The government of India has proposed a penalty of Rs 135.60 crore on private telecom operators, including Tatas, Airtel and Reliance Communication, for delays in rolling out networks. Though, the department of telecom (DoT) has lowered the total quantum of penalty from Rs 477 crore decided earlier to Rs 135.60 crore after repeated representations by the operators, giving a major benefit to all big private telecom players. Almost all private players except Vodafone-Essar face penalties.
As reported in Economic times, the penalty comes to over Rs 41 crore on Tatas, Rs 31 crore on Airtel and Rs 19.65 crore on RCOM. Among others, Aircel faces a penalty of Rs 28.85 crore, HFCL has a liquidated damages of Rs 7 crore and the two PSUs — BSNL and MTNL, along with Vodafone-Essar face no penalty.
The cases for imposition of liquidated damages were processed since 2005 and show-cause notices for imposition of liquidated damages (amounting to Rs 477.15 crore) were issued in 96 cases to 10 operators. There were representations from industry pointing out delays in statutory clearances, grant of spectrum for access, among other factors, for delayed rollouts. Thus, it was decided to revisit the subject and DoT has arrived at revised lower penalty for these operators.
As suggested in one of my earlier posts its also time to adopt Swedish model for penalizing operators for not meeting roll out obligations and are in turn hoarding spectrum. (For reading the full post click here)
China has 338 Million internet users !!
The state-run China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said that its Internet statistics show that Internet users in China are up by an estimated 40 million from the end of last year. The internet user base has reached reaching 338 million users by June 2009 and the country has achieved a density of 25.5 percent, which is above the global average of 23.8 percent. By the end of June, there were 3,061 million websites registered in China, 16.25 million domain names and 205 million IP addresses.
In China, internet service providers include companies like Baidu, Alibaba group and Tencent.
Many of these Internet service companies have carved out niches using their market knowledge to satisfy consumer demand for music, news, instant messaging and search functions with the other four popular services being in way of online gaming, videos, email and blogging. As reported in Telecommunications online, Tencent Holdings achieved a total revenue of CNY 5.38 billion (US$787.9 million), an increase of 77.5 percent increase over the same period last year. It had a cash position of CNY 7.7 billion (US$1.1 billion) at the end of first half 2009. Noted for its instant messaging service, it reportedly has 990 million user accounts of which 448 million are active.
Also reporting positive results is China’s leading Internet search provider, Baidu, which attained a turnover of CNY 1.1 billion (US$161 million) for its second quarter in 2009, representing a 36.7 percent increase year-on-year. As for the online auction provider Taobao, the country’s equivalent of eBay, it had a favourable first half year of 2009 recording revenue of CNY 80.9 billion (US$11.8 billion) and it reportedly has set a target of CNY 200 billion (US$29 billion) for the whole year. Taobao is part of the Alibab group which also has interests in online payment and business-to-business platforms in 240 countries.
According to the CNNIC, the number of Chinese shopping online grew in the first six months with 14 million more shoppers to reach a total of 87.8 million. Online shoppers, however, only account for a quarter of Chinese Internet users, compared to two out of three in South Korea, the United States and Europe. Security risks of shopping on the Net may be one withholding factor.
I presume the things will not be much different in India
In China, internet service providers include companies like Baidu, Alibaba group and Tencent.
Many of these Internet service companies have carved out niches using their market knowledge to satisfy consumer demand for music, news, instant messaging and search functions with the other four popular services being in way of online gaming, videos, email and blogging. As reported in Telecommunications online, Tencent Holdings achieved a total revenue of CNY 5.38 billion (US$787.9 million), an increase of 77.5 percent increase over the same period last year. It had a cash position of CNY 7.7 billion (US$1.1 billion) at the end of first half 2009. Noted for its instant messaging service, it reportedly has 990 million user accounts of which 448 million are active.
Also reporting positive results is China’s leading Internet search provider, Baidu, which attained a turnover of CNY 1.1 billion (US$161 million) for its second quarter in 2009, representing a 36.7 percent increase year-on-year. As for the online auction provider Taobao, the country’s equivalent of eBay, it had a favourable first half year of 2009 recording revenue of CNY 80.9 billion (US$11.8 billion) and it reportedly has set a target of CNY 200 billion (US$29 billion) for the whole year. Taobao is part of the Alibab group which also has interests in online payment and business-to-business platforms in 240 countries.
According to the CNNIC, the number of Chinese shopping online grew in the first six months with 14 million more shoppers to reach a total of 87.8 million. Online shoppers, however, only account for a quarter of Chinese Internet users, compared to two out of three in South Korea, the United States and Europe. Security risks of shopping on the Net may be one withholding factor.
I presume the things will not be much different in India
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