Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nupur Sharma, in the eye of a storm over her remarks against Prophet Muhammad, Monday sought time to appear before the Maharashtra police to record her statement, while more than 300 people have been arrested in Uttar Pradesh in a crackdown on protesters who indulged in violence after the Friday prayers on June 10.
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.
Telcos participating in the upcoming auctions at the end of July say they expect only a fourth of the value of spectrum on offer to be sold. The government has put Rs 4.3 trillion of spectrum up for sale at the base price across seven bands including for 5G. An executive of a leading telco said he estimates that mobile operators collectively would buy spectrum of only around Rs 1.1 trillion.
Tata Group had hinted at combining its enterprise business with Tata Communications and its fixed-line and broadband businesses with Tata Sky.
The government expects to realise Rs 35,100 crore from the partial sale of Bharatnet fibre assets and around 13,500 mobile towers owned by state-run telecom firms as part of its national monetisation pipeline released on Monday. Government think tank Niti Aayog has valued over 2.86 lakh kilometre of optical fibre assets laid by BBNL and BSNL under rural broadband project Bharatnet at Rs 26,300 crore, according to the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) document. According to the document, BSNL's 13,567 mobile tower assets and MTNL's 1,350 towers have been valued at Rs 8,800 crore.
Pawar, who had surprised the BJP by forging an unlikely alliance of Congress-Shiv Sena-NCP to form government in Maharashtra after the 2019 assembly elections, has already appealed to opposition parties to keep aside differences and join hands to challenge the Modi juggernaut.
More than 100 million users with 5G-ready smartphones wish to upgrade to a 5G subscription in 2023 while a majority of them are open to adopting a higher data-tiered plan in the next 12 months, a report by Ericsson Consumer Lab has shown. Titled "Promise of 5G in India", the study carried out in the second quarter this year reflects the views of 300 million urban smartphone users. According to the study, consumer 5G readiness remains one of the highest in the world.
India's largest mobile operator Reliance Jio Infocomm will land the multi-terabit India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) undersea cable system in Hulhumale, Maldives, according to a statement on Monday. The high capacity and high-speed IAX system will connect Hulhumale directly with world's major internet hubs in India and Singapore. Jio's IAX project will land in the Maldives in collaboration with Ocean Connect Maldives, the statement said. The IAX system originates in Mumbai in the west and connects directly to Singapore, with branches including additional landings in India, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Active subscriber base declined by 2.2 million on a month-on-month (MoM) basis to 970.2 million in August 2019, on the back of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea losing customers. Jio was the only operator to add 7.2 million active subscribers in the same month.
The digital blackout in Kashmir completed 145 days on Friday with no sign of restoration of the services in near future.
The retired president is also entitled to a secretarial staff consisting of a private secretary, an additional private secretary, one personal assistant, two peons, and office expenses up to Rs 1 lakh per annum.
The temptation to get into businesses that are hot is perhaps too great for any politician, no matter what his public slogans are. Nehru plunged into hot sectors of his time -- engineering and iron and steel. Modi has plunged into digital payments -- the hot sector of his time, notes Debashis Basu.
The wave of enthusiasm for digital technology had faded as we'd grown more and more worried about what smartphones and social media were doing to society and to us as individuals. Now that switchback ride between hopes for the technology and fear of it seemed to have taken us on another upward path, as the virus made us fall back in love with it. Read on for an intriguing excerpt from Rory Cellan-Jones's Always On: Hope And Fear In The Social Smartphone Era.
The move comes a few days after billionaire businessman Elon Musk tweeted that his Starlink internet services would be available in India as soon as it gets regulatory approvals next year. Musk's Starlink, which plans to have a constellation of 40,000 low-orbit satellites, recently started offering high-speed internet in the US as part of its beta launch phase.
Cheap data plans, affordable handsets, increasing popularity of video services and 4G networks have helped average data consumption per user in India to grow to over 11 GB a month, telecom gear maker Nokia said on Thursday. Nokia -- in its annual Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) report -- said the overall data traffic in India increased by 47 per cent in 2019, driven by continued 4G consumption. 4G data constitute 96 per cent of the total data traffic consumed across the country, while 3G data traffic registered its highest ever decline of 30 per cent, it added.
The company is also in advanced stages of negotiations to rope in the kingdom's largest telecom service provider, Bhutan Telecom, as partner.
Indian Space Association (ISpA) chairman Jayant Patil has said that the executive council will debate whether it can include more telecom companies as founding members. The response came after some leading telcos said that they had been asked to be core members but preferred to be inducted as founding members. The key founders of the ISpA include the Bharti group through two companies (OneWeb and Airtel), L&T, Nelco, Walchandnagar, Alpha Designs and MapmyIndia.
Australia is considering not sending any government officials to the Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing next year amid growing calls from lawmakers for an official diplomatic boycott, the Sydney Morning Herald said in a report on Thursday.
Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Ltd, a little-known entity through which the Adani Group has launched a hostile bid for NDTV Ltd, had an annual turnover of just Rs 60,000 few years back but it gave Rs 400 crore of interest-free loans to the broadcaster in 2009, as per Sebi orders.
India's expectation of Twitter complying with the country's rules for social media platforms will not change with its takeover by Elon Musk, according to a senior minister.
Indiagames, a provider of online and mobile games, has signed a deal with Bharat Sanchar Nigam to offer its online 'games on demand' service.
'There is no doubt at all that Jio's disruption of the mobile broadband market was a turning point for India's digital economy.'
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 22.5 per cent rise in net profit for the quarter ended March on the back of bumper oil refining margins, steady growth in telecom and digital services and strong momentum in the retail business. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate's consolidated net profit rose to Rs 16,203 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2022 from Rs 13,227 crore, the firm said in a statement. Net profit, however, fell 12.6 per cent sequentially -- breaking a six-quarter chain of quarter-on-quarter improvement.
From a teledensity (number of phones in use for every 100 individuals) of just 1.4 per cent in 1995, India today has reached a teledensity of over 50 per cent, with big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, etc going up to 130-140 per cent, same as in Europe and North America.
At the 45th Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries (RIL) in August, chairman and managing director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani described the company as an "unputdownable book" with never-ending chapters of success. "Reliance grew from strength to strength because we internalised the founder's mindset of purpose, philosophy and passion," he said. Wednesday marked the 90th birth anniversary of RIL founder Dhirubhai Ambani.
Mukesh Ambani, who took over the reins of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) after the sudden demise of his legendary industrialist father Dhirubhai Ambani, completes 20 years at the helm during which the company saw a 17-fold jump in revenues, 20-times surge in profit and has become a global conglomerate.
Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced a new corporate structure to sharpen the company's focus on rapidly unfolding digital opportunities while enabling it to unlock value. The move comes at a time when digital is turning out to be a compelling proposition for players in the Indian market, where the use of smartphones and better broadband connectivity has spurred the adoption of a new range of services. Players are positioning themselves beyond the core telephony offerings, as they enhance digital engagement, build future streams of revenue and create brand differentiation, besides redefining themselves as a larger platform of digital services, say market watchers.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
'We have filed our draft red herring prospectus for a floating IPO for a net offer size of 86.6 million shares.'
Consumers can expect a 5G launch in the country soon. Telecom companies (telcos) say if auctions take place on time - the target is July - they would be able to offer some services in a few cities by the end of this year and a full roll-out from 2023. But the question is: will 5G turn the tables for telcos financially? Will average revenue per user (ARPU) improve? Will mobile consumers upgrade to 5G quickly and pay more? Will the expanded functions that 5G enables drum up sufficient revenues? In simple terms, will telcos make more money?
Jio will woo consumers with new products as well as technology, offering them quadplay services - TV, data, voice and mobile - seamlessly working across the platforms, with a single bundled offer and just one bill.
Fixed-line Internet is consistent and translates into a better experience for users.
Bharti group-backed OneWeb and New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation, have entered into an agreement that will help ensure OneWeb completes its satellite launch programme. The first launch with New Space India is expected in 2022 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launches will add to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications firm OneWeb's total in-orbit constellation of 428 satellites -- 66 per cent of the planned total fleet -- to build a global network that will deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity.
'It has been a wonderful experience since she independently manages the show without much of interference,' says IT professional Baudhayan Lahiri.
With India rolling out 5G services, can telcos get the sizeable 350-400 million 2G customers to upgrade to 4G, or even better -- but very improbably -- straight to 5G?
Companies have activated a comprehensive pandemic response plan with requisite risk mitigation protocols for keeping networks working as telecom is an essential service.
A rare bonhomie among three private telecom companies in raising tariffs coming on the back of a bailout package by the government may have helped the telecom sector avert a crisis but the challenges haven't ceased to exist as the industry faces a cash-guzzling task of rolling out 5G networks in the coming months. The sector that provides direct and indirect employment to millions is projected to see Rs 1.3 lakh crore to Rs 2.3 lakh crore of investments in the coming years in creating robust infrastructure and building telecom and network products that have been incentivised by the government through PLI and other initiatives. After years of cut-throat competition and the apex court ruling on payment of past statutory dues left some players in the lurch, billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel and struggling Vodafone Idea almost in tandem raised tariffs, taking the plunge they had long been talking about.
