New Delhi, Oct. 30 The mobile tariff war intensified further on Friday with the largest player in the Indian cellular market Bharti Airtel announcing seconds-based billing. Until now, Bharti was charging on a per-minute basis. This move comes after Tata Teleservices reported highest number of monthly net addition of mobile users for two consecutive months. Tata Tele was the first operator to launch seconds-based billing in the country due to which it has added close to seven million new mobile users in two months. Bharti Airtel has launched the ‘Freedom Plan’, wherein customers will be charged one paise per second for all local and STD calls to Airtel numbers and 1.20 paise per second for local and STD calls to other network.

Mr Atul Bindal, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel Ltd said, “In keeping with our ethos of providing the best to our customers, we are delighted to offer a one second pulse to those customers who find value in this pulse.” Though Bharti has been consistently adding the highest number of new users every month, it had lost the top position to Tata Teleservices in August and September. The Freedom Plan will be available across the country in all the 4.25 lakhs towns and villages covered by Airtel. For those who want to remain on the per-minute tariff scheme the operator has launched the ‘Airtel Advantage’ plan that offers 50 paise per minute tariff for all calls within Airtel Network and 60 paise per minute off net.

Second quarter results Bharti Airtel also announced a 13 per cent increase in its net income at Rs 2,321 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2009 compared with Rs 2,046 crore in the same period last year. Total revenue for the second quarter rose 9 per cent at Rs 9,846 crore (Rs 9,020 crore). In the first quarter of this fiscal, Bharti Airtel had posted a higher growth of 24 per cent in its net income and 17 per cent in its revenues. The slip in the rate of growth is believed to be because of the entry of various new players in the market, offering stiff competition with cheaper call rates. “In the near term, we are ready to face the challenges posed by heightened competition. We are confident of emerging winners through our superior offerings,” said Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, in a statement. In the April-September half-year period, net income rose 19 per cent at Rs 4,838 crore, while the total revenue rose 13 per cent at Rs 19,787 crore. The average revenue per user (ARPU) of its mobile services division fell to Rs 252 per month in the quarter, from Rs 278 in the first quarter of the current fiscal.

The company further said that it had 113.4 million customers at the end of September, up 42 per cent from the same period last year. However, its market share fell to 23.5 per cent, from 24.6 per cent a year earlier. “There will be small blips in the market place, because of new players. The competition intensity is going up. We will make our business model the leanest in the world through more outsourcing and better operating efficiency,” said Mr Manoj Kohli, CEO and Joint Managing Director. On the upcoming 3G auctions, he said that the company may launch 3G services before Diwali, if the auctions take place on time. Mr Akhil Gupta, Director, Bharti Group, added that the auctions will require more investment from all players, adding that about 35 per cent of the EBITDA is coming from non-mobile business. On the company’s acquisitions plans, Mr Gupta said, “The MTN issue is behind us. Our belief of taking the business to other parts of the world remains and we continue to pursue all opportunities.” Bharti Airtel shares at the BSE were down 6.38 per cent at Rs 292.15 on Friday, from the previous close at Rs 312.05.

NEW DELHI: Buoyed by their emphatic victory in the last game, a confident India will seek to keep the momentum going when they go into the third One-dayer against Australia on Saturday, hoping to exploit a slow and low track. With the seven-match series tied 1-1, both the teams will be keen to regain the initiative in what promises to be a thrilling floodlit contest at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground. The resounding victory in Nagpur will no doubt serve as a huge confidence booster for Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his men, who came out with a brilliant all-round display to claw their way back into the series after Australia took the lead.

Barring Sachin Tendulkar, the awesome Indian batting line up has looked solid with most of the top order batsmen being among the runs in the first two matches. Dhoni himself led from the front with a blistering 124 off 107 balls while Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir have laid the foundation with their lusty strokeplay. While the Indians looked a confident lot, the Aussies have a few problems to sort out, particularly in their bowling department with pace spearhead Brett Lee, who sat out of the Nagpur tie because of an elbow injury, was ruled out of the game. The spate of injuries to some of their key players has weakened the World Champions to some extent and a depleted bowling attack have only compounded their misery.

Wicket-keeper bastman Tim Paine was the latest to join the casualty list with a broken finger which has ruled him out of the entire series. Paine has been replaced by rookie Graham Manou, who is sure to make his ODI debut on Saturday. Despite winning the first match at Vadodara by a narrow margin, the Aussies never really looked in command and Ricky Ponting would be keen to plug the loopholes before it is too late. "It will be like starting from the scratch in Delhi. Hopefully, we will improve in the areas where we did not do well and we will bounce back," Ponting said. "Ever since Glenn McGrath has moved out, the death overs have been a problem," he said. His counterpart Dhoni would be delighted with the performance of his team, especially the bowlers who went for a ride in the series opener.

Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar looked menacing upfront with the new ball, while Ravindra Jadeja has been a sensation in the spin department and shared the responsibility ably with Harbhajan Singh, who is going through a rough patch. "All the bowlers did well. Ashish Nehra is at his usual impressive form, Ishant Sharma is continuing with his good show and good thing is Praveen Kumar has come up good. Ravindra Jadeja came in late but got three crucial wickets in the last game," Dhoni said. To add to that, the options in the slow bowling department would be an advantage for the Indians in the low and slow Kotla strip. The first two matches of the series have been high-scoring contests but tomorrow's game could turn out to be a rather low-scoring affair with the Kotla pitch not very conducive for strokeplay. The recent Champions League matches have shown that scoring freely would be a tough proposition although the curator has tried his best to prepare the track for the match. Dew will be another important factor and both the captains will have that in mind when they go out for the toss.

The Teams (from): India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Captain), Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Ashish Nehra, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Sudeep Tyagi, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja. Australia: Ricky Ponting (Captain), Michael Hussey, Doug Bollinger, Nathan Hauritz, Jon Holland, Ben Hilfenhaus, Shaun Marsh, Graham Manou, Peter Siddle, Adam Voges, Shane Watson, Brett Lee and Cameron White. Umpires: Amiesh Saheba , Shavir Tarapore Match Name: 3rd ODI Teams: India vs Australia Venue: Feroz Shah Kotla, New Delhi Time: 1430 IST Channel: Neo Cricket

KOLKATA: The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-Azim Premji chemistry has worked. The state has been spared the blushes of having to see Wipro being forced to abort plans to set up a second campus at a cost of Rs 500 crore here.

Just over a month after the chief minister personally took the initiative to speak to Wipro chairman Azim Premji, offering alternative land in lieu of the scrapping of the controversial Kolkata IT Links venture, the tech major on Friday expressed keenness to take up the plot on offer at New Town, Rajarhat.

A Wipro team - which visited the New Town site during the day - returned pleased with what it had been shown and later called on the managing director of West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco) to formally seek 50 acres at a 'concessional price' - five acres more than what the CM had announced earlier. They later also met state IT minister Debesh Das.

An IT department release issued late in the evening said the revised plot offered to Wipro was only a 15-minute drive from the airport and adjacent to a 6-lane road. Around 300 acres in the vicinity have already been allotted to IT firms and developers of related infrastructure.

NEW YORK: The Dow industrials suffered its worst slide since July on Friday on concerns that the economic recovery won't be robust enough to sustain the seven-month stock rally, while financials sank on renewed worries about Citigroup's balance sheet. Investors unloaded shares across the board on the day that marked the end of the fiscal year for many mutual funds, putting the S&P 500 on the brink of a correction. Wall Street's favorite measure of investor fear, the CBOE Volatility Index, soared 24% — its biggest one-day%age gain since October 2008 — and the Dow had its worst day since July.

Analysts said there were doubts that the recovery would be strong enough to justify higher stock prices a day after government data showed the economy returned to growth in the third quarter. "There's still some systemic risk to the environment," said Anthony Conroy, head trader for BNY ConvergEx, an affiliate of the Bank of New York, in New York. "You need growth, you need a healthy financial system to have a healthy economy. There are questions out there about how things go from here. Right now the government is fueling the system with cash. That can't last forever." The Dow Jones industrial average slid 249.85 points, or 2.51%, to end at 9,712.73. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index tumbled 29.92 points, or 2.81%, to 1,036.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 52.44 points, or 2.50%, to close at 2,045.11. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq snapped seven straight months of gains.

For the week, the Dow fell 2.6%, the S&P 500 lost 4% and the Nasdaq declined 5.1%. For the month, the Dow was unchanged, the S&P 500 shed 2% and the Nasdaq slid 3.6%. Citigroup fell 5.1% to $4.09 after accounting expert Robert Willens, an independent consultant, said the bank was likely to have a $10 billion fourth-quarter charge on its deferred tax assets. The KBW bank index fell 5%, while the S&P financial index lost 4.8%. Other sectors taking a beating were technology, industrials and materials, which had all led the market's run-up since March. All 30 Dow stocks finished in the red, with JPMorgan the top drag with a drop of 5.8% to $41.77, followed by Exxon Mobil Corp, off 3.1% at $71.67. On Nasdaq, Apple Inc, the iPhone maker, lost 4% to $188.50, while Google Inc, the Web search leader, declined 2.7% to $536.12. The market's slide, coinciding with technical glitches on the New York Stock Exchange, wiped out Thursday's gains, which represented the best one-day rally for stocks in three months.

A 10.7% slide in the Dow Jones Transportation Average <.DJT> from its post-March peak, which was reached on Oct. 20, underscored some of the pessimism. Technically, the DJT has crossed a threshold that chartists regard as signifying the onset of a correction. A huge influx of orders prevented the New York Stock Exchange from disseminating quotes shortly after the start of trading on Friday. NYSE Euronext, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, said the delays followed "an inordinate influx" of erroneous orders received as Friday's session got under way. Later in the session, the company had to temporarily transfer quote processing to a backup system. The interruption on the NYSE and in the NYSE Amex cash equities trading was later resolved. The benchmark S&P 500 is up 53.2% from the 12-year closing low of March 9. It has shed 5.6% from its post-March peak it reached on Oct. 19.