Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal has expressed hope that the government and regulators will step in to ensure the sector remains a viable place for continued investments and asserted that the industry requires "long overdue" support to maintain its current 3+1 structure. In the latest annual report of Airtel, Mittal said as the sector's role in the economy becomes more pervasive, its challenges loom larger. Issues such as unsustainable pricing and low returns in a highly capital-intensive environment, coupled with legacy legal issues, "have extracted their toll", Mittal observed.
Airtel tops with 3.7 million new subscribers, Jio adds 2.2 million; Vi lets go of 2.7 million.
Apple's decision to slash its entry-level iPhone (8 GB version) in the US market will not trickle down to India anytime soon.
BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap indices settled the day 0.7% and 0.9% higher
The uniform SUC, if implemented as per recommendations made by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, will provide relief for mobile operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, but will increase rates for broadband wireless access spectrum holders like RJIL.
Given the security dilemma prevailing between India and China, India should curb the operation of Chinese telecom companies in India, asserts Dr Rup Narayan Das.
India Inc's quarterly net profit reached a record high of Rs 1.64 trillion in the third quarter ended December 31, 2020, mainly due to gains from higher commodity prices and a big swing in banks' earnings. The combined net profit of 3,323 listed companies that have declared results so far was up 68.6 per cent year-on-year (YoY). In comparison, earnings were up six times (534 per cent) in the second quarter and 6.5 per cent in the corresponding period last year.
Sector regulator Trai on Tuesday directed telecom operators to "immediately" enable port out SMS facility for all mobile users requiring it, irrespective of value of their tariff offer, vouchers, or plans they have opted for. Trai's stern missive on smooth network portability, assumes significance as Reliance Jio had recently written to the regulator complaining that the new tariff structure of Vodafone Idea (VIL) allegedly restricts entry-level customers to port out their mobile number from its network. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a strong note of telecom service companies not providing outgoing SMS facility in certain prepaid vouchers.
Apple Inc has rolled out a beta programme to enable 5G on Apple devices as the upgrade lets users try out pre-release software. This software upgrade enables 5G access on Apple devices, as and when service providers Jio, Airtel and Vodafone enable 5G network access, sources said. Apple users have to enrol for the beta programme on the website, install a profile and download the software.
Rs 3,050-crore penalty on Airtel, Voda Idea gets nod. Final decision will be taken by DoT.
.jpg)
Moving quickly towards ending a retrospective tax dispute with a firm that gave India its largest oilfield, the government has accepted Cairn Energy PLC's undertakings which would allow for the refund of taxes, sources said. Meeting the requirements of the new legislation that scraps levy of retrospective taxation, the company had earlier this month given required undertakings indemnifying the Indian government against future claims as well as agreeing to drop any legal proceedings anywhere in the world. The government has now accepted this and issued Cairn a so-called Form-II, committing to refund the tax collected to enforce the retrospective tax demand, two sources with direct knowledge of the development said.
According to the CEO of an Indian group with presence in the telecom segment and two merchant bankers, the Mexico-headquartered telco's bankers have been sounded out for preliminary discussions with leading Indian telecom companies for a strategic tie-up.
BSNL, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications, who also provide GSM technology-based services, are not part of the report.
Under the UASL norms, spectrum is linked to licences, and a particular band of radio wave is restricted to be used in a particular technology
Telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti may post a 5-7 per cent sequential rise in revenue with a steady margin for the second quarter of FY22, according to Jefferies. Bharti's growth will be led by segmented tariff hikes taken in the second quarter ended September, while Jio's growth will be driven by continued subscriber growth, it further said. Jefferies expects the outlook on tariff hikes for Bharti, further details on JioPhone Next for Jio, and tenancy outlook for Indus Towers to be the key things to watch for in the September quarter.
At $12-bn valuation, this will be India's largest FDI; deal to be announced on Saturday, says Dev Chatterjee.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has given its recommendations on the much-awaited issue of spectrum sharing.
The sale of Essar Oil was India's biggest deleveraging exercise undertaken by any debt-heavy group
Mobile phone service providers alone jointly reported gross revenue of Rs 55,164.18 crore (RS 551.64 billion).
Trai has said the three operators were "intentionally denying and delaying" the provision of points of interconnects (PoIs) to Jio, "only to restrict a new entrant thus violating the terms and conditions of licence and regulations of the Authority which also caused a lot of inconvenience to the consumers."
Sachin Bansal, who had co-founded Flipkart with Binny Bansal in 2007, would exit the company
Adani Enterprises' proposed Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) fundraising via fresh issue of equity shares through a public offer would be the fourth biggest by Indian companies, excluding banks and non-banking financial companies.
FM has agreed to dump an ill-conceived plan to slap a retrospective 20% levy on overseas asset managers
After a two year run-in with controversies, telecom sector now looks stable and seems back on its feet with initial investment proposal of over Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) received in 2013.
After initial success, data use is stagnating and getting consumers to spend additional money for high-speed internet is proving to be difficult for telcos.
Eight telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, the biggest three in the country, bid a combined Rs 61,162 crore (Rs 611.62 billion) in the spectrum auction held earlier this month.
Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer K Rajaraman on Friday took charge as the new telecom secretary. His joining comes following the superannuation of Anshu Prakash on September 30. "Shri K Rajaraman, IAS (TN:89) takes charge as Secretary, @DoT_India in presence of senior officials of the department," a PIB tweet said. He was serving as the additional secretary for investments at the Department of Economic Affairs before being promoted to the position of secretary, DoT.
Reliance Jio's aggressive target to reach 100 million households through the launch of the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) could make it one of the world's largest players in this space. But this also marks a change from its earlier strategy of offering fibre-to-the home (FTTH) broadband to households. Despite its best efforts, in two years Jio has been able to connect only 7 million households with FTTH, as permission for right of way for the last mile became a major impediment and the process of laying ducts for the roll-out was slow and cumbersome.
Six consecutive profitable quarters after an equal number of losses - for Bharti Airtel, the turnaround has been quick. But it is not a result of higher tariffs or absence of exceptional items alone. Execution and strategy are playing a part, too. Bharti Airtel's chief executive officer Gopal Vittal summed it up in a post-result conference call last month. "We track the profit in each of our 237,500 (cell) sites.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is India's most-valuable brand in 2022 replacing HDFC Bank, which held the number one spot since 2014, according to Kantar BrandZ report on India's most-valuable brands. TCS was able to grab the top slot due to rising global demand for automation and digital transformation, following the pandemic. Indian brands have bounced back from the pandemic to increase their brand value by 35 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2020.
UBS AG's head of operations (India), Manisha Girotra has resigned from the bank to pursue her own business venture. The lender has named Aashish Kamat as the new head of its India business.
The problem is simple: None of the incumbent players, including Vodafone Idea, has a similar offer to challenge Jio and ensure that its 2G customers do not migrate.
The government is planning to roll out 5G testbed in early January to enable small and medium enterprises and other industry players to test their solutions on a working platform, a top Department of Telecom official said on Thursday. For the promotion of 5G indigenous technology, DoT in March 2018, had approved a multi-institute collaborative project to set up an indigenous 5G Test Bed at a total cost of Rs 224 crore. A testbed consists of a specific environment including hardware, software, operating system, and network configuration to test a product or service.
.jpg)
Big brands are keen to tie up with IPL for advertising purposes.
The issue was whether India could tax capital gains arising from sale of shares of overseas companies merely because such companies had downstream subsidiaries in India.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
Providing services like broadband connectivity, cable TV, enterprise solutions, and payment wallets is the need of the hour for telcos, and a second wave of consolidation is upon the industry, a rating agency said on Tuesday. India Ratings and Research said the sector, which was battered following the aggressive entry of Reliance Jio, will continue showing signs of recovery amid conducive regulatory environment and maintained a "stable" outlook for the industry in FY22. The second round of consolidation (Consolidation 2.0) is kicking-in in the industry, which will bring a transformation in the business models of telecom companies, leading to the evolution of incumbents from the providers of traditional voice-only services to complete digital solutions for households, it said.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Jio Infocomm and five other telecom firms will battle it out at the spectrum auction tomorrow, from which the government expects to garner at least Rs 11,300 crore (Rs 113 billion).
Reliance Industries Ltd is expected to invest Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion), of the total Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) announced, in its telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm over the next two years, credit rating firm Moody's said on Monday. The investment in the telecom business is a credit negative for RIL because RJio will not generate any EBITDA (an indicator of cash flows) for at least next 12 months, it said. Moody's added however that RJio will be a formidable competitor in the sector making it a credit negative for top telecom operators already in the field. "Based on RIL's March 2014 annual report, we estimate that it has already invested about Rs 400 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) in Reliance Jio, and we expect RIL to invest the next Rs 300 billion in Reliance Jio over the next two years," Moody's Investors Service said in a statement. RIL recently announced that it will launch commercial 4G telecom service of RJio in 2015 entailing investment of Rs 70,000 crore. RIL has said that RJio will initially cover about 5,000 towns and cities accounting for over 90 per cent of urban India, as well as over 215,000 villages in India and the target is to expand this to over 600,000 villages. Moody's said RJio will be a "formidable competitor in India's telecom sector" as it will enter the business with financial muscle. RJio's entry into highly competitive telecom sector is also credit negative for incumbent mobile operators and market leaders Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India because "it will undoubtedly result in intensified competition that will lead to declines in average revenue per user and margins". But, it also said that strong spectrum holding of incumbents; existing large subscriber-bases and well- established brand equity; offering 2G and 3G services (apart from 4G services being launched) as well as marketing and distribution architecture mitigate much of the near-term competitive threat from Reliance Jio for them. "Furthermore, given issues of language and literacy, large parts of rural India remain a substantially voice-based market where near-term demand for 4G services may be muted," Moody's said.
The management plans to invest Rs 27,000 crore in 2019-20, supported by savings of around Rs 14,000 crore that it expects to come from synergising operations of merged entities.
