India’s top telecom firm to sponsor home series

NEW DELHI: India’s top telecoms firm Bharti Airtel has won the rights to sponsor all cricket series played in India until 2013 and will pay $700,000 per match, a cricket board official said on Friday.

“Bharti Airtel has won the series sponsorship rights for the period of 2010-2013 with a bid amount of 33.3 million rupees per test/ODI/T20 International,” Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Secretary, N Srinivasan, said in a terse statement.

Initially, 10 firms had shown an interest in the right but eventually only four — Bharti BRTI.BO, Idea Cellular IDEA.BO, Karbonn Mobile and MicroMax — submitted bids on Thursday.

The marketing committee of the BCCI, the world’s richest cricket board, opened the bids in Mumbai on Friday and awarded the rights to Bharti Airtel.

World Sports Group is the current holder of the rights.

BCCI chief

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Katrina Kaif, Aamir Khan Most Downloaded Bollywood Celebs

MUMBAI: Katrina Kaif and Aamir Khan are the most downloaded Bollywood celebrities, according to Bahrti Airtel’s mobile phone usage survey.

The survey – Airtel Mobitude 2009 – captures the preference and choice of over 116 million mobile users located across India.

“Airtel Mobitude 2009 reflects the true choice of India. A mobile phone is considered by many as an intrinsic part of their daily life, be it a user in a small village or in a large town,” said Atul Bindal, President- Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel Ltd.

Katrina Kaif and Aamir Khan were the most downloaded celebrities on an Airtel mobile beating the likes of Kareena Kapoor, Salman and Shah Rukh Khan. Surprisingly, the survey also showcased that mobile users prefer to download a lot of Hollywood celebrities’ as much as Bollywood superstars.

Over 200 million music downloads were completed by Airtel users in 2009.

The Indian Cricket team still rules supreme in the popularity charts amongst (male) sports personalities. International tennis player Rafael Nadal completes the top five in this category. In the women sports category, Maria Sharapova was the most downloaded sports personality ahead of India’s Sania Mirza.

India’s Reliance Comm Q2 Net Plunges More Than Half

India’s Reliance Comm Q2 Net Plunges More Than Half: Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO), India’s No. 2 mobile operator, said quarterly net profit fell more than half, as network expansion costs, derivative losses and low-paying users weighed. India’s mobile industry, the world’s fastest-growing major market, is becoming increasingly competitive, with existing players cutting rates to attract subscribers before four new firms start operations this year.

India’s Reliance Comm Q2 Net Plunges More Than Half:Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO), India’s No. 2 mobile operator, said quarterly net profit fell more than half, as network expansion costs, derivative losses and low-paying users weighed.

India’s mobile industry, the world’s fastest-growing major market, is becoming increasingly competitive, with existing players cutting rates to attract subscribers before four new firms start operations this year.

The Mumbai-based firm, which trails market leader Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO), said net profit fell 51.7 percent to 7.40 billion rupees ($158 million) for its fiscal second-quarter ended in September, from 15.31 billion a year earlier.

The company had to provide for foreign exchange losses of 2.83 billion rupees for the quarter, excluding which net profit would have been 10.23 billion rupees, it said in its earnings statement issued late on Saturday.

Reliance Communications in October cut all call charges to a flat 50 paise (1 U.S. cent) a minute, reacting to competition from rivals such as Tata Teleservices [TATASL.UL] that added more subscribers than market leaders during the September quarter with its new per-second bill plan.

Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani said the sector was going through a “challenging” phase in the wake of competition and price cuts, and that a market-driven industry consolidation would help.

Reliance Communications said it “fully recovered” the forex losses in October, due to subsequent favourable exchange rate movements.

Revenue for the September quarter rose 1 percent to 57.03 billion rupees from a year earlier.

Analysts polled by Reuters had on average expected the company to post net profit of 12.17 billion rupees on revenue of 63.22 billion.

Reliance Communications, the majority of whose subscribers are on CDMA, earlier this year expanded its smaller GSM business to all of India with a $2 billion investment. It has said capital expenditure for the year to March would be lower by a third from its previous guidance.

The company’s shares have fallen about 43 percent in October in face of the price war. The shares had risen 6.2 percent during the September quarter, but underperformed the broader market.

source:http://www.reuters.com