BSNL leasing out it’s Tower Infrastructure in semi-urban areas

State-run telecom operator BSNL has decided to lease out its passive infrastructure, that includes towers mainly, to other telecom companies in semi – urban areas in the country.

A senior official of BSNL said, “since we have more towers in tier-II and -III cities, we have decided to lease out those towers with unutilised capacity to the operators.” Aimed at generating more revenue and fully utilising the huge tower base, BSNL plans to cash in on its pan-India presence. It operates all over India, except Delhi and Mumbai.

(Source: Economic Times)

DoT selectes two US – based companies – Telcordia Technologies and Syniverse Technologies – to provide MNP services in India

Syniverse has been awarded a letter of intent to provide India’s telecommunications operators with number portability clearing house and centralised database solutions for the next 10 years.

The DoT (Department of Telecommunications) has divided the country into two geographic zones for the effective implementation if the MNP (Mobile Number Portability) services.

Each zone is further divided into 11 service areas that represent cities within the zone.

Syniverse will cover northern and western states including Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, while MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions India Pvt Ltd, a joint-venture including Telcordia, will roll out services in the southern and eastern states.

The MNP implementation will be initially focussed on the larger metropolitan service areas before moving into the rural locations, the company said.

(Source: siliconindia)

New Business Models in Wireless Space at Barcamp Delhi…

Today I attended BCD5, the Barcamp event in IIT-Delhi. Although registrations for this event were many online. However, only a few turned up for the event actually. Quiet a few people were carrying laptops and PDAs to blog in real time about the event using wifi which in general IIT – Delhi auditoriums have for use by everybody but today there was’nt any due to security reasons.

Among others, I also spoke on new business models in wireless space, representing CellStrat. Though the attendees for this topic were very very less with a total of about just 10-15 peoplefrom close to 100+ . But it was appreciated quiet a lot as these were the only people who were either working in mobile space on these models for their clients abroad or would like to include them in their businesses in India.

Overall, the technology presentations or the one in tech space were quiet good.

Startup Lunch 3.0 held successfully…

CellStrat (mobile technologies and consulting company) as part of Delhi Startup Community is organizing Startup Lunch Edition 3 this time in Amity University on Saturday (Septemebr 6th., 2008).

It came out successfully with total count of 18 registered startups (CellStrat, RouteGuru, EarlySail, OnDaMo, TechTree IT, Etruevalue, Zoomtra, SimplyLearnt, khojguru, SearchMyCampus, GVC Systems, myMobilePhone, Ariston Advisory Group, Curium Technologies, CareerGlide including some last minute registrations like Gadgets.in, Images.in and Discoveries4u) and audience (inculding prospective candidates and 10 volunteers) of about 104. Startups this time were not only looking techies (like every time) but also for other fields like business development professionals,  HR managers, technical and voice and accent trainers to centre managers for all India positions.

Last time just 24 candidates were short listed but this time number is expected to be about 60. Confirmations of the same will be there in about a weeks time.

Everybody appreciated the event a lot. It was very well organized and all volunteers provded the musch required last minute help to make it a successful event.

Ondamo was technology partner and helped greatly in assisting the organinzing of the hiring part of the event by their custom designed mobile application just for this event.

Some of the other other volunteers worth mentioning are Tarun and Swati from SimplyLearnt who covered the event on Video and pictures (which will be out soon), Shiv from viewspaper, Praval, Vineesh , Abhishek from Zoomtra and Avinash from RouteGuru.

Some supporting organization without support of which this event would not have been successful are Tie-Delhi , Proto and last but not the least Amity University (the lead sponsors of the venue).

Vishal

Startup Lunch Update

Here we are…today we present you the Startup Lunch convened by CellStrat…

We have got a whooping 125 candidate registrations comprising both working professionals and aspiring professionals and entrepreneurs of the future…

Also, a total of confirmed 20 startups (comprising of all mobile, internet and other technology and consulting areas) are going to attend the event. This time startups from other far of places of the country too besides Delhi  are attending the event. This is really, quiet encouraging…

A lot of press people are also expected this time as they have shown keen interest in covering this event.

More updates…post event and may be videos too this time…

Vishal

Count Down begins for Startup Lunch…organised by CellStrat

Adrenalin is simply gushing through all of us at CellStrat as we are the main conveners of Startup Lunch Delhi Edition – 3 (due on 6th. September, 2008), this time and hopefully for future events too.

We’ve been noticing something interesting. A Startup is probably the best place to be at for a fresher or for a professional who is looking for a career boost or to experience rapid growth. But the issue is that most freshers are not aware as to where to find these startups, neither are these startups able to be part of campus recruitment processes because of their small size.

This is a small effort towards that direction in making it happen with the most simplistic tools in place. All you have to do is click on the name of the city that you live in, hit register and enter your company name, along with the logo and website details if you are a company, or enter your name and details and arrive at the venue if you are a professional/techie looking to get plugged into a adrenaline-pumping startup.

This time, we are taking two new initiatives to make this event better then before i.e. we are building up a database of candidates who register so that the same can be forwarded to the participating companies for future hiring. Second, we are conducting an ideas jamming session with great prizes to be won.

So…what are you waiting for…join in by registering here and benefit out of this event. If nothing else, I am sure you will not feel that it has been a waste of time.

Vishal

Mobile Monday Delhi Event today…

Hi All! Today I attended Mobile Monday (MoMo) Delhi event in Amity University. Agenda for today was mobile advertising. Quiet a few good speakers like Salman Hussain of Vuclip, Vijay Shekhar of One97, Chirag Jain of recently funded smsgupshup, Salil from NDTV, Milind Pathak of Buongiorno etc. presented their views on mobile advertising trends and scenarios.

Vijay Shekhar during his presentation asked the audience as to how many people are thinking of buying the recently launched iPhone 3G, if we become price agnostic, just 3 out of 70 odd people said they are planning to buy. These 3 also said yes, as they are in the process of developing applications for iPhone and thus they will need the same for test purposes.

Though gathering this time was less (in comparison to other events of Momo), with a total of approx. 65-70 professionals from the mobile world. But, overall it was a great event.

A brief about the Mobile Monday is given below for the people who don’t know what it is:

Mobile Monday is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets.

Mobile Monday has the following objectives:

To encourage innovation within the mobile sector.
To facilitate networking between small and large companies, and between local and foreign.
To help local companies effectively participate in international initiatives through the import and export of visions, concepts, technologies, know-how and best practices.
To present innovative visions, trends, studies and forecasts from the mobile marketplace.
To facilitate and create partnerships.
To contribute to the education of the broader public through its publications, online presence and media partnerships.

Mobile Monday is organized by a group of dedicated volunteers from around the world. Originating in Helsinki, Finland, in the year 2000, Mobile Monday has grown into the world’s leading mobile community.

E-mail conversation with Velipekka Kuoppala, VP(Sales & Marketing), BlueSky Positioning…an LBS enabler

I have been member of an online group here by the name of Momo – Delhi. For some time there has been a discussion over a technology by the name of ” BlueSky Positioning http://www.blueskypositioning.com/ )” which if used by operators in their SIM cards, can make Location Based Services arena quiet an easy one, for telecom operators around the world. A number of people shared their views on this topic. Some of these are:

” This is a cool technology ..if anyone on this list works with Telecom companies, please forward this link to them,  if they consider to incorporate this technology in their SIM cards than it will open flood gate of LBS Services . Imagine a world where you can do a LBS App for Entry level Nokia Handset.  This is the SIM, Which can do it.”                                                                                                                              …Prashant

“I don’t get it. If the carriers put a little extra software into their towers to monitor signal strength of existing phones, they can know where phones are already. Why would an Indian telecom company want to re-deploy 70m SIM cards when their ARPU/ customer are already so low and getting lower?  Doesn’t a tower of central software solution make more sense to people?”                                                           …Sean

“This scheme of things have few advantages over Cell ID Triangulation:

#1 unlike Cell ID Triangulation  its independent of Network  Signal Strength at any given location [because its GPS assisted] so you can point location to a greater accuracy

#2 DUE To SIM + GPS combo I Think it  will be possible to  provide  location  info even when  you are roaming on other network .

#3 we did some tinkering around with Cell ID info and tried to map it with GPS Co-Ordinates on MY N95. accuracy /precision  was more in GPS mode but funny thing was how fast and randomly the Tower ID changed within a stretch of 2 KM on a HIGHWAY while GPS thing was more steady, so useful for feeding into a Trail kind of application.

Right now when we say LBS we think of only high end phones, this can change it.”                        …Prashant

One of the group members, contacted “Velipekka Kuoppala, Vice President Sales and Marketing of BlueSky Positioning” for the benefit of all of us. Here is a summary of an email conversation he had with Velipekka Kuoppala, Vice President Sales and Marketing of BlueSky Positioning. Some of the doubts about their  technology is cleared  in his replies.  He was kind enough to agree for posting this conversation on blogs and groups and also to answer another round of queries so if anybody wants to ask something specific please let us know.

So, here is the info straight from his mouth:

Does deploying your offering require physically changing/ replacing SIM Card or is it a SIM Tool Kit which can be pushed OTA?
Veli: SIM change is needed. It’s a hardware/ software solution. Afterwards different applications can be handled via OTA.

There was a rumour that it can be detected via GPS even when the Cellphone battery is off?
Veli: Off means off! That rumor is plain wrong.

What is the accuracy  of positioning (Error range ) ?
Veli: Like any other A-GPS technology. From few meters up to ~35meters.

How its better than Cell ID Triangulation?
Veli: The relevant point is: ROI for operators offering LBS will be directly proportional to the number of subscribers who can be located. To enjoy maximum return from location-enabled services, operators should logically select a technology, which is available to all wireless users and which provides the best price/ performance ratio. 

Just think on country side, where you have one base station each 10-20miles – triangulation does not give any needed accuracy for any kind of LBS applications on that kind of conditions. Emergency situations being the most important ones.

Mr. Graham Curry, Assistant Operations Manager for the Lancashire Ambulance Service, offers the emergency services’ perspective: “Over 50 percent of calls to the emergency services are now made via mobile phones, and current estimates suggest that over 1 million emergency callers across the EU are unable to indicate their location each year. In an emergency situation it is critical that we reach the person in distress as quickly as possible, and the ability to provide accurate location information via mobile phones could mean the difference between life and death.”
 
In city areas, some applications (there are hundreds of these) need even a few meter accuracy and some not – when needed, like with several tracking apps,  triangulation is not suitable for that. Cell ID itself is quick and good with its limitations, and is rather complementary than competing technology versus GPS. While starting talk about triangulation – we start as well to talk about additional cost.

Is this available for CDMA?
Veli: Each basestation has GPS receiver build in, and there are many GPS phones available under CDMA technology. Saying that, the business case in CDMA is not very strong.

The above conversation indeed gave some insights on this technology. However, we will have o keep our finders crossed until we see this technology being adopted by telecom companies. I strongly beileve however, that it may be added to the new SIM cards being developed but companies will not be able to do it for the ones already in use…

VS

Startup Event in New Delhi

India is catching up too in number of new startups and number of candidates looking for taking risk early/ late in their careers, to join these startups.

Last weekend,  I attended a Startup Lunch event held in Delhi (India) as a team building exercise. About 25 startups registered for the event and about 18 presented their businesses to 80+ prospective candidates. Many candidates were interviewed by these startups and results were almost mind blowing. Many candidates were hired by more than one startup.

I also presented showcasing CellStrat’s products and services. We got lot of attraction from almost all present there. This is because Mobile applications area is still a brand new area and people are just now beginning to get their hands around mobile data apps and uses.

Although venture funding companies are investing less in Indian companies in comparison to other countries, but good ideas and people behind the same have no fear and quite a few might become successful.

VS