Consensus on reserve price, 3G auction soo

Finally, the long-awaited auctions of 3G spectrum, the airwaves that enable faster data download and video streaming on mobile phones, is poised to take place within two months.

The way for the auctions has been cleared on Tuesday after the finance ministry and the department of telecommunications (DoT) have buried their differences over what should be the minimum reserve price for the auctions. The two have agreed on a reserve price of Rs 3,510 crore, which is higher than Rs 2,020 crore proposed by DoT earlier and lower than Rs 4,040 crore suggested by the finance ministry.

Another significant development is that a 2% administrative charge, proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), on the successful bidders annually has been dropped.

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Over 70K jobs cut in a single day

The deepening global economic recession claimed over 70,000 jobs in a single day, with six companies, ranging from manufacturing to telecom across the US and Europe, announcing job cuts as part of a cost cutting measures to grapple with the slump in consumer spending. With the bloodbath in the job market on Monday, the tally of total jobs lost in January so far crossed two million.

Construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, pharma major Pfizer, telecom firm Sprint Nextel Corp, home improvement retailer Home Depot were among the six major firms that announced massive job cuts.

A total of 207,120 jobs have been lost so far this year. Nearly 2.6 million people were rendered unemployed through 2008, the highest yearly job loss total since 1945. Caterpillar said it would cut 20,000 jobs amid a "very challenging global business environment".

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Trai asks telcos to bring down SMS charges

In a move that could halve SMS charges, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked mobile operators to slash tariffs voluntarily. Unlike the voice traffic, the cost component in SMS is negligible–around 2 paise. Still, SMS tariffs are either higher than voice rates or at best comparable.

Sources say Trai has held two rounds of negotiations with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the apex of body of GSM mobile operators, convincing them to voluntarily bring down the tariffs, failing which it would intervene through regulation. In fact, two years back also Trai had urged the operators to bring down SMS rates.

The average tariff for local calls is Re 1, the same as the local SMS rate, while for STD calls, the average tariff is Rs 1.50 and the SMS rate is higher at Rs 2.

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Personal Computer to Phone Calls in Offing

Removing the last barriers in seamless connectivity, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will soon allow connectivity between PC and fixed and mobile phones. This would mean that telephone calls could be made from a personal computer to a fixed phone or a mobile phone. These are currently not allowed.

The move would bring about a steep fall in STD rates and redefine the national long distance(NLD)regime.

Sources said Trai would release a consultation paper on the issue on May 12. Currently,voice over Internet protocol(Internet telephony) is permitted by licensed Internet service providers (ISPs), but such calls can only be made from PC-to-PC. For terminating such calls to phones, a special device has to be attached.

There's a big market for PC-to-phone calls, as can be gauged by the traffic in the international long distance sector, where it's allowed, the usage is about 300 million minutes in a quarter.

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