The entertainment industry is not amused by her activities, neither is the IT sector since it has given rise to a new breed of e-criminals (piracy is a crime according to the Indian Cyber Act 2000). Moreover, system administrators abhor her existence since her downloading clogs their corporate networks, weakens their firewalls besides disseminating unregulated content.
In August this year, ABN Amro Bank decided to renew the lease for its 3,100 sq ft office space at Nariman Point's Sakhar Bhavan, but the landlord dropped a bomshell by jacking up the rental to Rs 500 per sq ft.
The spectrum tangle has also resulted in the fall of telecom share prices as investor confidence was eroded after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) decided to permit CDMA (Code division multiple access) players operate GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) services in their existing circles.
In the first 10 months of CY07, Indian firms received orders worth Rs 128,147 crore.
Poor broadband penetration, high priced set-top boxes and last-mile (to the home) connectivity problems are delaying the telecom industry's much-touted plan of rolling out Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services.
The incessant rise of the rupee, which has dented the bottom line of export-oriented companies, has another side to it. With the Indian currency's value against the dollar moving from 44 on March 30 this year to under 40 now, a bunch of companies have received a boost. The corporate results of the second quarter make a telling revelation. As the rupee rose 10 per cent against the dollar, net import-based companies reported nearly 36 per cent growth in net profit.
The company recently received permission to launch GSM services within its existing license and is awaiting allocation of spectrum, the radio frequency that enables wireless communications, from the government. CDMA and GSM services cannot be operated on the same spectrum.
Second-quarter corporate results show a significant slowdown in sales and profit growth.
Though in its infancy in India, mobile advertising is emerging as the biggest competitor to Internet advertising. It might even cannibalise online advertising, states a new study by global analysis firm Thomas Weisel International. India's online advertising is expected to reach an inflection point by 2009-end - a time when mobile advertising is predicted to grow at a scorching pace.
The lower sales growth rate is on account of single-digit growth in sales by Reliance Industries (6.3 per cent), Reliance Energy (9.53 per cent), Hero Honda (5.48 per cent) and Biocon (7.52 per cent). Companies that posted a decline in sales included two-wheeler giant Bajaj Auto (- 3.03 per cent), pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy (-4.79 per cent) and Madras Aluminium (-11.13 per cent).
The country's two ubiquitous financial powerhouses, HDFC and ICICI Bank, have been the darling of participatory notes, the instrument through which overseas investors invest indirectly - through foreign institutional investors - in India's stock market. Among the stocks comprising Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensitive Index and National Stock Exchange's S&P Nifty, HDFC has the highest P-Notes holding in value, 14.2 per cent, followed by ICICI Bank's 9.1 per cent.
Telecom subscribers in the country can now make intra-state call at the rate of a local call, with the state-owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) extending its group-dialing facility to private operators. Group dialing facility enables local dialing within a state by pre-fixing `95' to the receiver's number.
Analysts expect that Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications (RCom) and Idea Cellular will post over 50 per cent annual growth in revenues (year-on-year) and more than 10 per cent sequential growth (over the previous quarter). Bharti continues to lead in the subscriber addition race (2.1 million in August).
Wannabe telecom operators will take a while to know whether they have passed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's test. But that hasn't stopped them from taking the next step: tying up with infrastructure providers such as tower operators for rolling out their nation-wide operations.
Analysts at stock broking houses Motilal Oswal, Religare Securities, IL&FS Investsmart and Sharekhan say that while Maruti Udyog is doing well, the other biggies Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra would have weak single-digit performances that could lead to a decline in net profit.
Call blocking is one facility that telecom service providers claim is only for the chosen few, for instance the celebrities. Not withstanding its niche appeal, service providers in the country are in various stages of implementing the technology.
A user can list certain numbers with the operator from which he does not want to receive calls, and calls from these numbers would be blocked. Around 10-15 numbers can be blocked, while the caller will get a "busy tone or a recorded message".
Companies like state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Tata Teleservices Limited, Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel are rolling out coin-operated PCOs that will support international calls across the country.
Confirming this, Chief Financial Officer S Venkatesan said that the company has passed an enabling resolution to raise around $200 million from foreign investors either through an FCCB or a private placement.
In financial year 2006-07, the exchequer earned Rs 2,090 crore (Rs 20.90 billion) as spectrum charges and Rs 6,360 crore (Rs 63.60 billion) as licence fees.
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