - ILD +17% 
  - Tata Com  #1
  - Pacnet gets NLD, ILD license

Other Services 

- 8.75 mn broadband subscribers - grim picture still
- Policy target (20mn/2010) a dream 
- 60% subscribers in top ten cities
- VSAT up 22% 
- Radio trunking +3.5%

Carrier Equipment

- $18.8bn (+21%)
- WiMAX: +48%, Broadband: 13%
- Wireless 26%, Transmission 82%
- Wireless Rs 43k cr
- Telecom software Rs 27k cr ( +7.3%) 

Enterprise Equipment 

- $4.2 bn market size. (31% growth) 
- A/V conferencing: +15.2% 
- Security: +21.6% 
- Storage: -7.3% 
- Modems: -4.5% 

Handsets

- Mobile Phones: $5.8 bn, +4%
- Fixed Phones: -2.8%
- QWERTY, dual-sim sales zoomed
- India brand handsets: 14% share
- Nokia lost %14.9 share

Challenges 

- Margins (while adding subscribers)
- MNP
- Allocating 3G spectrum to private ops
- Healthy regulatory atmosphere 
- Clarity on security clearance 
- Increasing data revenue
- Zooming energy costs due to unreliable utility supply
- Slowdown in revenue, explosive subscriber growth: the challenge.
- operators will need much more of their magic to make money post 3G spectrum license...
- Energy, a big challenge...

About Voice&Data

V&D100, now in its 11th edition, is the most comprehensive annual survey of the Indian telecom services and equipment industries. It is the most trusted and widely used survey for those seeking statistics on Indian telecommunications industry. It is perhaps the only 'single source' of such diverse information.

About CyberMedia

CyberMedia is the largest specialty media house in South Asia and amongst India's top five magazine publishers.
With 15 publications, 12 websites, over 100 events and two weekly TV programs, it reaches out to a community of over 1.5 million people. Its brands have consistently been leading in their respective domains. They cover infotech (Dataquest, PCQuest,ciol.com), technology (MIT’s Technology Review), telecom (Voice&Data), biotech (BioSpectrum), entrepreneurship (Dare), outsourcing (Global Services), and consumer electronics (Living Digital,ld2.in).

Its Media Services include IDC India, the leading IT and telecom research company in the region; and Content Matrix LLC which provides through its subsidiaries, custom publishing (TDA Group LLC) and content management services (Publication Services Inc. and CyberMedia Services).

For more details, please visit: www.cybermedia.co.in or www.ciol.com orwww.voicendata.com

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At Strategic Communications and PR

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News Source : Voice&Data Telecom Industry Awards