'I feel more like a chess player, thinking for long hours how to make the next move," Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan tells Surajeet Das Gupta.
Manoj Sinha, earlier minister of state for railways, will be tasked to conduct the auction and deal with issues like net neutrality.
A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud said the parties should appear before the Constitution bench and formulate issues to be taken up for the hearing.
Titan, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Power Grid, NTPC and Tata Motors were among the among the major gainers. Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Nestle, JSW Steel, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra and Maruti were the major laggards.
The regulator has also agreed to the one-nation, one-licence proposal, which will make roaming free across the country. But it wants to decide the modalities of the issue.
A bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar issued notice to the government and fixed the matter for further hearing on December 10. The petition filed by an NGO, Telecom Watchdog, contended that the government alloted the spectrum without following any policy and cellular operators were provided excess spectrum without charging them for the scarce resource since 2001.
The policy change was originally scheduled to come into effect on February 8, the Facebook-owned company said.
The demand for white-collar gig roles saw an 11 per cent uptick year-on-year in March, amid muted hiring across industries due to global headwinds and job cuts, according to a recent report. The month saw white-collar hiring in India rise 2 per cent in terms of job posting activity compared to the same period the previous year, according to the report by staffing portal foundit.in (formerly Monster APAC and ME). Sectors such as retail, telecom, and Travel and Tourism saw the biggest growth in demand on an annual basis.
'At a time when massive strides are being made in bringing 5G technology to India, and with TSPs ramping up their infrastructure, it is unacceptable that a large number of complaints over quality issues continue to come in, even from major urban areas.'
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) expects to finalise the norms for mergers and acquisitions and spectrum sharing by the end of June. It also plans to approve the National Telecom Policy (NTP), 2012, by the end of July.
"I want to reiterate that I went as per the telecom policy of 1999, as per recommendations of Telecom and Regulatory Authority of India and vision contemplated by the government. If there have been any procedural lapses. Let it be investigated. No problem at all," Raja told reporters here two days after he unceremoniously put in his papers.
New Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Nripendra Misra said on Wednesday there were no differences between the regulator and the Department of Telecom.
Call drops may end as govt allows telecom spectrum trading
According to software company Mavernir, the new virtualised networks would lead to a saving of 40 per cent in capex and 34 per cent in terms of lower operations cost for operators.
'You have to have commitment to both, but it has to be done at the individual level.'
The Finance Ministry, which is under immense pressure to meet the fiscal deficit target during the current financial year, has also written a letter to the department of telecommunication to auction spectrum to earn additional revenues.
Communications Minister A Raja met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday and briefed him about the developments in the telecom sector including recent policy decision like introduction of number portability and releasing spectrum for third generation (3G) mobile services. The meeting lasted for about 25 minutes, official sources confirmed but did not give details.
Global credit rating agency Fitch upgraded outlook for the Indian telecom sector from 'negative' to 'stable'.
Tata group chief Ratan Tata has questioned allocation of spectrum based on subscriber and technology without having a defined policy.
Ashok Pradhan on Monday took charge as the Minister of State for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
Performance is considered a major reason why Ravi Shankar Prasad might have had to leave telecom.
The CBI approached Shourie last week asking him to appear before the agency in connection with the Preliminary Enquiry registered by the agency following a direction from the Supreme Court.
These policies aim to raise revenue of both the sectors to $700 billion over the next eight years.
Chandrasekhar's comments came within hours of Tata slamming him for the alleged subversive role played by him to change the telecom policies.
Citing security concerns the Home Ministry has opposed hike in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) caps in sectors like aviation and telecom, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
With reduced uncertainty and clarity on the spectrum-pricing and sharing front, industry set to see positive growth and stability in the new year.
Despite multiple headwinds at the start of 2023, the Indian markets delivered a strong performance, posting 19-20 per cent growth for the year. Even as new records were set, investor sentiment remains strong going into 2024, given the lower inflation, expectations of steady to lower interest rates, higher economic growth, and strong inflows. However, the overriding concern for most brokerages is valuations.
The long-awaited high-speed 5G services are expected to be rolled out in about a month, Minister of State for Telecom Devusinh Chauhan said on Monday. Addressing the inaugural event of the International Telecommunication Union's Regional Standardisation Forum (RSF) for Asia and Oceania region, Chauhan said India is likely to deploy indigenously developed and manufactured 5G telecom gears by end of this year for 5G services. "In about a month, 5G mobile services will roll out in the country, which will have multiplier effects on the development of all sectors.
'If Parliament had not been obstructed, even the Indian media would not have realised that such a monumental scam had taken place,' says Arun Jaitley.
After engaging in a war of words with industrialist Ratan Tata, Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar has now given a 7-point agenda to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal suggesting that the ministry be made "free of lobbyists and wheeler-dealers" to clean up the sector.
Both Airtel and Vodafone claim they did everything possible to resume services.
High court orders Swan Telecom's promoter Shahid Balwa, the director of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables, Rajeev Agarwal, and three firms, namely Dynamic Realty, DB Realty, and Nihar Constructions to plant 3,000 trees each in the Delhi's South Ridge forest area.
The Unite dProgressive Alliance government and the Opposition will debate in Parliament on Thursday the terms of reference of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 2G spectrum scam and pass a resolution.
Gautam Adani's alleged proximity to Narendra Modi may dent the latter's self-styled image of incorruptibility, points out Kanika Datta.
The government is planning to merge Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) with the loss-making state-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) this month, a senior official has said. BSNL chairman and managing director PK Purwar at a recent event organised by the All India Graduate Engineers and Telecom officers Association (AIGETOA) said that the government is giving the telecom firm an opportunity for a turnaround. "The government has taken a policy decision that BBNL is going to be merged into BSNL. "This means all work of BBNL at the pan-India level is going to come to BSNL," Purwar said at the All India Conference of AIGETOA on March 13.
Former Telecom Minister A Raja had "misled" then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh regarding policy of first-come-first-served which was to be followed for allocation of 2G spectrum, Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday told a special court.
Breaking its silence on reports that Chinese telecom equipment makers are being banned in India on security reasons, Beijing on Monday urged New Delhi to remove restrictions and said such curbs amount to discrimination.
The government is not in a "crazy rush" to sell everything and it will continue to have a presence in four strategic sectors, including telecom, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday. In strategic sectors, a bare minimum presence of the existing public sector commercial enterprises at the holding company level will be retained under government control. The remaining enterprises in a strategic sector will be considered for privatisation or merger with another PSE or for closure.
The government may earn about Rs 50,000 crore (Rs 500 billion) from the new telecom spectrum policy, which seeks to delink licences from spectrum, if it decides to fix the price based on the figure discovered through last year's 3G auction.
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