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.
With the new entity coming in force, Bharti Airtel will lose the tag of India's biggest telecom service provider to the new entity.
Analysts expect structural risks such as risk to voice revenues, steep correction in data realisations, capex spend and rise in churn and subsequent increase in costs to continue in the medium term
Idea Cellular will have to furnish an undertaking that it will entertain all the liabilities whenever a final decision is taken by the courts
Idea tops list of companies with high percentage of active subscribers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to make this decade a "techade" for India and the push for 5G, semiconductors and transformation through digital services is going to boost the technology sector in the country, industry players said on Monday. Modi, in his speech on the 76th Independence Day, touched upon all-round development of technology in the country, from 5G to push for electronic chips, laying of optical fibre cable (OFC) network across villages and enablement of digital entrepreneurship in villages through Common Services Centres, making the present decade as "techade" for India. Homegrown mobile devices maker Lava International's Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai said electronics and technology sectors create about $4 trillion of revenue.
Amid an existential crisis facing the firm over Rs 50,000 crore unpaid dues towards the government, billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla on Wednesday stepped down as the chairman of Vodafone Idea Ltd. Birla -- who had in June offered to give away his holding in the joint venture with Britain's Vodafone to the government -- will cease to be a director and non-executive chairman of the company at the end of business hours on Wednesday, VIL said in a filing to the stock exchanges. It did not give any reason for Birla's decision. He will be replaced by Himanshu Kapania (who was earlier managing director and CEO of Birla's Idea Cellular) as the new chairman of Vodafone Idea Ltd.
Continuing with the growth momentum, GSM-based cellular operators led by Bharti added about two million more subscribers in September, taking the total users past the 50-million milestone.
Airtel customers woke up to a network outage on Tuesday as the telecom giant's data and cellular network was severely impacted due to a major fire at its data centre in Malad in suburban Mumbai.
Cellular operators' body COAI had, last year, alleged that the new entrant Reliance Jio was attempting to acquire customers by offering connection loaded with freebies, in the guise of a trial launch.
Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal, Vodafone Plc CEO Vittorio Colao, Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas and Idea Cellular Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla on Wednesday met ministers and senior government officials to present the industry's concerns over telecom regulator Trai's proposals on the auction of spectrum.
Inching towards the 50 million mark, the GSM subscriber base in India touched 44.92 million in June, 2005 adding 1.57 million users with telecom operator Bharti enjoying a market share of over 27 per cent.
The adjusted gross revenue (earnings from sale of telecom services) of the top three telecom companies in India - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular declined by 7.98 per cent, 5.14 per cent and 4.91 per cent respectively during third quarter of 2016-17.
Cellular major Airtel would be offering its services in Jammu and Kashmir by June next year thus becoming the first private sector operator to enter the militancy-affected state.
Telecom complaints against other players were below 500 in the first half of 2016.
Triggering a tariff war, Idea Cellular on Thursday slashed data charges by 90 per cent in eight circles, following Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, who recently cut their rates by similar margins in select circles.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have demanded allocation of a part of CDMA spectrum in 800 Mhz band for GSM services.
Telecom industry body COAI has approached the information technology ministry for removal of fake and misleading messages from social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter linking spread of COVID-19 to 5G technology. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, said the claims linking 5G with coronavirus are baseless as 5G networks have not yet been installed in the country and even 5G trials are yet to be started by the telecom operators. In a letter dated May 15 to MeitY additional secretary Rajendra Kumar, COAI director general S P Kochhar said: "To safeguard the national interest, we request your good office to kindly instruct all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Watsapp, Twitter, etc, to remove all such posts and misleading campaigns from their platforms on an urgent basis." People have been sharing audio and video messages on social media platforms in which 5G towers are being blamed for rise in casualties across the country even though none of the companies have installed 5G technology anywhere in India.
Kumar Mangalam Birla will be the non-executive chairman and Balesh Sharma the new CEO of the merged entity, which will remain listed.
Bharti, which operates AirTel cellular telephone services, announced on Wednesday a 36 per cent reduction in tariffs for cell-to-cell STD calls.\n\n\n\n
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has bluntly told the government there is no reason for its members to roll out 5G networks as they will be unviable if 'captive private wireless networks' are allowed to be run by enterprises. The COAI, which has Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as its key members, has written to Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying there is 'no business case for the roll out of 5G networks'. Permitting such captive networks will 'diminish the revenue so much that there will be no viable business case left for the telecom service providers and there will not remain any need for 5G network roll out by telecom service providers (TSPs)'.
Denial of interconnection "appears to be with ulterior motive to stifle competition and is anti consumer", Trai said.
Taking the pole position among other operators, Reliance Jio logged download speed of 19.12 mbps during April, even bettering its own performance of 18.48 mbps demonstrated in the previous month
Apex telecom industry body COAI has asserted that spectrum pricing should be kept conducive to market conditions as 5G entails upfront capital investments with monetisation spread over a long-haul, and pricing radiowaves high will only push the players up against the wall. The stage is set for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to come out with its recommendations on 5G spectrum pricing and other modalities for upcoming auctions, and the announcement from the sector watchdog is expected anytime now. Norms will also be worked out for new frequencies such as 526-698 MHz and millimetre band, that is 24.25 - 28.5 GHz, in addition to bands such as 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz, 3300-3670 MHz.
Telecom major Bharti Airtel led the growth in segment with net addition of 1.31 million subscribers.
Home minister heads several groups of ministers, including the one to decide the revival package for Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam. His ministry also takes decisive calls on national security in relation to telecom operations as well as equipment and technology used in the industry.
The government on Tuesday invited financial bids from all the nine applicants, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices and RCom, who had applied for participating in 3G spectrum auction.
According to BSE, Bharti Airtel's revenue (on a standalone basis, excluding that from foreign operations and their subsidiaries) stood at Rs 49,919 crore (Rs 499.19 billion).
Members of COAI, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar, Idea Cellular and others met in New Delhi and decided to go ahead with filing of the affidavit in TDSAT against the Telecom Engineering Centre's report. COAI has also questioned the government's move to allocate spectrum to two telecom PSUs -- BSNL and MTNL -- saying they have been given frequency out of turn as many other players have been waiting to get spectrum for months and even years now.
Telecom operators Vodafone and Idea Cellular on Monday said they will resume 3G services in circles where they don't have spectrum through intra-circle roaming (ICR) pacts with other operators.
The Sunil Mittal led firm accused the regulator of "wrongly" holding Jio's promotional offer as compliant with the regulatory guidelines
India's leading private sector cellular operator, Airtel is targeting a mobile customer base of 25 million in the next two years, Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises, said on Wednesday.
Indian cellular companies added 13.7 lakh (1.37 million) customers in January this year, taking its subscriber base to 2.33 crore (23.3 million) even as CDMA based mobile companies added another 218,000 customers during the period in reference.
New telecom operators who have been given licences to operate pan-India GSM mobile services are all set to fight a bitter battle with the established GSM players like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.
The new proposals will lead to complex processes and huge costs for telecom service providers, without any substantial benefits: COAI
India added over 13.5 million new GSM mobile subscribers in August, with Bharti Airtel adding a little over two million users to achieve close to 30 per cent market share.
The telecom tower-transmission business is going to see a shake-up with cash-rich and independent companies moving in with aggressive plans.
One in five stocks from the BSE-500 index has underperformed the market and recorded losses.
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