Telenor launches India ops

Norwegian telecom firm Telenor announced the launch of its services in seven out of 22 mobile zones in India on Thursday, amid an intense tariff war in the world's fastest-growing wireless market.

The company said it would charge 29 paise per minute for local calls and 49 paise for national long distance calls, staying away from a per-second billing plan that most mobile operators have recently announced.

Telenor, which last year bought into a nascent telecom firm of Indian realty Unitech Ltd, launched its services under the Uninor brand. Intense competition is driving drastic cuts in call charges in the world's second-most populous country.

Tata Teleservices, the No. 6 operator, was the first to launch per-second billing earlier this year, deviating from the industry norm of per-minute billing. The offer was a roaring success.

Mobile services leaders Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar have all followed suit to launch the per-second billing, which analysts have said will significantly dent profit margins.

Number portability from Dec 31

India will introduce mobile number portability on December 31, a move that could further intensify the stiff competition in th
e world's fastest-growing wireless market and push call charges lower.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which allows users to retain their number even if they switch operators, will be introduced in two phases, the telecoms regulator said, first in the metro cities and the so-called Category A telecom zones and in other areas by March 20.

MNP helps in "increasing competition between the service providers and acts as a catalyst for the service providers to improve their quality of service," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on its website.

The regulator also notified certain charges associated with MNP and said switching charges for users must not exceed Rs 19 rupees.

Four new firms including ventures of international telecom operators Telenor, Etisalat and Batelco are set to start services in India this year and MNP would make it easy for them to lure existing subscribers.