According to a senior company official, BSNL is in the process of appointing recovery agents on a commission basis to bring back the money.
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd will soon expand its network by an additional 4 lakh GSM lines. The company has awarded a contract for this purpose to US-based telecom equipment vendor Motorola.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) have sent separate letters to the department of telecommunications (DoT), asking the government to bear the entire burden of nearly Rs 11,000 crore they need to fork out as one-time payment for additional spectrum.
Announcing the launch of the pre-paid 3G service, company CMD R S P Sinha said, "MTNL is launching 3G Jadoo Prepaid Services so that customer should be able to avail the latest 3G/3.5G services at an affordable price". Since pre-paid is the preferred by customers, the 3G service will be available for only Rs 300 with lifetime validity, whereby a customer can make local video calls at Rs 1.8/minute and data download at Rs 3/MB.
Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd is extending its lifetime validity cards to post-paid mobile segment, under which users have to pay Rs 800 as one-time charge for rent-free connection lifelong and 80 paise a minute for local calls.
Work on BSNL, MTNL sell-off plans to begin
The two PSUs, however, when contacted, said they are yet to receive any communication from the DoT and would decide once they receive such a demand.
State owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd will lose an additional revenue of up to Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) for not implementing the standard tariff package announced by telecom regulator Trai.\n\n\n\n
MTNL to invest Rs 500 cr on capacity expansion
The number of mobile phone connections in India rose by 1.96 million in March, after reducing by 1.06 million in February, latest data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed. The number of new connections have hit a 9-month high. In these past 9-months, the total number of wireless (mobile phone) subscriptions had reduced on 5 occasions, the data shows.
State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd has reported a dip in net profit to Rs 877.1 crore (Rs 8.771 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2003 as against Rs 1300.6 crore (Rs 13.006 billion) in the previous year.
The first ever auction of non-core assets through the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management's (DIPAM) asset monetisation portal has failed to garner adequate response for land assets of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) that was expected to garner at least Rs 470 crore. The DIPAM has asked its property consultants to identify issues in the bidding criteria that can be resolved. In November 2021, the DIPAM had listed six properties of BSNL and MTNL for sale through its new e-bidding portal for asset monetisation portal developed by state-run MSTC.
The refund also includes interest payment of Rs 166.19 crore (Rs 1.66 billion), which would increase the net profit of MTNL for the last financial year. "The interest component will have an impact on our net profitability. We are expecting it to go up by about Rs 120 crore," MTNL Director (Finance) Anita Soni told PTI. The company has lined up huge investments to ramp its GSM capacity both in Delhi and Mumbai and also broadband network.
BSNL will start providing telecom services, both wireless and fixed line, in Mumbai and Delhi on behalf of MTNL from January 1 on a pilot basis for five to six months.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to interfere with the Delhi high court verdict granting bail to former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in a money laundering case related to alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees.
Market concentration in the country's telecom sector continues to scale new heights despite government bailouts of public-sector Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), and private-sector Vodafone Idea. The combined revenue (or net sales) share of the country's top two telecom operators - Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio - in the sector's total reached an all-time high of nearly 72 per cent in FY23 from 70.4 per cent in FY22 and around 60 per cent in FY20. The net sales of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel India were Rs 1.67 trillion in FY23, up 18.6 per cent from the Rs 1.4 trillion a year earlier.
Margaret Alva claims she is unable to make phone calls after dialing 'friends in the BJP'
A Delhi court on Wednesday sent former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey to nine days' custodial interrogation by Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case related to alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of stock exchange employees. Special Judge Sunena Sharma allowed ED to quiz Pandey after the agency said he was required to be confronted with other accused in the case. Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the ED, moved an application seeking Pandey's 14-day custodial interrogation, saying the former Mumbai Police Commissioner committed an unlawful act of tapping of MTNL phones, for which purpose Rs 454 crore was paid, and becomes proceeds of crime.
The Delhi high court on Thursday granted bail to former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey in connection with a money-laundering case related to alleged illegal phone-tapping and snooping of National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees.
The fall represented the second straight month of decline in subscribers. Users in the segment had reduced by 3.66 million in September, shrinking for the first time in seven months.
The number of mobile phone subscribers in India decreased by 3.66 million in September to 1.17 billion, representing the first fall in seven months, according to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The number of subscribers had last fallen by 3.7 million back in February. In recent months, it rose by 1.08 million in August, 0.64 million in July, and 1.89 million in June.
Taking cue from holy book Bhagwad Gita, the draft telecom bill has equated spectrum to the soul which remains immortal and has used the analogy to propose its use for continuity of telecom service of entities that face insolvency.
The department for promotion of industry and internal trade has asked the telecom department and State-owned BSNL to put on hold the tender for setting up 4G network, valued at Rs 9,000 crore, after allegations emerged that the tender favoured foreign companies. The tender was floated by BSNL in March under the new management for setting up the 4G network.
BSNL Chairman and Managing Director P K Purwar told PTI that the scheme will be open between November 4 and December 3, and that instructions have already been given to field units to inform employees about the VRS offering.
The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited has invited bids for the design and construction of an underground station at Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex and for a tunnel for the bullet train project, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday. This is the first set of bids invited after the rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde-led government came to power in Maharashtra. The new government has given the green light to the project, which remained dormant during the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led dispensation.
A Delhi court on Thursday dismissed the bail application of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in a money laundering case related to alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of national stock exchange (NSE) employees. Special Judge Sunena Sharma said the material available prima face showed Pandey was actively involved in the execution of recording and monitoring of calls at the NSE, and was directly communicating with the bourse staff as well as those of the iSec, the company he founded and which was responsible for the cyber security audit of the NSE. The judge noted the material collected by the investigating officer "prima face" showed the retired IPS officer was in de facto control of the affairs of iSec even after 2006, when he resigned as a director, and kept attending the meetings with NSE officials.
India's telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.17 billion in October with Bharti Airtel maintaining its leadership in mobile subscriber addition that accounts for over 98 per cent of total connections in the country, according to the monthly report released by sector regulator Trai on Wednesday. This is the second consecutive month when Airtel added highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company added 3.67 million new customers in October, taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million in October 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) report said.
At an event at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in south Mumbai, Modi first flagged off the the CSMT-Solapur Vande Bharat Express and later another semi high-speed train linking the financial capital to Sainagar Shirdi temple town in Ahmednagar district.
The government is planning to roll out 5G testbed in early January to enable small and medium enterprises and other industry players to test their solutions on a working platform, a top Department of Telecom official said on Thursday. For the promotion of 5G indigenous technology, DoT in March 2018, had approved a multi-institute collaborative project to set up an indigenous 5G Test Bed at a total cost of Rs 224 crore. A testbed consists of a specific environment including hardware, software, operating system, and network configuration to test a product or service.
The government expects to realise Rs 35,100 crore from the partial sale of Bharatnet fibre assets and around 13,500 mobile towers owned by state-run telecom firms as part of its national monetisation pipeline released on Monday. Government think tank Niti Aayog has valued over 2.86 lakh kilometre of optical fibre assets laid by BBNL and BSNL under rural broadband project Bharatnet at Rs 26,300 crore, according to the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) document. According to the document, BSNL's 13,567 mobile tower assets and MTNL's 1,350 towers have been valued at Rs 8,800 crore.
Debt-ridden telecom operator Vodafone Idea has decided to defer payment of additional adjusted gross revenues of Rs 8,837 crore dues by a period of four years. The company in a late night filing on June 22, said that the DoT on June 15, has raised adjusted gross revenue (AGR) demand for additional two financial years beyond 2016-17, which were not covered under the Supreme court order on the statutory dues. Vodafone Idea (VIL) in the filing said that its board of directors "has approved the exercise of the option of deferment of the AGR related dues by a period of four years with immediate effect, in accordance with the said DoT Letter.
MTNL has slashed STD tariffs for subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai who will charged at a flat tariff of Rs 1.90 a minute.
'BSNL employee cost is Rs 14,500 crore and we anticipate that around 80,000 should opt for VRS.'
MTNL's board has given the go-ahead to a voluntary retirement scheme for group C and D employees. It also announced its foray into 'Mobile Commerce', which will help customers to transact business with the help of mobile.
BSNL told a government panel that it should be allocated 5 MHz spectrum in the 700 MHz band through the equity route
Under Plan A of the new initiative -- One Minute Plan -- the customer will get 500 free calls of one minute duration on monthly rental of Rs 499 and calls beyond free talk time will be charged at 60 paise per minute, the company said.
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