Editor’s Note:With 2011 nearly over, RCR Wireless News takes a look back at the top stories from India over the past 12 months. The stories are in chronological order beginning with Jan. 1.
Mar. 25: India is looking to replicate China’s vendor credit models to finance greenfield telecom infrastructure projects worth Rs 5 lakh crore (approximately $110 billion). … Read More
April 7: Stepping up the pace of its inquiry into the 2G telecom scam, the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament has summoned cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar and principal secretary to the Prime Minister T K A Nair on April 16. … Read More
April 14: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday issued important recommendations related to manufacturing, infrastructure and green telecom to promote structured growth of the sector. It has also proposed investments of over Rs.1-lakh crore for technical upgradation and improvement of manufacturing capabilities of the sector. … Read More
April 21: A special court, citing “incriminating evidence,” Wednesday denied bail to five senior telecom industry executives as India’s top federal investigative agency continued with its efforts to unravel one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s history. … Read More
June 17: The advent of high speed wireless services, namely 3G and BWA, will take the total of size of the Indian telecom services and mobile handset market to $82 billion or Rs 3,77,685 crore, approximately by 2014, said market research firm CyberMedia Research. … Read More
July 20: EMC Corp. and Zinnov Management Consulting, in a study on private cloud landscape in India estimated that the totalcloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach a market value of $ 4.5 billion by 2015. … Read More
Aug. 16: The government is seeking legal opinion to cancel as many as 83 telecom licences for the failure of service providers to roll out their networks as per their agreements between 2006 and 2008, officials have said. … Read More
Sept. 7: India needs to spend “tens of billions” of dollars to expand its broadband network, as Asia’s third-biggest economy targets better public access to information and services, an adviser to the government said. … Read More
Sept. 29: According to a report of the working group on the telecommunication sector for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017), specific attention needs to be given to network expansion, especially in rural and remote areas. … Read More
Oct. 3: India’s National Frequency Allocation Plan – 2011 (NAFP), released by Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal, came into effect from October 1, 2011. … Read More
Oct. 11: Important features of the draft NTP – 2011 like policy on merger and acquisition, exit policy for operators are directly aimed at consolidating the crowded telecom sector in the country. … Read More
Oct. 25: The Indian telecom sector is again in news for the wrong reasons after a national daily reported about a “3G roaming scam” wherein some telecom operators are “offering 3G services and earning money from areas which they never bid during the 3G auctions.” … Read More
Nov. 3: India, the world’s second-largest telecom market after China, will have a projected handset demand of 350 million a year by 2020, with an estimated 505 million handsets to be manufactured in India during the same year, says a latest study. … Read More
Nov. 7: India’s Telecom and Information Technology minister says 4G services may be launched in the country as soon as the second half of next year. … Read More
Nov. 17: India’s nationally owned and six smallest private telecom companies will continue to suffer operating losses in 2012, according to a report released Thursday by global ratings agency Fitch Ratings. … Read More
Nov. 22: The sentencing of a former telecom minster last week on bribery charges continues the troubled recent history of India’s telecom agency and sector. Of the nine telecom ministers since 1996, four have faced serious corruption charges. … Read More
Nov. 24: The telecom sector over the last few months and year, has seen many controversies – most of them a result of public policy ambiguities. … Read More
Dec. 1: The chiefs of leading telecom companies met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other key policy makers to discuss contentious issues plaguing the telecom sector. … Read More
Dec. 6: India’s minister of information technology and communications, Kapil Sibal, is under fire for asking Internet companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo to prescreen user-generated content posted from India. … Read More
Dec. 13: The number of telecom towers in India is expected to double in the next 4-5 years as a result of growth in mobile data (3G expansion), coverage rollouts, expansion by new operators and new technologies, according to a report by Macquarie Group. … Read More
Dec. 22: Terming the 3G roaming deals illegal, India’s Telecom Ministry has asked the telecom operators to discontinue their agreements. No decision has been made yet on whether to penalize the telcos for those deals. … Read More
Dec. 28: Hailing the country’s telecom sector as an international success story, the Indian government said that with an overall subscriber base of 914.6 million and teledensity of 76%, the sector continues to grow from strength to strength. … Read More
