Chiefs of leading telecom firms, including Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Anil Ambani of RCom and Vittorio Colao of Vodafone, met Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday and placed their views.
Vodafone, Airtel, Idea provide services without spectrum.
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About Rs 52,500 crore (Rs 525 billion) has been offered as of the fourth day of the ongoing wireless spectrum auction on Thursday, with metros like Delhi seeing renewed demand for airwaves.
TTSL is now behind only Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone, the company said in a statement.
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.
The telecom companies have also been asked to urgently improve their infrastructure, as the government aims to digitise a host of services.
A user will need to buy a 4G-enabled handset and then upgrade his or her existing 2G/3G SIM card to a USIM (Universal SIM)/4G SIM.
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Battleground shifts to rural and small towns, where user base aspires to upgrade to smartphones.
Irrespective of demonetisation and GST blues, IIM Lucknow has been able to successfully place their batch of 459 students.
The third round of spectrum auction continued to witness aggressive bidding even after completion of seventeen rounds on Wednesday with demands for both bands of airwaves on offer continuing to pour in.
The government will start allotting third generation (3G) spectrum from Wednesday to successful bidders, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar, among others. A senior DoT official, said the allotment of 3G spectrum will start on Wednesday.
Senior official from the department of telecommunication said the deck has been cleared and the department will handover the spectrum to the operators on Wednesday.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
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Indian GSM telecom operators added 11.25 million new subscribers in the month of May, taking the all-India cellular subscriber base to 444 million, according to cellular operators' association COAI.
Tata DOCOMO has announced its intention to launch 3G services around Diwali. Vodafone Essar plans to roll out 3G services by the first quarter of next year.
The big advantage that Jio is able to garner currently is its low cost of operations.
The government on Friday banned short message service for post-paid subscribers in Jammu and Kashmir, while restricting the facility for pre-paid users from midnight, due to security concerns.The department of telecom has asked all the 12 operators, including state-owned BSNL and other private players like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, to withdraw text message service to their post-paid users in J&K altogether.
Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost 12.4 million subscribers in the first quarter of FY22, the most since the fourth quarter of FY20, as the second wave of Covid hurt its operational and financial performance. Vi had managed to trim subscriber losses in the third and fourth quarters of FY21. However, it lost 12.4 million subscribers and its customer base shrunk to 255.4 million in the first quarter of FY22. Sequential fall in 4G users was modest, indicating that most of the loss was in the low-margin 2G segment.
Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal on Wednesday said the regulatory regime needs to be simple to avoid fresh litigations in the telecom sector, asserting that collaboration among competing players, lower duties and reduction in spectrum pricing will help unleash the full potential of the industry. The telecom czar noted that the "temperature" of the industry needs to be lowered when it comes to litigations and appealed to the government to look into the matter. The timely reforms that were announced brought in cheer and heightened comfort for all the active players in the sector, Mittal said and urged the industry counterparts to focus on building the next wave of connectivity in the run-up to 5G and beyond.
Both Airtel and Vodafone claim they did everything possible to resume services.
Around 75 per cent, or 372 stocks, that are part of the BSE500 are trading at least 10 per cent below their all-time high levels, despite the index hitting a record high 20,515 points on the BSE in intra-day trade on Wednesday, surpassing its previous high of 20,390 touched in March 12. The index, which accounts for 93 per cent of BSE listed companies' market capitalisation, has gained 8 per cent from its recent low of 18,983, touched on April 19. In comparison, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex gained 6 per cent over the same period, but is still nearly 4.5 per cent away from its all-time high of 52,517 that it hit on February 16.
The DoT is conducting a special audit on companies that have multiple licences -- mobile, international long distance, domestic long distance and internet service provider among others. Contractor, Nayak & Kishnadwala has been appointed to examine the books of Bharti Airtel, while S K Mehta & Co will check Vodafone-Essar's accounts. Varma & Varma has been appointed as auditors for Tata Teleservices, while Chhajed & Doshi will examine the books of Idea Cellular.
The telecom tower-transmission business is going to see a shake-up with cash-rich and independent companies moving in with aggressive plans.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your stockmarket queries.
Just to promote govt's policy of Make in India, BSNL said, it cannot afford to procure sub-standard equipment from inexperienced companies, not having proven technology. BSNL complained that when competitors were procuring world-class 4G equipment from experienced vendors, why should BSNL be compelled to procure locally.
Rediff.com gives you a lowdown on the net neutrality issue that is today part of the national discourse.
Tata Group had hinted at combining its enterprise business with Tata Communications and its fixed-line and broadband businesses with Tata Sky.
Telecom operators in India appear to be gung-ho over the prospects of value-added services which help them to differentiate, add substantially to their margins while simultaneously be a precusor to third generation or 3G regime. The recent creative campaigns of majors like Vodafone (ZooZoos), Airtel (R Madhavan and Vidya Balan), Virgin Mobile (music download) and Aircel's (Internet applications) are a case in point.
Spectrum auction took off on Wednesday from Rs 58,980.29 crore (Rs 589.80 billion) mark with demand for the premium 900 Mhz band seemingly tapering off at the end of 56 rounds.
Telecom industry may be hit by biggest customer churn ever, due to mobile number portability.
Outlets of telecom companies such as Airtel and Vodafone may soon double as bank kiosks for financial services like funds transfer or bill payment, especially in parts of the country where there are very few banks or none at all.
Rationalisation of reserve prices in the ongoing spectrum auction helped the government to get Rs 40,000 crore of bids on the opening day.
The broader markets, however, outperformed the benchmark indices -- BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices ended up 0.6%-1%.
The Department of Telecommunications' Wireless Planning and Coordination arm has moved a note to issue start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz to four leading service providers offering GSM technology, whose applications have been pending from December 2006.
The operators are willing to accept auction of second generation spectrum beyond what has been contracted. According to them, they are allowed to have spectrum up to 10 Mhz.
Akash Ambani's first big job as he takes over as chairman of Reliance Jio, the group's telecom arm, is a no-brainer - he has to get his company through the long-awaited 5G auctions that are a few weeks away. But his bigger job, analysts said, will be to lead the transformation of the telecom company into a tech giant, a process that is underway as it seeks to list in the US. Insiders said there has been plenty of debate within the company's top executives on the auction strategy.
GSM operators added 8.89 million subscribers in June, taking the total number of subscribers using the technology to 315.8 million.
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