Airtel, Idea raise postpaid data rates
India’s Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular extended data tariff increases introduced in June to their postpaid customers, raising rates by about 20 per cent in a number of service areas.

The two operators increased prices for 2G and 3G prepaid data users in June in Delhi and then expanded the hike to other regions.

Rates at both companies will increase to INR300 (about $4.50) for 1GB of 3G data compared to INR250 previously. Only 5 per cent of Bharti’s customer base is postpaid, while even less – 4 per cent – of Idea’s base is contract.

MyRepublic plans mobility trial in October
Singapore ISP and potential fourth mobile operator MyRepublic announced it will conduct a mobility trial next month in parts of Jurong East, with up to 500 people selected to test the network.

The company also said that if it wins the country’s fourth mobile licence next year, it will give fibre broadband customers, who sign up by 30 September, 12 months free on a 24-month unlimited data plan, which it plans to introduce once it launches service.

China Telecom’s new chairman takes on CEO role
China Telecom’s new chairman, Chang Xiaobing, has been named as CEO and an executive director.

Last month Chang, who was chairman of China Unicom, switched positions with Wang Xiaochu, who at the time led China Telecom.

The new appointment is effective from 1 September.

Nokia demos 365Mb/s TDD-FDD using tri-band CA
Nokia Networks showcased TDD-FDD tri-band carrier aggregation (CA) to achieve a theoretical peak rate of 365Mb/s with a commercial chipset from Qualcomm.

The lab test, at Nokia’s R&D centre in Kawasaki, Japan, used a Snapdragon X12 LTE modem together with 20MHz of FDD band 1 and 40MHz of TDD band 41 spectrum, contributing 145Mb/s and 220Mb/s respectively.

Last October Nokia and Qualcomm said they completed interoperability testing of LTE-A three-band CA, which enables peak data rates of 300Mb/s using 40MHz over three frequencies.

100K users sign up for Telstra Air
Australia’s Telstra said in less than two months more than 100,000 people have signed up for what it claims is the country’s largest Wi-Fi network.

Telstra Air allows customers to make use of their home broadband data allowance at thousands of hotspots across the country and millions more overseas through its partnership with Wi-Fi provider Fon.

Telstra plans to expand the network to two million hotspots across the country. When customers sign up to Telstra Air, they create home hotspots with their gateway modems.

True Move partners with Jasper on IoT
Thailand’s True Move is partnering with Jasper, a designer of Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, to enable the operator’s enterprise customers to introduce IoT-based services that can enhance the customer experience and create new revenue channels.

Jasper said its Control Centre platform will enable True Move to offer connected services to enterprises across a variety of industries, including automotive, fleet management and smart cities.