Thursday, November 04, 2004
Meanwhile, in the Asian Telecom market...
VSNL won its little battle with Reliance and bought Tyco's global network, paying about $130 million for a network that cost Tyco about $3 billion to build. That's almost as good a deal as Reliance's acquisition of the FLAG network. In the process, VSNL has become one of the top three undersea carriers along with Reliance and Global Crossing, which is owned by Singtel. By buying Tyco, VSNL managed to make an entry into the trans-pacific market, while FLAG remains dominant on the Eurasia sector. What this really means is that India has now emerged as a major hub in the telecom market. Hopefully, the bandwidth available in India (currently about 550 Gbps) will also go up dramatically, thanks to these two acquisitions. It remains to be seen whether VSNL can make use of Tyco to offer cheap incoming calls into India the way Reliance has.
Meanwhile, it is also being reported that seven Asian cellular operators have formed an alliance to develop products and services built on a common infrastructure. The seven carriers are Bharti of India, Globe Telecom of the Philippines, Maxis of Malaysia, Australia's Optus, Singapore's SingTel, Taiwan Cellular and Indonesia's Telkomsel (Singtel has a stake in Bharti, Optus and Globe). Clearly, this will improve roaming facilities for subscribers of these networks. In addition...
Alliance members will also offer more seamless roaming and interoperability, he said. For example, subscribers will be able to top up their pre-paid cards through partner networks even when overseas, a service not offered today. For Bharti Tele-Ventures, which derives 10 percent of its revenues from roaming, these are significant benefits, said Manoj Kohli, president of Mobility. "There are 20 million non-resident Indians who live outside India, and about one-third of them stay in Asia-Pacific. Eighty to 90 percent of Indian market is pre-paid," he said.
Clearly, an exciting time to be in the Asian telecom market. In the meanwhile, watch out for an IPO from Reliance Infocomm.
PS: The number of mobile phones in India have now exceeded the number of landline phones. There are apparently 45 million mobiles and 44 million landlines for a total of 89 million telephone lines. Thats quite an increase from 2000, when there were 28 million landlines and 3.2 million mobile phones. What a difference competition and decent regulatory policy can make.
Meanwhile, it is also being reported that seven Asian cellular operators have formed an alliance to develop products and services built on a common infrastructure. The seven carriers are Bharti of India, Globe Telecom of the Philippines, Maxis of Malaysia, Australia's Optus, Singapore's SingTel, Taiwan Cellular and Indonesia's Telkomsel (Singtel has a stake in Bharti, Optus and Globe). Clearly, this will improve roaming facilities for subscribers of these networks. In addition...
Alliance members will also offer more seamless roaming and interoperability, he said. For example, subscribers will be able to top up their pre-paid cards through partner networks even when overseas, a service not offered today. For Bharti Tele-Ventures, which derives 10 percent of its revenues from roaming, these are significant benefits, said Manoj Kohli, president of Mobility. "There are 20 million non-resident Indians who live outside India, and about one-third of them stay in Asia-Pacific. Eighty to 90 percent of Indian market is pre-paid," he said.
Clearly, an exciting time to be in the Asian telecom market. In the meanwhile, watch out for an IPO from Reliance Infocomm.
PS: The number of mobile phones in India have now exceeded the number of landline phones. There are apparently 45 million mobiles and 44 million landlines for a total of 89 million telephone lines. Thats quite an increase from 2000, when there were 28 million landlines and 3.2 million mobile phones. What a difference competition and decent regulatory policy can make.
