Airtel telecom which has earlier launched several customer friendly services in the country, offering the cheapest cum benefitted plan has reported to have violated subscriber local dialing (SLD) services-National and International Long Distance license provisions.

According to reports, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) committee has asked the telecom to pay Rs 50 crore each for 13 circles violating norms between 2000 and 2005 for a total of Rs. 650 crore.

Denying the claims, the company said, “We are in compliance of all regulations. All relevant details have already been provided to the authorities.”

Meanwhile, the committee who recommended the penalty, also favored by TRAI has sought the advice of the minister of communications and information technology, Kapil Sibal on this.

However, Bharti Airtel has reduced their free minutes by 10 to 25 percent and has increased price of some call vouchers for pre-paid customers such as SPVs by Rs. 5-15, reports said.

Over Idea Cellular, sources said that the company has raised voice call prices in some parts of the country, added that Idea has smashed some of the promotional offers and freebie.

Continuous margins reduction and increasing costs have had the major reasons of telecom moves to pass the burden on subscribers to meet costs.

Airtel clarified that there will be no change in the headline tariff across India’s 22 telephone circles, but the company will cut back on various promotional offers.
Chances are high that Vodafone will also follow same suit of Bharti and Idea, but not yet immediately.

It has been said that the tariff hike move could have an impact on call volumes as the rates are lowest in the world and also the companies are on eager to cover their costs as soon as possible to remain telecom industry healthy.

Recently, the telecom is in amid pressure due to declining profits. and the decision is likely to come behind this seeking growth in amid tough competition in its home market.

Mr. Kapoor, has served his 15 years of illustrious innings at Bharti Group. Bharti Airtel, has decided to pursue his future aspirations outside of Bharti, the company said.

He will continue his association as CEO with the Bharti Group and be on the Board of Indus Towers Ltd and Bharti Global Ltd till end of February.

The company has announced major changes, will replacing Mr. Kapoor by Gopal Vittal, the current group director of special projects.

Mr. Gopal will take over as chief executive of Bharti Airtel India operations from March 1.

In his new role, Vittal, will report to Bharti Airtel’s MD and chairman, Sunil Mittal and will be responsible for defining and delivering the business strategy and providing overall leadership for Airtel’s India operations, the company said.

After the brutal Delhi gangrape of a 23-years-old girl student, the Telecom Ministry has announced the women helpline number for the first time in the past three years.

However, as per the statement issued by the Telecom Ministry, “”upon request for a number that would be easier to recollect”, the number has been changed to ’181′”

Meanwhile, it is said that Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had requested Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal to provide a three-digit number for helping women in problem in the national capital.

The Telecom Ministry statement said, “Though DoT has limited resource in respect of three-digit numbers, yet within two hours of the request, a three-digit number has been allotted for Chief Minister’s helpline.”

On the other hand, protesters allover India is seen demanding quick justice to the accused in the gangrape case.

With the launch of nationwide MNP, mobile users can retain the same number but still they can move to another state or circle.

The Telecom Minister was sharing his views with media at the India Telecom 2012.

Sibal said, “A broad agenda to timely roll out Nationwide Mobile Number Portability has already been finalized by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).”

Meanwhile, the National Telecom Policy targets to make India’s telecommunications sector more transparent, relax merger and acquisition norms to encourage consolidation and also give more teeth to sector regulator and de-link spectrum from licences.

In addition, Aircel has agreed to pay 10 paise per SMS to Airtel.

Further, the Supreme Court said that this would be the subject to the condition that from Monday, Aircel would pay Airtel in terms of demand latter dated from October 25 and pay 10 paise per SMS.

In the meantime, Aircel had challenged the sectoral Tribunal TDSAT’s verdict announced on September 24 had rejected its plea against Bharti Airtel on the issue.

The termination charges are paid by an operator from whose network calls or SMS originate to the one on whose network these communications end

The major difference have been occurred between Airtel v/s Aircel, Airtel v/s Reliance Communications and Vodafone v/s Tata Services and the point of differences is termination charges.

Without affecting the ordinary phone users, TRAI ensured to set limit much beyond average person daily requirement which will help to stop unregistered telemarketers to send spam messages to users.

Under TRAI’s revised rule, now for every SMS sent beyond the cap of 100 SMSes, a minimum charge of 50 paisa will be applicable as a move against those telemarketers who are misusing the cheap SMSes packages offered by telecom regulator .

As per TRAI’s principal advisor, N Parameswaran, this move came after regulator has received several complaints from subscribers about receiving pesky messages from unregistered telemarketers.

However, this cap will not apply on registered telemarketers, transactional message-sending entities, and telephone numbers, he added.

It has been also said that TRAI is asking telecom operators to use a new mechanism to block messages with same or similar characters, marking that not more than 200 SMSes with “similar signatures” are sent in an hour.

“Now there is no bidder left for CDMA. We will have to take a call on what to do,” government official told media persons.

After Videocon, Tata Tele is the second company which has quit the CDMA process for that TTL once again had applied by submitted applications in three telecom circles Assam, North-East and Jammu and Kashmir.

After the Supreme Court cancellation of 122 permits of telecom, TTL also included had lost services in three circles.

The government which had planned to start CDMA and GSM spectrum auction to garner Rs. 40,000 crore, has set minimum price of Rs. 14,000 crore for GSM, while the CDMA spectrum will be of 1.3 times of GSM price lead to each block at Rs. 4,550 crore, reports said.

Meanwhile, after TTL exit, losing the govt around of Rs. 12,928 crore in CDMA auction which was followed by an auction for airwaves for GSM services scheduled on November 12, now there I no bidders for the CDMA auction.

Indications are more that government may cancel auction for the CDMA band. Now all are depend on upcoming days that what next futuristic plan has been followed by govt.