If Vodafone Idea shuts, a bulk of the high-paying ARPU customers will move to Airtel as Reliance Jio does not have a comprehensive postpaid offering like it, and have aggressively preferred to play in the prepaid market. The bulk of Vodafone Idea customers use 2G phones and only a few of them use data. It will be easier for Airtel to woo these customers as they can shift seamlessly to its 2G network without changing handsets or even SIM cards,
Netcore offers the service 'MyToday' to 3.8 million mobile phone users in the country. Jain was the founder of IndiaWorld Communications, a small start-up, which was acquired in 1999 by IT major Sify Technologies for around Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion).
Vodafone India said on Friday it would launch fourth-generation (4G) mobile phone services in the country by the end of the year.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Monday announced 20-25 per cent tariff hikes for various prepaid offerings, including tariffed voice plans, unlimited voice bundles and data top-ups, and said the new rates will come into effect from November 26. The entry-level tariffed voice plan has been raised by about 25 per cent, while for unlimited voice bundles, the increase in most cases is about 20 per cent. Sunil Mittal led telco -- whose India mobile customer base stood at about 323 million at the last count -- has also increased the tariffs for data top-up plans by about 20-21 per cent
Leading telecom operators including Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Vodafone and the Tatas are understood to have been slapped penalty for non-verification of subscribers in the J&K and Assam circles.
Vodafone 3G plans now start from Rs 25 for 25 MB data usage and go up to Rs 1,599 for 12 GB data usage.
Sector experts have, however, indicated that a large part of the airwaves in the upcoming auction will remain unsold.
Reliance Jio has paid about Rs 10,700 crore to the telecom department towards outstanding amount for spectrum acquired in 2016 auction, sources said. The payment was made by Jio last week, sources added. With this, the company has made full payment with regard to spectrum bought in 2016 auction, and the outstandings now pertain to 2014, 2015 and 2021 auction.
Launched in March, it triggers re-verification of suspected fraudulent numbers. Failing re-verification, the number will be disconnected.
The incumbents Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea recorded adjusted gross revenue of Rs 10,701.5 crore and Rs 9,808.92 crore, respectively, during the quarter.
Jio is planning to win over 350 million 2G feature phone users by launching a smartphone at a fraction of the current cost.
Reliance Jio saw fall in speeds from 7.2 mbps in September to 6 mbps in October, according to CLSA report.
VIL pegs dues at Rs 21,533 cr, less than half of DoT estimate. During a meeting with Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad made it clear that the government is against a monopoly in the telecom sector, and wants Vodafone Idea to survive and remain invested in India.
The company added 95 lakh new 4G subscribers taking its total 4G subscriber base to 7.53 crore inching closer to its peer Bharti Airtel which reported 4G customer base of 7.7 crore.
Jio had almost three times higher speed than its nearest rival Bharti Airtel.
Loop Mobile has debt of Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion), which is likely to be included in final deal size.
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."
The Department of Telecom may bar operators holding 3G airwaves from sharing the high-speed spectrum.
The police had filed charges in December against Bharti Airtel and Vodafone's India unit.
Country's second largest telecom player Vodafone has launched Rs 5 per day scheme offering free incoming calls, cheaper outgoing calls and SMS rates during national roaming.
'At a time when massive strides are being made in bringing 5G technology to India, and with TSPs ramping up their infrastructure, it is unacceptable that a large number of complaints over quality issues continue to come in, even from major urban areas.'
The call failure rate, Jio said, has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited
The current termination charge is 10 paisa a minute.
In a report, JP Morgan said Vodafone needed to raise exposure to high-growth emerging markets and offset prospective fall in EBITDA in Europe.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) on Tuesday postponed the spectrum auction by 19 days to June 25, as per information available on its website. According to amendments made in the notice inviting applications for bids on Tuesday, the new date for "start of the live auction" has been changed to June 25 from June 6. The government will auction eight spectrum bands for mobile phone services at a base price of about Rs 96,317 crore.
Telco moves Delhi High Court against order; Vodafone expected to get notice too
Reliance Telecom and Bharti Airtel have entered the second round of qualifying process for a GSM-based mobile license in Qatar that the Gulf country plans to award by October this year.
Now, it cannot offer 3G services in pact with other telcos.
Airtel reported a 19 per cent rise in its ARPU in the March quarter, as it removed the non-paying users from its network.
Vodafone Idea's cash flow analysis indicates that its situation may remain challenging even after any relief measures, and the telco needs "meaningful capital infusion" with a long gestation period to become competitive, a report by Credit Suisse said on Wednesday. The report expects Airtel to be "well placed" in either of the scenarios, of two-private-operator sector, or three private operators post an industry repair. The note by Credit Suisse on the Indian telecom sector said there has been increasing interest among investors to evaluate valuations of Bharti Airtel and Indus Towers under two situations, in the wake of recent developments.
Country accounts for 38% of telco's global user base, 10% of total revenue
Vodafone Idea will gradually lose market share given its weak balance sheet and limited financial flexibility, says Fitch.
Mittal said he discussed a plethora of issues with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and sought the government's support for faster clearances to streamline the group's investment plans.
Continuing to push back against the stringent quality of service (QoS) norms brought in by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), telcos have informed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that collection and submission of monthly and site-to-cell-level data should be eased, officials and industry sources said. In place since October last year, the QoS norms call for data for network availability, call drop, voice packet drop rate in uplink and downlink, among other parameters, to be collected at the cell level.
The merged entity would lead with a revenue market share of about 37 per cent against Airtel's 31.2 per cent and Jio's 14.5 per cent
Bharti to spend Rs 1,600 cr for spectrum payout over 10 yrs; Telenor to service its own debt.
Airtel already offers services in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and 17 African countries apart from India.
The minister said the companies have given representation which is being examined by the DoT before taking a final decision.
Reliance Jio maintained the top position in the 4G speed chart with a 20.9 megabit per second (Mbps) average download rate in September, while Vodafone Idea topped in the upload segment with 7.2 Mbps data speed, as per telecom regulator Trai. Reliance Jio's 4G network speed increased by about 15 per cent in September while its competitors Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (VIL) speed jumped by about 85 per cent and 60 per cent month-on-month to 11.9 Mbps and 14.4 Mbps, respectively, according to data published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
Agreement between Bharti Airtel and Loop Mobile, which offers mobile services in Mumbai, expired on October 31
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