Korean Telcos to Double 4G/LTE Speeds – Airtel & Reliance Jio Infocomm Listening ?

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Kora LTE Speed DoublesDuring July-October 2013, Korea Telecom will double the data allowance for subscribers that are on its 4G LTE tariff plans that offer ‘unlimited’ voice. (Please refer to our sector report from 11 April 2013 for more details on ‘unlimited’ voice tariff plans.) Korean consumers already enjoy real speeds of 10-30Mbps on 4G LTE networks, and operators are increasing speeds further through 4G LTE-Advanced. As such, we may be reaching a level where mobile data speed difference is not noticeable for most users.

SKT has announced that it will be offering higher data speeds through 4G LTE-Advanced technology. We think this may have caused concerns for KT about falling behind in competition until KT is also able

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How Sohu Winning the Internet Battle with Local Apps in China ?

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Sogou is considered a core business for Sohu, with a product offering that includes Pinyin, browser and search. Further, Sogou has reported strong growth in recent quarters. It is a source of innovation for the company and its apps provide Sohu with a mobile starting page.

Sogou’s core products are Pinyin, browser and search. Sogou Pinyin is the top software application for Chinese language input, with 88% penetration based

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Sale of eBooks Growth Declining on Amazon

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As the e-book industry matures and users amass progressively larger content libraries, generating incremental e-book sales may become increasingly difficult. When the Amazon Kindle was introduced in 2007 and customers began building digital content libraries, the product had a relatively high attach rate, in our view. Now that the Kindle has been in the market for over 5 years, we believe the attach rate has declined. This is especially true as a larger proportion of Kindle sales are “upgrade-sales”, in which case, the customer already owns an existing content library. Data from BookStats shows that e-book revenue has decelerated every year for the past 4 years.

According to The Digital Reader, 76% of public

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TRAI for Reduction in 900MHz Spectrum Pricing & Data Tariffs

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TRAI IndiaMs. Anuradha Mitra, Principal Advisor (Financial & Economic Analysis), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) met Telecom Industry Analysts and here are some of the feelers the officer has given during the interaction.

The regulator indicated that failure of two auctions has given a reason to re-think the spectrum pricing mechanism. Also, the flat 2x multiplier to derive the price of 900Mhz spectrum across circles could be tweaked to adequately capture the benefits of more efficient spectrum depending on circle dynamics.

The recent reduction in data tariffs

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e-Tax & e-Cash Disbursement – An Insight into Progress

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etax and eCash Disbursement IndiaThis is the Final Part of the Three Part Article on e-Initiatives in India. Read Part 1 – e-Governance & Digital Offices Part 2 covered – e-Records and Rights for Citizens, Judicial Systems and other e-Citizen projects. Today we’ll cover the electronic tax bases initiatives and electronic / mobile money disbursement.

The digitization of direct and indirect tax functions has simplified the filing of records, maintaining compliance and getting tax refunds. Electronic filings also make it easier to track noncompliance and tax evasion by mixing and matching various databases. As information and money get digitized, it is becoming easier to tax the two non-digital entities: (1) people (individuals or companies) and (2) goods and services. Earlier (1) the activities of economic actors, (2) their tax returns and (3) their money were paper-based. This made it difficult to match the economic activities with the money trail.

Indians now primarily file their taxes

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2G Data Tariff Cut, A Gimmick by Airtel, Vodafone and Tata DoCoMo + Data Potential

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Mobile Data Tariff Cuts in IndiaIn recent days, Airtel, IDEA, Vodafone and Tata DoCoMo, have cut their “pay-as-you-go” data tariffs by 80-90%. The headlines look catchy, but it applies to only certain plans or when the customer exceeds the existing allowances. Yet again, everyone is following each other, which again shows that trying to differentiate in India is difficult.

For 2G data, Airtel’s data pricing is down to 1p/10 KB, while peers have reduced the price to 2p/ 10 KB from 1-2p per KB – this amounts to 80-90% reduction on the “pay-as-you-go” tariffs. In most of the cases, 2G data price cuts have been done in circles where these telcos didn’t win 3G licenses.

The current data bundles are priced at around 20p/MB or US0.4c/MB, which is cheaper than these ‘pay-as-you-go’ plans. But the ‘pay-asyou- go’ plans could act as a hook to attract new customers (given its convenience) and can also help with churn reduction. Moreover, data penetration rates are currently sub-10% and data revenue contribution is 7-9%. So at this stage, we don’t think these price cuts alone will have a

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e-Records in India – Citizens Rights, Judicial System etc

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e-Records for Indian CitizensIn continuation of your Three Part Post on e-Governance in India [Read First Part – Digital offices in India] Today we’ll see which Citizen Services have gone digital in India.

The first aspect of digitization is the coming online of the Indian identity. The most visible face of this is the Unique Identity (UID) Aadhar Card that is being rolled out across India. As we will note in the next chapter, most Indians are expected to have their IDs online and bio-metrically recorded by the end of FY2014. However, even before the UID came into existence, Indians have looked up to their Government to provide them with documents of identity. UID can and will eventually provide the link to the various identities that Indians carry. If the databases of various departments speak with each other, they can create a comprehensive profile of every Indian.

In many states, the local state government provides basic infrastructure facilities like water and electricity and hence records of such bills indicate not just

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Samsung Pushing Galaxy Mega 5.8 Flopped Mobile in India with Reliance 3G Freebies

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samsung galaxy mega-5-8 IndiaFlopped and Outdated SmartPhone – Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is being pushed in India by offering 3G freebies from Reliance Communications. Samsung Galaxy Mega is a Dual Core Phone with features similar to galaxy Grand but Priced a whopping Rs 5,000 higher. Angry Indian Consumers have given a thumbs down to Samsung Mega with just 2.4/5.0 on the rating scale.

Samsung Executives went ahead and have struck a deal with Reliance Communications by offering a cut on the handset and the Telco has to rollout the following benefits in return so that Samsung can sell-off all its handsets

2GB of 3G data for 3 Months [Worth Rs 1,200]
Unlimited movies for 3 Months from BigFlix [Data Usage not to be Counted] [Worth Rs 747]
Unlimited Whatspp, Twitter and

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Aircel Free Unlimited 3G in Tanjavur, Tamilnadu

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Aircel IndiaNew Entrant, Aircel with a stronghold in Tamilnadu is struggling to gain 3G Subscriber Traction.

Aircel has announced it will provide to citizens of Tanjavur, Tamilnadu FREE UNLIMITED 3G between 6.00AM to 9.00AM for 30 days if subscribers sign-up for its 3G Offerings.

How to Activate Free Unlimited 3G from Aircel 3G Morning Plan ?
Just dial *122*456# from your cell and it should be activated in few minutes and then start browsing.

Aircel 3G Morning should in fact

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eGovernance & Digital Offices of Indian Government – Progressing Slowly

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eGovernance in IndiaThe Indian Government is increasingly coming closer to its citizens and businesses. Power brokers who would work their way through the Government system are giving way to professionals who help the masses to connect with their Government through a digital system. Three big digitization programs are taking place: (1) identity of Indians, (2) interaction portals of Government agencies and (3) money transactions (cash and property). The changes are transforming the way Indians and its Government interact.

We’ll explain these initiatives beginning with 1) G2B and G2C interactions, 2) Citizens e-Records & Rights 3) e-Tax and e-Cash.

G2B and G2C – Govt to Business / Govt to Citizens
India, which has emerged as the global hub of the IT industry, has been late in leveraging IT for local governance. A virtual world where both interaction and money are digitized makes the task of making the government accountable much easier. Government services in general – is progressively being made easier as

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