In financial year 2006-07, the exchequer earned Rs 2,090 crore (Rs 20.90 billion) as spectrum charges and Rs 6,360 crore (Rs 63.60 billion) as licence fees.
Government websites -- including those of the Prime Minister's Office, home and petroleum ministries, and the department of telecommunications -- were out of service for many hours on Monday. An official attributed the cause to firewall problems.
'Pressures come to those on whom pressure can be brought upon. I have had no such instance in the past. So pressures do not matter to me,' retired Supreme Court judge Shivraj Patil tells Vicky Nanjappa.
The weekend lockdown will start from 8 pm on Fridays and last till 7 am on Mondays. Besides, prohibitory orders will be in force during daytime on weekdays, the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) said in a statement.
The Supreme Court on Friday directed the managing directors and directors of telcos and other firms to explain why contempt action be not taken against them for non-compliance of its order to pay adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of Rs 1.47 lakh crore to the department of telecommunications.
According to senior officials in the department of telecommunication 20 Mhz of spectrum has been given to the four firms -- Infotel, Bharti, Aircel and Tikona Digital, which have licences to offer services.
This decision was taken at Executive Council meeting of National Association of Software and Service Companies held in Pune.
The department of telecommunication has sent notices to Etilsalat DB, along with other new operators for cancelling their licences, as it failed to start services even after two years of getting spectrum, which is a violation of the licence terms and conditions.
The department of telecommunications (DoT) will soon start looking into the issue of ineligibility of recent licensees such as Unitech, Loop and Datacom, in the wake of the Comptroller and Auditor-General's scathing report. And, take action, if it thinks it is required.
Regulator wants the power to fine errant telecom companies.
The two PSUs have been losing revenues as well as market share.
The court asked Idea to transfer all the licences of Spice back to DoT.
DoT further clarified that since 2003 as many as 51 new licences were issued prior to January 2008 under the same guidelines on first come first served basis.
'The announcement has come too late. This should have been done years ago.'
The Unique Identification Authority of India, the apex agency managing the UID project, which aims to give every resident of the country a unique identity, has initiated the process to make this happen, according to chairman Nandan Nilekani.
"As so far, 12 people died and another 125 were injured," China Daily reported.
A senior official in the Telecom Ministry said the government is considering an exit option for the new telecom players who are struggling to roll out services.
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.
The scheme will be offered to 15,000 employees, or one-third of the workforce, in the current financial year.
The government on Thursday made it clear that BlackBerry services may be banned if its maker, Research-in-Motion, fails to provide a monitoring solution in the next five days.
Scheme likely to come into force by June or July this year; both PSUs have been losing revenues and market share.
The Home Ministry will hold a meeting with Department of Telecommunications and service providers to take a view on BlackBerry's services on Thursday, and is expected to direct them to stop certain features which cannot be accessed by security agencies.
Reliance Communications on Friday said it has been allotted a brand new 8080 series by the DoT for roll-out in Mumbai.
On September 3, department of telecommunication had directed that all handsets without IMEI numbers be banned with effect from December 1, 2009.
Idea Cellular has over 68 million mobile subscribers and has operations in most of the circles across the country.
Department of telecommunications has set up a committee to look into the issue of escalating cost for the project.
The prime minister's directive comes in the wake of telecom minister A Raja seeking his intervention for early resolution of BSNL's tender controversy.
DoT said SingTel was selling the full-circuit IPLC links to customers directly and also invoicing the customers in India without having a licence.
Nine companies were given new licences in January 2008.
As many as 12,394 complaints of alleged corruption were received against railway employees.
The government will miss the June 30 deadline to implement nationwide mobile number portability, as telecom public sectors MTNL and BSNL, and a new operator Uninor, are not ready with equipment.
The ongoing lockdown in force in other parts of the state will continue during which essential supplies like groceries, vegetables, fruits and milk will be available to the people.
The DoT also clarified that all queries have been duly and promptly replied in time. The Director General Audit, Post and Telegraph in continuation of their earlier queries has issued Draft Report on July 19 to DoT for comments.
This is the second time the launch of MNP has been delayed. Earlier, it was scheduled to start from December 31 last year in metros, which was later extended to March 31 across the country.
The DoT issued the information memorandum last week, saying auction would start on January 14 and for this to happen, the blocks of spectrum to be auctioned must be identified latest by the first week of December.
Move aimed at strengthening Sebi's powers to investigate market-related offences.
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