Reliance Communications’ Reliance 3G mobile just a while ago has informed us that their is across the board Drop in 3G mobile Data Tariffs signalling the beginning of the 3G data Tariff War. Reliance Mobile 3G Data Pack which costed Rs 250 for 1 GB of Data will not cost Rs 123. 2GB Data Pack will not Cost Rs 246 and 4GB Data Pack costs just Rs 492. The Data Tariff cuts are applicable to
Month: July 2013
The Great Broadband China Strategy Includes SmartCities
The State Council announced several measures to encourage the growth of China’s IT-related sectors. First of all, a Broadband China strategy will be introduced to accelerate the construction of the country’s telco infrastructure. The government will promote further its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) scheme to enable broader access to higher internet speeds. The operators are moreover tasked to further expand the coverage of 3G networks, while the regulator will strive to approve 4G licenses by 2013-end. We expect these measures to improve the demand outlook
Why India is a Failure in Telecom Technology compared to China ?
One of the foundations of our China Telecom Technology is the development / support of the domestic technology standards, and domestic telecom equipment vendors is the Chinese government’s pre-eminent policy objective. This approach results no doubt in structural over-investment by the operators and lower returns on invested capital. The decisions to build three parallel national wireless networks based on three different standards and then deploy 4G TD before China Mobile’s 3G TD network is loaded may make no economic sense but
Korea Leads in Global 4G / LTEvolution & Data Consumption
4G LTE has led to a big jump in data consumption behaviour as shown in Figure 3, with Korea leading the global curve with ~1 GB/month and ~1.8 GB/month of data usage in 2011 & 2012, respectively, versus the global average of 342 MB/month and 1.3 GB/month. The Cisco Visual Networking Index is forecasting a 30.8% CAGR for 2012-17 in average global traffic per device with smartphones accounting for ~70% of data traffic by 2017.
LTE ARPU lies in its tiered data plans. Unlike Korea’s 3G
JustDial Facing Competition at All Levels
Justdial (JD) provides contact information and user reviews about local businesses, products and services to its users through telephone/SMS, Internet and mobile Internet platforms. JD database contains 9.1m business listings (as of March 31, 2013) – predominantly comprising small and medium enterprises (SMEs) – across various towns and cities in India. Some of these businesses pay JD for priority listing in its search results and also to get leads to potential consumers that seek supplier information through JD.
JD had first mover advantage and was one of the first companies to offer comprehensive local search services in India. However, alternatives have come up in niche verticals like burrp & Zomatio on the Mobile & Web, AskMe and GetIt in Calling and not to
Google Online Ads Growth to be Stronger in Q2- 2013
Google’s Domestic desktop CPC growth is likely to range in high single to low double digits yoy across our contacts. Growth in the proportion of lower priced mobile clicks was offset by growth in average mobile CPCs. A number of our contacts noted that growth in Product Listing Ads (PLAs) CPCs continued as more and more retailers continue to come to auction. Further, our checks indicate most advertisers have not yet adopted Google’s new enhanced campaigns in AdWords due to the need to rework their campaigns to reflect the grouping of tablets and desktops in enhanced campaigns. As such, we would not
Facebook Expected to Report Mobile Ad Revenue at 30% of Total Revenues
With many Ad Networks reporting Facebook mobile came in at 35% of client spend in the quarter and a few even seeing 40%, we see potential upside risk to both our mobile estimate and consensus. Our contacts again reported meaningful sequential growth in spend with Facebook, with performance of the entire Facebook platform beginning to rival that of search for some of our contacts’ clients. Analysts expect mobile ad revenue of $425mn, up 13% qoq and representing 30% of total ad revenue for 2Q13, similar to last quarter. For the desktop business (which consists of news feed ads as well as right hand rail), we expect revenues of $994mn, up 14% qoq and up 1% yoy
For many, App Install ads were a key driver of mobile performance, with
Philippines Mobile Data Services More Expensive than India
Almost 95% of Philippine Telecom’s cellular revenue comes from Voice and SMS. Internet penetration is fairly high at 35% in 2012 (Increased from 29% in 2011) but a large proportion of customers access the internet through internet cafes. Mobile data is growing from a very small base and contributes around 5% of mobile revenue now compared with 2.5-3% two years ago. High smartphone prices as well as high data tariffs have been the key hurdles to a pickup in data in our view. We believe that the key enablers for data growth, including cheap smartphones and network availability, are now in place, but the pricing of data remains high. Data can lead to a trade-off, as despite being the biggest possible growth avenue it also has the
What does Vodafone Offer for Spectrum Renewal Mean to Indian Telecom Sector ?
Vodafone recently offered some terms and conditions to govt. for renewal of its licence/spectrum in three circles that expire in 2014. Prices offered are at a ~75% discount to last (failed) auction prices, along with a reduction in annual spectrum fee. Importantly, Vodafone believes 900MHz should be 1.3x. 1800Mhz. Vodafone’s offer for the 20-year renewal is as follows
Are Data / OTT Apps Threatening Telcos Revenue Model ?
One common feature among all the new approaches, though, is the growing awareness that data bandwidth on a mobile network is an intrinsically scarce resource that must be allocated carefully. Indian 3G pricing acknowledges this and all Indian operators are charging on a tiered basis only. Going forward, we believe re balancing of data / access pricing versus voice and SMS pricing packaging will become increasingly important.
Let us examine what could happen to overall pricing for operators if their users were to switch to using over-the-top (OTT) applications, consuming just data. The key, in our view, is to price data in a way that takes into account voice pricing