A presentation by the CBI to a Joint Parliamentary Committee last week said the decision led to a loss of Rs 508 crore to the exchequer.
Denial of interconnection "appears to be with ulterior motive to stifle competition and is anti consumer", Trai said.
The latest telecom war kicked off after some pictures surfaced, showing Airtel banners among agitating farmers. According to the Jio camp, it was a giveaway that farmers were being enticed to port their phone numbers.
These customers will be unable to meet the lowest recharge requirements for Jio, meaning they will either exit the market or migrate to BSNL/MTNL.
Firms come out with detailed communiqu for consumers that counter Jio's claims of cheap data
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has slapped a penalty of Rs 2,000 crore on Vodafone Idea and Rs 1,050 crore on Bharti Airtel based on sector regulator Trai's recommendation five years ago, according to sources. The DoT has given three weeks time to the telecom operators to pay the penalty, a source said while sharing the content of the demand notice served to the companies on Thursday. When contacted Bharti Airtel spokesperson said, "We are deeply disappointed with the arbitrary and unfair demand based on Trai recommendations of 2016 relating to provisions of point of interconnect to a new operator.
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.
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.
Big three telecom companies term Jio's free voice calls predatory pricing
Rs 3,050-crore penalty on Airtel, Voda Idea gets nod. Final decision will be taken by DoT.
When, recently, Bharti Airtel announced a Rs 21,000 crore rights issue, analysts pointed out that its structure was similar to that of Reliance's issue in June 2020. One similarity is that shareholders in both companies have to pay only 25 per cent of the money on application. The rest is to be paid in two tranches. In Bharti Airtel's case, it is within 36 months; in Reliance Jio's, it is within 17 months.
With telecom disruptor Reliance Jio not raising tariffs, incumbents Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are focusing on the minimum monthly recharge and higher first recharge offers to ensure they retain only loyal and revenue-incremental subscribers, reports Romita Majumdar.
Incumbent operators can retain 2.5-MHz spectrum in 900-MHz band, rest to be refarmed decision final.
Mobile operators with the exception of Reliance Jio are in a much worse financial condition than expected earlier. The combined borrowing of the four incumbent operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) - reached an all-time high of Rs 3.85 trillion at the end of March this year. The companies' combined debt was up 22.4 per cent year-on-year last financial year against 8.3 per cent growth in their borrowing in the previous year. As a result, the incumbent operators' debt-equity ratio shot up to an unsustainably high level of 6.83X at the end of March this year from 2.3X at the end of March 2020. This was largely due to big losses reported by all these companies last financial year. The four incumbent operators racked up combined net losses of Rs 70,000 crore in FY21.
The Rs 51 per GB data versus industry norm of Rs 250-plus comes with the caveat of an upfront payment of Rs 1,498 for a year
The joint letter to Manmohan Singh was written by Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla group which has promoted Idea Cellular, and Vittoria Colao, chairman of Vodafone Group Plc.
Telecom Commission says refarm all spectrum in 900-MHz band to 1,800-MHz band operators.
CDMA operators on Tuesday slammed a report of the DOT spectrum committee on airwave allocation, saying it is 'highly inclined' in favour of the GSM operators.
The empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on telecom headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday decided to impose a one-time fee on incumbent operators prospectively for spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz in GSM and 2.5 MHz in CDMA.
Over the three-month period, Airtel's stock price has rallied from Rs 432 to Rs 540, while Vodafone Idea has risen from Rs 9.2 to Rs 11.8 per share.
The pack is available for Rs 1,495 for existing users and Rs 1,494 for new users, and effectively brings down 4G data rates to Rs 50 per GB
The call failure rate, Jio said, has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited
The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led firm on Sunday approached its competitors to set up intra-circle roaming and other processes in the way it is done by the sector to respond to disasters.
According to JP Morgan, it seems that Jio is willing to go for the jugular in chasing market share if this hurts some of its standing rivals like Vodafone and Idea to a point from where they find it difficult to fight back.
Unlike Reliance Jio's focus on 4G, it plans to segment the data market based on device prices and spectrum.
Trai has said the three operators were "intentionally denying and delaying" the provision of points of interconnects (PoIs) to Jio, "only to restrict a new entrant thus violating the terms and conditions of licence and regulations of the Authority which also caused a lot of inconvenience to the consumers."
Jio is planning to win over 350 million 2G feature phone users by launching a smartphone at a fraction of the current cost.
Reliance Jio saw fall in speeds from 7.2 mbps in September to 6 mbps in October, according to CLSA report.
Jio says it has completed mobile number portability testing and is certified MNP-compliant
The Department of Telecommunications' Wireless Planning and Coordination arm has moved a note to issue start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz to four leading service providers offering GSM technology, whose applications have been pending from December 2006.
Demand for 1,800-MHz weak but govt secures a combined Rs 42k cr on Day-1
Airtel already offers services in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and 17 African countries apart from India.
Vodafone and Bharti have pointed out that, for data, their revenue realisation should be at Rs 30-35 per GB for them to cover their costs as opposed to the current figure of over Rs 11 per GB. But Jio has suggested a gradual increase to Rs 15 per GB and then maybe to Rs 20 per GB after six to nine months.
Revenues of Airtel and Idea have been hit by falling realisation and analysts said margins would be affected by higher costs.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has given its recommendations on the much-awaited issue of spectrum sharing.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned company had complained to Trai about incumbents offering segmented offers to different customers
Jio has accused incumbent telecom operators for not providing the required number of equipment to connect its mobile network with theirs
Operators continued aggressive bidding in 900 MHz band
Experts say going ahead data price will fall further due to competition
43 rounds of bidding has taken place.
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