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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Biddle who wrote (30493)	12/27/2002 4:31:10 PM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196670

WiLL Power Reliance finger on retail customer’s pulse financialexpress.com The best laid plans of mice, men and cellular operators to stall the rollout of telecom’s dark horse Reliance Infocomm may well have fallen apart with the Ambanis icing the opposition to their aggressive tariffs with a free trial period that stretches all the way to March 31, 2003. With the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) conditional approval reportedly in, the company may have had to hike talk rates for its wireless in local loop (WiLL or WLL) from the proposed 20 paise per minute to 40 paise — bringing it on the level with the stipulated floor of Rs 1.20 for three minutes. But it seems to have gotten away with the 15-second pulse that will now cost the caller a mere 10 paise per pulse. With a targeted 10 million subscriber base across 600 cities and towns, Reliance’s Rs 24,000 crore Infocomm blitz is the first step towards tapping two of the country’s lifelines: Communications and petroleum. Following its recent finds in the Krishna-Godavari block, its piped gas project should be the next whopper to watch out for. The WLL project (to be followed soon by the supply of cheap piped gas to households) is aimed at interfacing directly with the retail customer — almost 20 years after Reliance’s first direct-to-customer venture, notably, the Vimal textiles brand. Driven by elder son and Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani, the Infocomm megaventure is also being touted through a big bang countrywide ad blitz as the culmination of Dhirubhai’s vision of making mobile communication cheap and accessible to the man in the street. The rollout, though, isn’t smooth-sailing. With the cellular lobby pitted against it and Trai acting tough on tariffs, the empire hasn’t yet managed to swing any interconnect agreements with cellular and other basic operators, except for the government-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited with a 3.5 crore subscriber base, and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd that were struck at the last minute. Which, in simple terms, means that with a Reliance phone you can’t talk to cell users, until the interconnect pacts are in place. Clinching interconnect with the public sector telecom companies wasn’t too tough, though, given union communication minister Pramod Mahajan’s well-known proximity to the Ambanis. And the first corporate family of India is geared to steamroll over speed-bumps, such as the cell operators’ objection to WLL operators (including the Tatas) walking around offering full mobility from their code division multiple access (CDMA) platforms without regulatory approval. The Ambanis are ready to pay up the Rs 1,200 crore or so for cellular licences in circles where they don’t have a presence as soon as Mr Mahajan obliges by lifting the cap that limits the number of cellular players in a circle to four. The minister is also known to be in favour of a threshold licence fee –– in place of the huge amounts the current players bid –– that would suit Reliance just fine. For now, it seems unstoppable.