Reliance Comm plans to add 1.25 million PCO lines

TECH BYTES

Reliance Communications is planning to add another 1.25 million private public call office (PCO) lines over the next 12 months. This will enable it to emerge as the largest PCO operator with a total of over 2.60 million lines, reports Rajesh S Kurup from Mumbai.

Reliance Communications is planning to increase the penetration of its CDMA-based Fixed Wireless Phone (FWP) and Fixed Wireless Terminal (FWT) based PCOs. BSNL currently leads PCO operators with close to 2.2 million PCOs in the country. A Reliance spokesperson declined to comment on the company's specific plans.

However, sources said the company is keen on expanding the PCO category in region where ARPUs could be as high as 15-20 times of the average blended ARPUs of a mobile customer.

Reliance has a PCO footprint in over 6,000 towns, and is offering connectivity over wireless terminals. With a base of over 1.34 million PCOs, the telephony major has garnered a 50 per cent marketshare in the private PCO segment and 23 per cent marketshare in the Indian PCO industry. In March 2004, there were around 1.8 million PCOs in the country "� today we have around 5.5 million.

Cellebrum wants to patent its sevices

Cellebrum wants to patent its sevices Cellebrum.com, a VAS player, is looking at getting patents and copyrights for all their services as well as protect their rights to the innovation that they have done under the IPR, reports Pradipta Mukherjee from Kolkata.

The company has already received a copyright for background music (BGM), Pay-4-Me and Select Caller List services.

"The products originally innovated and developed by VAS companies are being pirated and as a result it is becoming difficult for the VAS developers to complete the value chain and reinvest into developing new and innovative products," said Saket Agarwal, COO.

The Indian VAS market is currently estimated to be around Rs 4,000 crore. Almost six lakh subscribers are using the company's BGM service that allows users to play music in the background during a call, he claimed.

The BGM service generates average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs 40 per month.

Motorola to take on BlackBerry

With the deal to acquire mobile software maker Good Technology, Motorola is aiming directly at Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry platform. Terms of the deal, expected to close in early next year, weren't disclosed.

Privately-held Good Technology, provides wireless messaging, data access and handheld security products that compete with Research In Motion's BlackBerry platform.

Motorola, called the acquisition a strategic addition to its Mobile Devices business, claiming that Good Technology's software and services are deployed by 12,000 enterprises worldwide.

The real issue for RIM is the increasing commoditsation of mobile e-mail. Blackberries are no longer unique. Two-thirds of the RIM's revenues come from hardware sales.

So what happens to a company like RIM when device manufacturers and network infrastructure vendors bundle their own email software into their products, or email server vendors include mobile functionality in theirs (as Microsoft's new Exchange version will do)? Watch this space.

Submersible Verizon mobile

Verizon G'zOne is a phone that is completely submersible in water. It can handle being underwater for only about 30 minutes, though.

The openings for its 2-megapixel camera and built-in flash (which also serves as a flashlight) are shaped like a ship's portholes, and there is a round front screen for reading the time and caller ID The phone also has stopwatch and countdown timer functions.

Its battery lasts for about three hours of talk time and 170 hours on standby. The entire package weighs five ounces and includes a loop for attaching to a lanyard or other outdoor gear. It is available now on the Verizon Web site and costs $299 with a two-year subscription.

What's this MobileQwerty?

What's MobileQwerty?

South Korea-baded Mobience has redesigned the ABC and Qwerty layout and come up with MobileQwerty.

It's essentially the same three-letters-per-key system as the standard mobile keypad layout, but the letters have been rearranged in a Qwertyesque way to increase efficiency.

According to the Mobience site, the MobileQwerty interface requires many fewer presses and is much faster than a standard keypad layout.

This would mean having to learn a new keypad layout, which would be slow at first, but if Mobience tests are anything to go by it would pay off in the end.

MySpace could sell for $6 billion

News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch reportedly told investors in Australia that his company could sell MySpace for $6 billion any time. He acquired the social networking website for $580 million site last July.