Bharti Airtel Ltd, India’s largest telecom firm by market share, today said it has formed a joint venture with France’s Alcatel Lucent to manage its broadband and fixed line services. The JV will lead the telco’s migration into next generation networks to offer advanced services such as high speed Internet,…

Tata Communications, the telecom arm of the Tata Group, has invested $11.5 million in Burlingame, CA-based content delivery network BitGravity. Also Tata has announced the launch of its global CDN service using BitGravity’s technology. Just earlier last month, BitGravity announced it closed a $2.5 million “seed” round, from Allen &…

—The press office at Sify is busy this week. Sify Technologies has deferred the merger of its subsidary Sify Communications. Sify Communications, which holds National Long Distance (NLD) and International Long Distance (ILD) licenses will continue to conduct the VPN and Voice services of the company while Sify Technologies will…

At last! Maybe we needed something as dramatic as an eclipse, but dear readers, its finally here. The guidelines for the auction of allotment of spectrum for 3G services and WiMax were released on August 1. Service roll-outs are expected to occur mid-2009. The government is auctioning 5 licenses over…

Reliance Globacom, a division of Reliance Communications, has signed an alliance with Internap (NSDQ: INAP) Network Services to launch a Content Delivery Network. Under the alliance, Internap would set up a ‘point-of-presence’ in India which would be established and managed by Globacom. We had previously covered Tata Communications tying up…

Tata Comm has had a fairly active quarter, besides launching CDN services in partnership with BitGravity, it’s done a decent job of posting a 40% rise in net profits quarter-on-quarter. However, pay close attention to the same quater last year and you notice both total revenues and net profits have…

The wireless growth story continued in May with 8.62 million telephone connections (wireless and wireline) being added, bringing the overall tele-density to 26.89%. No suprises as wireline subscriptions decreased to 39.05 million from 39.21 million the previous month as wireless subscriptions grew to 8.62 million as compared to 8.21 million…

Aksh Optifibre has tied up with BSNL to provide IPTV services over the state owned telcos network. BSNL currently has a total landline network of 40 million across India and 6 million in the north. The 20 cities covered will be across North India including the states of Jammu and…

Well, doesn’t everybody? But the thing is, BSNL being a public sector company, just might get it. ET reports that the telco has sought an entry or licence fee exemption for WiMax, using the reasoning that it’s largely going to provide these services in rural India. Private telecom operators, on…

Sify has launched an international roaming broadband service called Roam Connect International, allowing Sify customers to access wireless broadband service on the move. Sify claims to have more than 100,000 broadband locations globally, including at airports, hotels, conference centers and retail venues. For this Sify has tied up with NASDAQ…

Hyderabad based Southern Online Bio Technologies, a BSE listed entity, is planning to hive off its Internet Services Provider (ISP) division into a separate entity, called Southern Online Services. The demerged entity contributed Rs. 8 crores to Southern Online Bio’s revenues last fiscal, and will also be listed on the…

Some updates from The Times on Reliance Globalcom’s (RGCom) proposed IPO: The company, into which the Reliance ADA Group had integrated its entire global telecom operations, is planning to list in London, though it’s not specified whether they’ll list on the LSE or the AIM. Apparently, the company is valued…

As per a TRAI release, India became the second largest wireless network in the world, by the end of March. India now has over 261.09 million wireless subscribers, with 10.16 million subscribers added in March 2008 alone. If I remember correctly, we were adding between 7-9 million subscribers every month…

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has terminated the licenses of 35 companies which never launched ISP services. Some of these include Discovery Infoways, Q-Net Infosystems, Netconnect (India), Infinity.com, KTV Net. As per the Hindu, over 100 other license holders are yet to offer services after five years of being given…

YOU Telecom, an Internet Service Provider in which Citigroup Venture Capital has a majority stake, has formed a 50:50 joint venture with Red Snapper, a Malaysian wireless and VoIP service provider reports Business Standard. RedSnapper has a Wide Area WiFi technology; the company is funded by the Malaysian Government. YouSnapper…

Video streaming co TinselVision has expanded its online content distribution arrangements with STAR India and other licensors to include streaming content to India as well. Tinselvision had deals with STAR, Zee, B4U, Zoom and others to provide content on demand, and as per the release, is going to announce more…

The fog is clearing, and we now have some clarity on the Internet and Mobile rights for the IPL: As per a release, Willow TV Inc has acquired exclusive rights for five years, for distributing the Indian Premier League “on television, radio, broadband and internet” in North America (including the…

Wow…I didn’t know that there was such a paucity of web developers and designers in the world that India’s largest telco Airtel had to resign itself to having its broadband consumer portal powered by iGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG). For a company that for years kept mobile users limited to its walled…

This is significant news for those Indian channels providing their content to online TV service Jump TV, and perhaps something for the video content portals like Saavn, Big Flicks, Rajshri Media, Tinselvision and others to think about: Jump TV has decided to reduce focus on the regional content business -…