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Xora Intros Voice Navigation
US-based Xora, location-based mobile resource management solution provider, has partnered with Garmin to provide audible turn-by-turn direction on GPS phones. With Xora's GPS Time Track solution, companies can easily and inexpensively track and record start times and the location of their mobile employees through their GPS-enabled mobile phone. To deliver its services, Xora has tied-up with service providers and charges on the basis of pay per user per month model.

RelCom to Premier Movies
Reliance Communications is foraying into premiering of movies over cell phones, even as it showcased the first movie-'Ctrl+Alt+Del'-on a mobile platform. The special 25-minute clip was produced by Phonethics Mobile Media. A user can log on to R-World, the data applications services of RelCom, and download the movie. The cost of a five-minute online streaming video would be around Rs 15, while Rs 10 is being charged for movie video clips.

GTL to Raise Rs 340 Crore
GTL Infrastructure is planning to raise Rs 340 crore through a rights issue that would be open for subscription in the next two-three months. The company, which is a subsidiary of telecom solutions provider GTL, intends to use the proceeds for its pan-India network rollout. The company's board has approved a rights issue at par (Rs 10 per share) in the ratio of 1:1 (one rights share for every share held).

MVAS Market to Double, End-2007
The mobile VAS (MVAS) industry could be worth of Rs 4,560 crore by the end of 2007, from its current size of Rs 2,850 crore, according to the 'Mobile Value Added Services Report' jointly prepared by the IAMAI and IMRB International. A break up of the total market size of Rs 2,850 crore reveals that person to person SMS or text messaging, continues to dominate the industry with Rs 1,140 crore, followed by ringtones, including caller ring back tones at Rs 1026 crore; person to application and application to person at Rs 428 crore; and others at 257 crore.

New Yr Bonanza for BB subscribers
The government has asked all state-owned and private ISPs to provide 2Mbps bandwidth as broadband (BB) in place of the existing 256 kbps to residential subscribers for the existing price with effect from January 1, 2007. Along with MTNL and BSNL, You Telecom is the only private operator who has announced the 2Mbps plan. The Citigroup Venture Capital International owned Broadband service provider has the necessary infrastructure and technology to provide 2Mbps bandwidth to its customers.

Lehman Bros Invests in Cellebrum
Cellebrum, announced an investment by Lehman Brothers in the company. Dilip Modi, president, MCorp Global Group, parent company of Cellebrum, says, "The Indian VAS industry, estimated to be around Rs 2,500 crore and is growing at approximately 25-30% y-o-y. Globally, we believe that mobile VAS services with potential 2.6 bn customers, is still in infancy, and India and Cellebrum have an opportunity to lead the VAS revolution."

Avaya's Deal with TCCS
Avaya GlobalConnect and The Contact Centre School (TCCS) have entered into an agreement to offer contact center consultancy services to contact centers in India and assist them in optimizing their contact center operations and technology utilization. TCCS will bring its expertise in this domain and Avaya GlobalConnect will offer these services as value added solutions to the contact center customers in India. Facilitated by industry specialists, courses will be conducted in an interactive environment to ensure successful transfer of newly acquired knowledge and skills to call center managers and supervisors.

Tech Mahindra's Contract with BT
Tech Mahindra has announced the signing of a five-year deal to provide BT with strategic sourcing services. This contract is expected to create new revenue for the company in excess of $1 bn over this period. The company will support BT's planned growth of managed services to business customers around the globe and continue to provide ongoing services related to BT's internal systems, processes and re-usable platforms.

Time Launches 'MY TIME'
Time Broadband Services, today launched its IPTV services, MY TIME. MY TIME will service the customers of multiple telecom operators offering broadband services accessible on both TV and PC. For this purpose, the company has tied-up with most of the top broadcast channels, film production houses, music labels and game developers in India and abroad for content partnership. The bouquet of services will include interactive games, chat, SMS, poll/voting through television and soon to be launched videophone through a common delivery platform.

MTNL's Integrated Billing, March
MTNL will be introducing integrated billing from March 2007, minister for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran has said. The minister said that the process of integrated billing would begin from January 2007, though the consumers will be receiving it only by March. The convergent billing will be introduced by MTNL in Delhi and in other cities, in phases.

NXP Partners with SRV Telecom
NXP Semiconductors, formerly Philips Semiconductors, and SRV Telecom have announced a collaboration to design, develop and manufacture digitally enhanced cordless telephones (DECT) in India. NXP will provide its proven three-chip DECT chipsets, including an RF amplifier (RF-PA), a transceiver (TX-RX) and a baseband IC designed on an ARM7 core. SRV will design, manufacture and market the phones in the country. This facility is due to open before the end of April 2007 and will have an annual production capacity of around 2,000,000 phones.

RelCom Plans to Expand FLAG NGN
Reliance Communications announced plans to expand FLAG Telecom's global optic fibre network. Over the next 36 months, FLAG Telecom will build the world's largest IP network termed FLAG Next Generation Network (NGN) over submarine cable systems. FLAG Telecom is currently the world's largest private undersea cable system, would invest $1.5 bn in laying 50,000 km of undersea optic fibre.

HP Inaugurates SOA Center
HP inaugurated the India SOA center at Bangalore as part of a $500 mn global investment strategy to deliver world-class SOA to enterprise customers. The India center will support capability creation and service delivery for HP globally. The center will be a critical component of HP's service offering portfolio and project delivery capabilities to enterprise customers. In addition to the India center, HP had unveiled 2 more SOA Competency Centers based in Cupertino, California and Singapore.

Aperto to Set Up WiMax Facility
Aperto Networks is said to locate a manufacturing facility in India that would produce WiMax modems and then, ultimately, base stations. The company is considering either Bengaluru or neighbouring Chennai in Tamil Nadu. Aperto has said that its products were being deployed across India by a state-owned telecom operator. The company wants to manufacture in India chiefly to meet the needs of the Indian market, where it anticipates the demand for hundreds of thousands of WiMAX modems in the next two years.

Vodafone, Essar Submit Offers to Buy Hutch
UK-based Vodafone and India's Essar have made their offers to acquire Hutchison Telecom's stake in the venture, news agencies reported quoting the British media. The reports follow the visit of top brasses of both Vodafone and Essar to the UK. Quoting sources, British media said that Essar has offered $11 bn for the 67% stake of HTIL, putting the enterprise value of the JV at $16.5 bn.

ISRO Puts 4 Satellites Into Orbit
ISRO's PSLV today successfully launched four satellites into a polar orbit at an altitude of 637 km with an inclination of 97.9 degrees with respect to the equator. It was in its 10th flight conducted from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, that ISRO's PSLV-C7 launched the satellites, India's CARTOSAT-2 and Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1), Indonesia's LAPAN-TUBSAT and Argentina's PEHUENSAT-1 into a 635 km high polar orbit.

VSNL Launched GDC at Pune
VSNL launched its Global Delivery Centre (GDC) at the EON SEZ near Pune. In the first phase, 140 employees have started working in the center; this will be increased to around 400 during the next 12 months. VSNL's GDC will enable the company to offshore several critical support functions from international locations to India. In future, VSNL also plans to use its GDCs in India to undertake outsourcing activities for other global companies.

Bipasha Basu in Gaming Arena
Zapak Digital Entertainment, a Reliance ADA group venture company, today announced its association with Bollywood actress, Bipasha Basu. A Bipasha Basu zone would be created on Zapak.com, which would host games on her. Bipasha would also work closely with the Zapak Team to conceptualize some of the games. On this occasion the portal also unveiled a new feature, called Zapak.tv. The first in the line of many games would be "BeachBlaze".

TCS Q3 Net up 48%
TCS posted a 48.20% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 1,116.10 crore in third quarter ended December 31, 2006. It had posted a net profit of Rs 753.08 crore during comparable period of previous fiscal. The company's total income rose to Rs 4,911.62 crore (over $1 bn) during the period under review, as against Rs 3,247.58 crore recorded during the third quarter of FY '06. Offshore contributed 41.6% of the company's total revenues in the third quarter, while 4% was from global delivery centres, and the remaining came in from onshore.

Bharti Commits Rs 200 cr
Bharti Airtel has embarked upon a series of social initiatives with a Rs 200 crore corpus for providing education to unprivileged sections of the society. The corpus is aimed at improving the quality of education in the country, particularly in the rural areas. Besides setting up primary schools in backward areas, the company has also launched library program, computer centers and scholarship schemes. 'Bharti Foundation' joined hands with 'Pratham', 'Kalakar trust' and 'Adharshila' to initiate computer centres in schools and community centres.

TRAI to Revise Cable Prices
TDSAT has allowed TRAI to revise prices of cable TV channels for 2007. "TRAI is free to consider, if it requires, to pass some orders on revision of rates," telecom disputes settlement and appellate tribunal chairman justice Arun Kumar says. Dismissing the appeal filed by 'Grahak Hitvardhini Sarvajanik Sanstha' in 2005 against TRAI's order of a 4% hike beginning 2006, Kumar said as 2006 has ended, "TRAI has to consider the matter of revision of rates afresh".

SingTel Targets Vodafone Shares
Singtel has said it will consider raising its 31% stake in Bharti Airtel if it is offered Vodafone shares in the Indian company. Vodafone, the world's largest cell-phone company, said last month it would like to raise its 10% stake in Bharti. "If the shares are offered to us, we'll consider under the right terms and conditions,'' says Andrienne Tho, a spokeswoman at SingTel. Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin says that he would bid for Hutchison Essar early next month.

Tatas May Hive off Tele Tower Biz
The Tata group is planning to hive off its telecom tower business into a separate company. Tata Teleservices (TTSL) is in talks with private equity firms, tower companies as well as some operators to hive off its 5,600 towers across India. TTSL is looking at setting up a tower venture where PE firms or tower companies could have a stake. TTSL is also talking to other telecom companies keen to come together for hiving off their towers. Company officials say that the company's towers are robust and could accommodate three to four operators.

India's Teledensity Reached 17%
The number of annual additions of subscribers in 2006 is three times the additions in 2004 while teledensity has increased by nearly 100% over the same period, from 8.62 at the end of December 2004 to 17.16 at the end of December 2006, according to recent figures released by the TRAI. The wireless segment added 6.48 mn subscribers in December 2006 as compared to 6.8 mn in November 2006. At the end of December 2006, total wireless (GSM, CDMA and WLL-F) subscribers were 149.5 mn. The gross telephony subscribers in the country reached 189.93 mn as on December 2006.

HCL Tech Q3 Net Shoots 58%
HCL Technologies has announced that its net profit for the quarter ended December 31 was up 58% y-o-y and 14.4% sequentially to Rs 286 crore. Revenue for the quarter went up 39% y-o-y and 6.2% sequentially to Rs 1,465 crore. HCL will also pay Rs 4 a share as mid-year dividend. This quarter also saw HCL win its second largest order of $200 million from Skandia UK. HCL's revenue for the quarter went up 39% y-o-y and 6.2% sequentially to Rs 1,465 crore.

Firms Fined Rs 75 Lakh
The Delhi State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has imposed a fine of Rs 75 lakh on the cellphone company Airtel, the ICICI Bank and American Express for making unsolicited calls, messages and telemarketing. The fine was imposed in response to a complaint filed by one customer against Airtel, ICICI and American Express Bank. Airtel and the Cellular Operators Association of India have been told to pay a fine of Rs 50 lakh while the ICICI and American Express have been issued a penalty of Rs 25 lakh.