In an effort to make 3G telecom service available while being able to monitor it closely, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said its members were working with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to formulate rules to allow the intercepting and monitoring needed for national security.
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.
Meanwhile, a top official of RIM paid a courtesy visit to Home Minister P Chidambaram.
Says nothing should move until system is in place to enable full tapping of lines.
'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.
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.
VIL, in which Vodafone holds 45.39 per cent stake, is staring at unpaid statutory dues of Rs 53,038 crore, including Rs 24,729 crore of spectrum dues and Rs 28,309 crore in licence fee, and has already warned of shutdown if no relief is given.
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.
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.
This decision was taken at Executive Council meeting of National Association of Software and Service Companies held in Pune.
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.
The government is also trying to curb child abuse and pornography and such platforms act as catalysts in these cases.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted 10-year time to telecom firms like Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices for paying the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR)-related dues to the department of telecommunications with certain conditions.
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.
Strict lockdown-like restrictions are already in place in the southern stateand the Pinarayi Vijayan government decided to clamp the complete shutdown in the wake of severe spike in the positive cases.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Delhi high court on Wednesday questioned actress-environmentalist Juhi Chawla for directly filing a suit against the setting up of 5G wireless networks in the country without giving any representation to the government on her concerns related to the technology.
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 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.
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.
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