Unlocked Apple iPhone 3G S for India in April

The device will be available for one-year lock-in

Bhaskar Hazarika

For the first time an official, unlocked iPhone will be available in India. By midApril, Apple will launch the iPhone 3G S in India, more than 10 months after its global launch reports Bhaskar Hazarika in New Delhi.

The high-end handset will be sold in the open market, not necessarily only through Apple stores or telecom operators.

However, there is another lock-in condition  a buyer of the new model cannot change the operator for one year. The handset will get automatically locked if the SIM card is changed during the period.

The open-market sale indicates Apple has learnt its lessons in India, which gave a lukewarm response to the iPhone 3G launched in August 2008. A person close to the development told Financial Chronicle that the model, locked and tied to specific telecom operators, gave little Indian business to Apple. Hence, the change in strategy.

According to market estimates Apple has sold at the most 30,000 iPhone 3G handsets through Airtel and Vodafone in India. No data from Apple were available.

However, the iPhone 3G S, launched globally in June last year, is already available in the Indian grey market.

The industry estimates that Indian grey market sales of iPhone 3G and 3G S could be between 80,000 and 1,00,000 handsets.

Among operators Airtel and Vodafone will offer the new model. But Apple is also in talks with other operators. With India readying for 3G services, it makes sense for Apple to dovetail its marketing strategy to the needs of the Indian market. An email sent across to Apple failed to elicit any response.

Last week Bharti Airtel in an official statement said the iPhone 3GS would be launched in India in "the coming months". It did not specify any date.

The iPhone 3G S is sold globally in two models: 16GB and 32GB. On the AT&T network in the US the 16GB model is available for $199 (about Rs 9,950) and 32GB for $299 (Rs 14,950) on a bundle offer with a two-year lock-in.

Compared to the earlier iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3G S is faster and with longer battery life. It supports speed of 7.2 mbps and has a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera.

© Financial Chronicle

Foreign telcos ask Trai to fix bandwidth price

New Delhi, Dec 18 2009

Bhaskar Hazarika

Global long-distance carriers BT, AT&T and Cable & Wireless have sought the intervention of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to create a wholesale bandwidth-pricing regime to regulate “the higher bandwidth prices in the country.”

These global operators petitioned the telecom regulator, arguing that a wholesale pricing regime would cut down bandwidth cost for the end-consumer. Apart from these global long distance carriers, Indian operators like Sify, Spectranet, and RailTel, too are in the bandwidth retail business.

There are nine submarine cable networks that offer the bandwidth to long distance carriers here. Tata Communications (formerly know as Videsh Sanchar Nigam) owns five submarine cables, Bharti has two, Reliance Communications one and the consortium of Bharti and Reliance owns another network. Long distance carriers like BT, AT&T buy bulk of bandwidth from these wholesale vendors and further retail it to end-consumers.

A senior Trai official, who did not wish to be identified, told Financial Chronicle that the global carriers had written to the regulator to set up a wholesale pricing regime. “At present, we have a retail pricing on bandwidth but there is no regulation on the wholesale pricing. The regulator is looking at the recommendations made by the carriers on the wholesale pricing,” he added. He said the “bandwidth prices in India today was $5-9 million per 10 gigabytes compared to $1.5-1.7 million in other countries in Asia.”

An email sent to Tata Communications went unanswered.Commenting on the need for a wholesale pricing regime, former Trai advisor, S N Gupta, said, “Once the regulation on the wholesale pricing is done, service-based competition will increase leading to a cut in prices. Asked if the entry of new vendors would ease the pricing, he said entry of new players would not bring competition in this space but would only increase the capacity.

Asia’s privately-owned submarine cable network, Pacnet, is another player, which is setting up a submarine cable network in India under the West Asia Crossing (WAC) project. With the entry of the new player, there will be 10 cable networks in the country.

© Financial Chronicle