National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will hold crucial talks with the top US leadership, including his counterpart Jake Sullivan, on the first high-level dialogue on Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET).
Around 83 per cent people in a survey in India shared that 5G is one of the factors they consider while buying a new phone and nearly three in every five existing premium smartphone users are looking to upgrade their device to the next generation technology, according to a report released by Cybermedia Research. According to the survey, 81 per cent respondents prefer Oppo for 5G smartphone and 79 per cent opted for Samsung. The global survey conducted in India, China and West Europe found that 5G users, where the service is available, have experienced better video calls, faster downloads and ability to stream ultra high definition videos and satisfaction level from 5G services is around 80 per cent.
A new board has been constituted for the merged entity 'Vodafone Idea Ltd' with 12 directors (including six independent directors) and Kumar Mangalam Birla as its Chairman. The board has appointed Balesh Sharma as the CEO, the companies said in a joint statement. The combination will have an all-India revenue market share of 32.2 per cent and take the numero uno slot in nine telecom circles, it said adding that both Vodafone and Idea brands will continue.
Bharti Airtel has partnered with UK based in-flight solutions company AeroMobile to offer on-flight cell-phone connectivity to its customers.
The government on Thursday tabled the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 in the Lok Sabha with an aim to protect the privacy of Indian citizens, while proposing a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore on entities for misusing or failing to protect digital data of individuals.
Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel has now become India's biggest music company, overtaking the industry leader Saregama, on the back of its music-related value-added mobile services, a top executive has said.
The government is likely to extend fiscal incentives for production of toys, bicycles and leather and footwear in the forthcoming budget as it looks to expand production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to cover more high-employment potential sectors, sources said. The government has already rolled out the scheme with an outlay of about Rs 2 lakh crore for as many as 14 sectors, including automobiles and auto components, white goods, pharma, textiles, food products, high efficiency solar PV modules, advance chemistry cell and speciality steel. The scheme aims to make domestic manufacturing globally competitive and create global champions in manufacturing, and it is yielding solid results, sources said.
Reliance Communications announced a new rate plan - Simply Unlimited Pack - with unlimited talk time on a single monthly recharge for its CDMA pre-paid customers.
The Indian markets have seen a good run in the last three months with the S&P BSE Sensex rising around 7 per cent and the Nifty50 moving up 7.5 per cent. The next leg of the market rally from here on, analysts suggest, will be driven by a growth in corporate earnings over the next few quarters. That said, they do not expect material / sharp downgrades to India Inc's earnings estimates despite headwinds for the economy.
The 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will see Disney-Star and Viacom18 competing to sell their ad space with an eye on the estimated Rs 4,000-crore advertising money.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 46 per cent jump in net profit for the three months ended June on the back of bumper earnings from oil and telecom businesses. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate's consolidated net profit rose to Rs 17,955 crore during April-June period -- the first quarter of 2022-23 fiscal year -- from Rs 12,273 crore in the year-ago period, it said a stock exchange filing.
'There is definitely a skill war, or a talent war going on.'
For the last 15 years, Pitroda and Desai's team is working on the technology to pay through mobile phones. Pitroda already has 11 patents with him and some 20 patents related to this technology are pending for registration.
Vodafone in India provides 2G and 3G services
India is likely to become a $40 trillion economy by 2047 -- a 13-fold jump from its current size -- driven primarily by a clean energy revolution and digitalisation, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Tuesday. Ambani's estimate for the Indian economy, currently the fifth largest in the world behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany, is more optimistic than Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, who last week stated that India will become a $30 trillion economy by 2050 on back of rising consumption and socio-economic reforms. "From a 3 trillion-dollar economy, India will grow to become a 40 trillion-dollar economy by 2047, ranking among the top three economies of the world," Ambani said at the 10th convocation of Pandit Deendayal Energy University in Gandhinagar.
Investors seem to be shying away from stocks of companies in the 'digital' space with most counters that comprise the Nifty India Digital index giving negative returns over the past year. The index tracks the performance of a portfolio of stocks that broadly represent the 'digital theme' within basic industries, such as software, e-commerce, IT-enabled services, industrial electronics, and telecom services. The fall in some of these stocks over the past year has been steep; the sharpest decline of around 60 per cent was seen in shares of PB Fintech (parent company of Policybazaar).
In view of the foreign investment that would come into Bharti Airtel via the proposed share-swap and cash transaction arrangement, the finance ministry has asked DoT to ascertain more specific contents of the deal and advise the ministry on the same. In its letter, DEA has also said that the transaction would need to adhere to the sectoral cap as per the FDI policy as also specific telecom sector regulations.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
The company recently received permission to launch GSM services within its existing license and is awaiting allocation of spectrum, the radio frequency that enables wireless communications, from the government. CDMA and GSM services cannot be operated on the same spectrum.
Disney-Star is positioning IPL as a "big-screen experience" where families and friends can come together over a game of cricket, much the way football is consumed in Europe and other parts of the world.
Indian telecom sector has registered a phenomenal growth and has become second largest telephone network in the world after China.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asked UK-based Vodafone Group, which is facing a tax liability of over Rs 11,200 crore in India, to give its view on the long-pending matter in writing, a senior official said.
Investment bankers who could have earned up to 48 million dollars in fees, if the proposed deal between Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN had materialised.
3G technology is the latest in mobile communications. 3G stands for 'third generation'. It is the next big revolution in the Indian telecom arena, with all big mobile firms -- Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance Communications -- in the fray to get a portion of the lucrative pie.
The restrictions may include an additional licence fee a foreign operator has to foot on, infrastructure hurdles and lack of a brand identity in the country, unlike in the case of a 2G operator.
The missing plane could possibly be located on Monday after Nepal Telecom tracked down the cellphone of the airplane's pilot Captain Prabhakar Ghimire through the Global Positioning System network.
Bharti Airtel on Monday renewed talks for acquiring stake in South African telecom company MTN.
Global pilot project set to revolutionise remittances.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio has introduced a 20-per cent cashback offer on select prepaid plans, intensifying competition in the Indian telecommunications (telecom) market. Jio is the largest telecom service provider in India, with 443 million subscribers as of July. Jio's cashback offer will drive cross-selling across Reliance's various retail businesses, but the move is also being seen by some analysts as a signal that tariff hikes may not be around the corner just yet.
Currently, subscribers pay 50-60p for an SMS. By comparison, Tata Teleservices charges a paisa per word, for up to 15 characters.
How dominant are Chinese firms in India's sub-Rs 10,000 mobile device market? The question has become relevant as the government has been thinking of reserving this price segment for domestic players who have not been able to battle the Chinese onslaught. However, telecom firms and others are concerned that such a move could stymie the effort to build affordable 5G phones in the sub-Rs 10,000 category.
The regulatory framework for manufacturing equipment needs to change, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Pencilling in a GDP growth in third and fourth quarters, SBI Research on Wednesday revised its contraction forecast for the current fiscal year to 7 per cent. The agency had earlier forecast a 7.4 per cent contraction in 2020-21 GDP numbers. In April-September, the economy contracted 15.7 per cent but the second half may see a surprise 2.8 per cent growth, if the SBI analysis turns out to be correct.
Apple, which is seeing declining sales elsewhere in the world, is betting big on India for growth as sales here saw an impressive 56 per cent growth in the January-March 2016 quarter.
'We are targeting the 5G tender around January-March 2023.'
Feedback from telecom members indicated a 10 per cent increase in traffic, but no fears of choked networks. Telcos currently use 65-70 per cent of the network capacity. In other words, they have enough additional capacity to handle the new pressure without clogging the system.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.
India despatches high level team to Afghanistan on kidnapping