India's largest telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd announced on Thursday a reduction in monthly free calls for landline telephone subscribers but did not increase the overall monthly telephone rentals for urban and rural subscribers.\n\n\n\n
'The recent incident in the US has no bearing in India.' 'We are not aware of any request from the US to India about 5G.'
Airtel said it will implement 25 per cent more stringent mobile call drop benchmark of 1.5 per cent versus 2 per cent prescribed by the regulator Trai.
Now calling the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada will cost Indian users only Rs 0.89 per minute, down from the current Rs 1.39 per minute.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Monday announced 20-25 per cent tariff hikes for various prepaid offerings, including tariffed voice plans, unlimited voice bundles and data top-ups, and said the new rates will come into effect from November 26. The entry-level tariffed voice plan has been raised by about 25 per cent, while for unlimited voice bundles, the increase in most cases is about 20 per cent. Sunil Mittal led telco -- whose India mobile customer base stood at about 323 million at the last count -- has also increased the tariffs for data top-up plans by about 20-21 per cent
Communist Party of India-Marxist member in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G spectrum allocation Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday supported calling former Telecom Minister A Raja as a witness before the panel saying it will help reaching "closer to the truth".
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.
BSNL, MTNL also reduce local call rates to Re 1 for a 3-minute call. But this comes with an increase in rental of Rs 49 to Rs 299 per month from the existing Rs 250.
Airtel CEO said, the 5G ecosystem is yet to develop in India and the prices are very high. Telecom companies including Vodafone Idea (VI) and Reliance Jio have also said that the current prices are exorbitant.
This will enable Non-Resident Indians in the US to call friends and family back in India at the most competitive rates in the market, Airtel said.
Telecom service provider Reliance Communications on Friday said it has launched an international calling card for the United States and Canada through which users can make calls to these countries at a rate of Rs 1.99 per minute.
Players such as Net4, Sify and Worldphone Internet Services are offering International long distance (ILD) calls that work out to less than a rupee a minute by using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Around 80 million minutes worth of calls are made via VoIP every month (legally), according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
In this interesting case filed by the petitioner against the Taj Hotels, the National Commission gave an equally interesting judgment.
Agreement between Bharti Airtel and Loop Mobile, which offers mobile services in Mumbai, expired on October 31
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.
After initial hiccups, the government on Thursday permitted carriage of video calls on mobile networks subject to an undertaking by operators that they would provide interception capability by July 31 this year.
Days after they claimed that no calls were made or received on Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse's phone number from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's number, the Mumbai police on Wednesday said a probe into the matter is still on as some "new elements" have emerged in the case.
In a relief to millions of mobile phone users, telecom regulator Trai on Friday said it will take 4-6 weeks to curb the menace of unsolicited calls and SMSes after DoT cleared the '140' number series exclusively for landline phones of telemarketing companies.
Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Ltd, a little-known entity through which the Adani Group has launched a hostile bid for NDTV Ltd, had an annual turnover of just Rs 60,000 few years back but it gave Rs 400 crore of interest-free loans to the broadcaster in 2009, as per Sebi orders.
A government panel on Tuesday proposed raising foreign investment limits in sectors like defence, multi-brand retail and telecommunications, to spur investment in the country and tide over the Current Account Deficit woes.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's decision to enforce stricter norms on unsolicited calls and text messages may well be a boon in disguise, feel organised mobile marketing companies.
An industry of scamsters is operating in the guise of call centres in India.
Mittal said he discussed a plethora of issues with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and sought the government's support for faster clearances to streamline the group's investment plans.
Nearly 60 lakh mobile subscribers have enrolled with the National-Do-Not-Call registry within just 10 days of its launch to avoid getting unsolicited sales calls from telemarketers.
To cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government on Wednesday liberalised guidelines for voice-based BPOs removing the distinction between domestic and international units as well as permitting interconnectivity between all types of OSP centres. Broadly, the rules would allow global companies, say an airline, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that required dedicated, separate infrastructure previously. Moreover, the restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (business process outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.
Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Telecommunications and Information Technology, has predicted that, thanks to the mobile technology boom, telephone calls and related charges in India would soon be free. Pilot said that in such a scenario, telecom companies would have to think of novel ways to make money, with services such as data transfer to survive and stay competitive.
Vodafone plc has made it clear that it will not make any fresh equity infusion in its Indian telecom business--Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL). Responding to a query, a spokesperson at the UK-headquartered telco said: "Just to confirm our position, there will be no new equity infusion from Vodafone Group." This is the first time that Vodafone has spoken about its stand after the government announced a telecom package.
DoT is even considering measures to urge private telecom operators to bring down their dependence on Chinese-made telecom equipment.
Company also called for clarity on jurisdiction and role of the TRAI and TDSAT.
The Department of Telecom on Tuesday approved applications of telecom companies -- Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and MTNL -- for conducting 5G trials but none of them will be using technologies of Chinese entities. The list of telecom gear makers approved for trials include Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, C-DOT and Reliance Jio's indigenously developed technologies.
According to the Trai latest report, only around 18 million telephone subscribers out of the total subscriber base of more than 344 million have opted to register in NDNC. Of these, urban areas like Delhi and Mumbai constitute around 40 per cent along with states like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked Vodafone Idea (Vi) to come back to it with a business plan soon in light of its decision not to launch 5G services for now (unlike its competitors Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel) and in view of its assessment of the possible impact of BSNL's impending launch of 4G in a few months and then 5G by August 15. "We are worried about Vi as we want to have three private players and one government player in the market. "The global trend now is to have two to three players.
Pradip Baijal, former chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), spoke to Nivedita Mookerji on what made him write the book, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh telling him to cooperate with then telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, being hounded and harassed during the UPA years, questioning by the Central Bureau of Investigation, and more.
Conversion of debt of the stressed telecom player Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) into equity could be an option to emerge out of the crisis, lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI) have suggested to Department of Telecommunications (DoT). DoT had called senior bank officials on Friday to discuss the stress in the telecom sector arising out of the Supreme Court order last month on the adjusted gross revenue (AGR)-related dues payable by telecom majors, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, sources said. The top court has given a time period of 10 years to telecom service providers struggling to pay Rs 93,520 crore of AGR-related dues to clear their outstanding amount to the government.
The long-overdue consolidation makes indebted RCom an even more attractive partner for a soon-to-launch upstart led by older brother Mukesh.
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.
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.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's four-year-old telecom venture Reliance Jio has been ranked the fifth strongest brand globally behind the likes of Ferrari and Coca-Cola. The Brand Finance's Global 500 ranking of the strongest brands globally, which determined the relative strength of brands, is topped by WeChat, according to its annual report on most valuable and strongest global brands.
The company has reportedly been in the process of shutting its CDMA business and shifting its subscribers to 2G, 3G and 4G networks.
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