Friday, June 19, 2009

Mobile number portability by September 2009


- MNP (Mobile Number Portability) will allow a mobile customer to change his/her service provider for any reason, while keeping the old number intact, all for a small fee.

- IT minister A.Raja had said that MNP will begin in October. (on June 2009)

- Mobile number portability (MNP) is set to roll out in Chennai from September, the focus will now shift from pricing to quality of service.

- In most of the countries where MNP is prevalent, the subscribers are not charged for availing the service.

- TRAI had earlier recommended a charge of Rs.200 for the number changing procedure,since higher prices may make the service unattractive.

- Number portability will be able to keep a check on the quality of service offered by mobile service companies and is also likely to provide a level playing field for all mobile companies, including new entrants.


Related news
- Tamil Nadu has a very high penetration market for mobile companies in the country. Already, Chennai has the highest teledensity at 111% (111 mobile phone connections per 100 persons)

- Tata Docomo, a joint venture between CDMA major Tata Indicom and NTT Docomo of Japan, will launch its GSM services in Tamilnadu by June-end.

- Idea Cellular, an Aditya Birla company with services in 17 of the 28 circles, is all set for a commercial launch in Chennai.

- Sistema Shyam Teleservices Limited (SSTL), a joint venture between Sistema of Russia and Shyam Group of India, which rolled out its telecom brand MTS' in Tamil Nadu recently, has clocked 55,000 subscribers within a month.

- Reliance Communications, which rolled out its GSM services in Tamil Nadu in April with a soft launch, will soon start full-fledged services across the state.

- The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is considering to introduce portability for the Direct-to-Home (DTH) segment.So, one DTH set can be used with DishTV/SunDTH/Airtel's when DTH portability is implemented.The procedure is in initial stages,may take years to implement. (TRAI was recommending Number portability for mobile phones since 2003!)

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The SMS scam

SMS (short message service) is available in every mobile phone, and network operators mostly charge for using sms.There are certain free sms plans, but they offer free sms at a monthly "topup" or "booster pack".

About 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones in 2008, and 3.3 trillion messages are expected to be sent in 2009, an estimate by Gartner group.

Lets take a look at what are the costs incurred by the network operators(Airtel,Aircel,Bsnl...) for processing sms. (From NYtimes)

A text message initially travels wirelessly from a handset to the closest base-station tower and is then transferred through wired links to the digital pipes of the telephone network, and then, near its destination, converted back into a wireless signal to traverse the final leg, from tower to handset. In the wired portion of its journey, a file of such infinitesimal size is inconsequential. Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the
University of Waterloo, in Ontario, said: “Messages are small. Even though a
trillion seems like a lot to carry, it isn’t.”

Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high — spectrum is finite, after all, and carriers pay dearly for the rights to use it. But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel,space reserved for operation of the wireless network.
That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.



Cost of sending an SMS is almost nothing, yet the network operators charge upto .50rs or 1re per sms , depending on the plan. Consider it along with the fact that 2.5trillion messages are sent last year, that will make a fortune for the telecom companies.

Further reading,
What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting (NewYork times)
TRAI not to intervene in SMS tariffs (The Hindu, read last paragraph)
Wired Blog

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