Terming the new unified licence regime to be in the interest of the consumers, the Centre has informed the Supreme Court that tariff reduction in telecom services fuelled by competition was not to the liking of cellular operators.
The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal will hear the petition, asking for a stay against the government order permitting crossover allotment, on Wednesday. In its petition, the COAI has said the DoT's decision has been taken with 'unseemly' haste to benefit a few operators that have made a 'backdoor entry' on the basis of 'invalid applications' given in February 2006.
App-based communication services providers and Indian telcos are at loggerheads over the SIM-binding directions issued by the department of telecom, which are to be complied with by the end of February 2026.
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Operators have invested billions of dollars in licence and spectrum.
'Everybody has freedom, but you cannot start a fire in a crowded theatre.'
'Instead of the government and telecom operators solving the mess of their own creation, they're telling us we need to give access to our phones perpetually.'
Smartphone exports for the first six months (April to September) of 2025-26 (FY26) surged to $13.4 billion, based on industry estimates. Driven by the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, this marks a 59 per cent jump over the $8.5 billion exported during the same period of the previous financial year (2024-25/FY25).
India's cellular subscriber base rose to 1.26 crore (12.6 million) in March 2003 reflecting an increase of 7.92 per cent over the previous month.
India's cellular subscribers base rose to 11.16 million in January 2003 from 10.48 million in the previous month, registering a growth of 6.4 per cent.
The petition filed by a host of GSM operators along with COAI also sought quashing of department of telecommunication's decision, dated October 19, to allow enhanced subscriber-linked criterion for spectrum allocation. They also sought non-implementation of these decisions terming them unfair, unjust, illegal, arbitrary and violative of level-playing field and principles of natural justice.
Faced with the threat of losing tax holiday due to the delay in starting operations, COAI has sought a year's extension upto April 2005 for the unified access service licencees, who got the licences in the first quarter of 2004.
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.
Mirroring the growth in the wireless in local loop services segment, the cellular sector added 11.5 lakh (1.15 million) users in July, taking the overall subscriber base to 1.63 crore (16.3 million).
The new platform allows subscribers to be on instant messaging even if they are overseas and roaming in one of the member-operator's service.
The attack reflects the open schism in the association, in which TTSL is a new member with other Unified Access Service Licence holders such as Loop Telecom , Etilasat DB, Uninor and STel. The older, established, operators are represented by Bharti, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular.
Private telecom operators on Friday raised serious concerns over BSNL's non-compliance with regard to implementation of interconnect user charge saying they (BSNL) were completely violating Trai's regulations.
Kolkata has emerged as one of the key concerns for the telecom companies providing GSM services.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has pulled up Cellular Operators Association of India
GSM mobile telephony operators have resisted any move to levy entry charge for 3G spectrum from existing operators, even as they opposed allocation of additional spectrum to CDMA-based mobile service providers.
Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Airtel retained the top rank with a market share of 33.21 per cent and a total user base of 77.48 million. Vodafone-Essar added 1.87 million and maintained a market share of 23.41 per cent. COAI, which does not include Reliance Telecom, estimates RT added at least 370,000 subscribers in the month,
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.
Mobile operators are divided on the consensus reached in the government to increase the base price for 3G auctioning to Rs 4,040 crore. Earlier, the base price for auctioning ranged from as low as Rs 1,020 crore to Rs 2,040 crore.
According to figures released by Cellular Operators Association of India today, Bharti Airtel maintained its leadership position with a market share of 31.88 per cent although its net subscriber additions during the month declined marginally at 2.03 million, against 2.06 million in September. The company has a total subscriber base of 50.90 million across the country.
The three-day India Mobile Congress (IMC) will showcase the widening convergence of telecom with new domains, such as semiconductors and deep tech, P Ramakrishna, the forum's chief executive officer, said on Tuesday. With more than 250 global and domestic exhibitors, the seventh edition is expected to draw more than 100,000 visitors this year, he said. There will also be over 5,000 CXO-level delegates and more than 350 speakers.
Telecom service providers have doubled down on their demands for a proposed fair-share charge (FSC) to be levied on major over-the-top (OTT) service providers, opening up the 6 GHz spectrum band and increasing the number of testing labs for telecommunication products. Telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Wednesday said these were the topmost demands for Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The industry body wants this additional capital expenditure to be borne by these Large Traffic Generator (LTGs) OTTs as a proposed fair-share charge.
A disagreement between mobile operators and device manufacturers over e-SIMs has reached the government with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) asking the DoT to order handset manufacturers to introduce eSIMs, in addition to the physical SIM slot, in all smartphones costing over Rs 10,000. The reason is the unprecedented global shortage of semiconductors which has severely impacted the supply of SIM cards across the globe and pushed up the price by four to five times. The shortage is not likely to improve before 2024.
Private cellular and fixed line operators on Monday demanded direct inter-connectivity with Bharat Sanchar Nigam's Ltd cellular services.
With the profitability of telecom operators declining due to "low tariffs and high costs", GSM industry body COAI Chairman Himanshu Kampania has said the mobile sector cannot sustain future investments with present low margins.
The Supreme Court on Monday posted the interim application of COAI for final hearing in the first week of December, but refused to order status quo on service-specific licensing regime as sought by the cellular operators.
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.
Telecom services providers have urged the Ministry of Finance to suspend the universal service obligation (USOF) till the existing corpus is exhausted. In their Budget recommendations, they have also pressed for an exemption from the service tax on "assignment of right to use natural resources" and the slashing of Customs duty on telecom equipment to zero. The Cellular Operators Association of India (Coai), which represents private sector telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, called for abolishment of USOF levy.
Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran on Tuesday said the roaming charges of private cellular operators are "very high" and the industry must look into it to bring them down.
Confident over second wave of revolution in mobile telephony coming from rural India, Cellular Operators Association of India said on Monday monthly additions would touch 10-million mark by December this year.
Private cellular operators have locked horns with state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd over sharing of the revenue earned from roaming subscribers within the country as well as those coming from abroad.
Mobile TV essentially uses DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast to Hand-held devices) technology for broadcasting content on mobile handsets, or any DVB-H enabled devices such as palmtops, gaming devices or laptops. However, other technology options for Mobile TV are also available such as 3G, MediaFLO, T-DMB, and S-DMB.
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