Maybe Modi could ask a patriarch of the stature of the late G D Birla to flesh out the details of a new company to manage government land privatisation.
An apex committee under DoT Secretary R Chandraskehar has been set up to oversee the required policy decisions and institutional framework for an alliance between the two public sector undertakings which have been incurring losses.
The department of telecom has asked operators to list out the priority areas, where policies are pending, for placing before the new government as a consensus agenda for the first 100 days.
Hearing from Apr 18 by five-judge SC bench against WhatsApp, FB move; Centre, Trai also summoned
Former Telecom Minister Arun Shourie on Friday appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the 2G case and said the real issue involved kickbacks and not the policy pursued for spectrum allocation.
'Some of his decisions were not so good, but his intentions were always guided by a deep national interest.'
'How is it to live in a place that does not have electricity or a telephone connection, where people do not have any concept of what the world is beyond the mountains?'
Although such alerts are not compulsory for the banks, this may become the norm now if payments are missed even for a day.
During the month, inflation in vegetables shot up to 35.99 per cent, as against 26.10 per cent in October. Likewise, the prices of cereals and eggs grew at a faster pace of 3.71 per cent.
A Delhi court on Friday reserved its order on the bail plea of former Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura, an accused in 2G spectrum scam case, who countered the conspiracy charge against him by saying he was implementing a policy backed by the Prime minister.
The government auditor CAG had estimated a presumptive loss of up to Rs 1.76 lakh crore (Rs 1.76 trillion) because of sale of spectrum in 2008 at 2001 prices.
If the Personal Data Protection Bill gets passed in its present form, a new class of companies and entities could emerge. The sole job of these new entities would be to manage the consent for data usage of a user.Banks, healthcare firms and fintech companies, among others, fear that sharing non-personal data with the government may hurt business interests. Banks also fear the threat of data misuse.
The department of telecom (DoT) on Friday announced a set of rules for granting telecom licences and allocating spectrum that is likely to impact GSM-technology service providers like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, among others.
So far, most of those horrified by the dramatic evidence that surfaced last week of Telecom Minister A Raja's largesse on 2G spectrum costing the nation $10bn (that on 3G will probably cost another $5bn) have comforted themselves with one thought: maybe the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, which is hearing the case, will conclude the policy changes were illegal and smacked of favouritism.
Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan appealed to people to boycott products from China and also directed officials of his ministry not to procure any Chinese products for day-to-day office use while his ministerial colleague Ramdas Athawale said all restaurants and hotels that sell Chinese food in India should be closed down.
The minister said that as committed earlier, the 3G spectrum would be distributed to all successful bidders on September 1 for launching services on commercial basis.
Voice calling will be free on Jio phones for life and post December 31, 10 data plans will be offered
Rahul Khullar's guiding credo was that a civil servant must never lose sight of his client: The little guy. The evil men are those who are decision-makers but abdicate their responsibility of taking decisions, leading people to lose confidence in public institutions.
Jaitley said the verdict held that nobody was guilty in the case and investigation agencies would take an appropriate decision, taking facts and history into account.
Leading telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has urged the government not to change existing spectrum allocation criteria and to continue with the additional 2G spectrum allocation policy based on subscriber figures.
The trio has been voicing their criticism of Trai's recommendations and have asked the government to dump the report, which according to them are 'retrograde' and 'absurd'.
While only 78.15 per cent of Jio's total subscriber base was active, Airtel boasts of 98.14 per cent active customers.
Demanding a level playing field for the old operators, Bharti group chief Sunil Mittal told PTI: 'our view is that the spectrum given to us and other operators from time to time is under a policy and there is no question of any additional payment for this.'
Krishnamurthy Subramanian listed land, labour, law, and liquidity as the key areas of big reforms.
Reliance Industries, which holds pan-India 4G telecom spectrum for data services, has applied for a licence to offer mobile telephony.
Events to keep an eye out for...
The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch has pointed out that these firms pose a threat to domestic manufacturing and retailing as they do not pay relevant taxes such as GST, giving them a huge edge over local players.
The ministry of home affairs has made the use of Aarogya Setu app mandatory for all employees, both private and public, and pinned the responsibility for compliance on the head of respective organisations.
According to industry insiders, India has 400 million smartphones and is the world's fastest-growing app market. So the addition or deletion of apps impacts the global valuations of these platforms. "Based on calls given by various local organisations to delete Chinese Apps, there will be an impact," said Blaise Fernandes, director at foreign policy think tank Gateway House. "All of them eventually will go the IPO (initial public offering) route so there would be economic impact also."
Telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday released draft recommendations on rural telephony for overcoming various constraints coming in the way of increasing telecom penetration in rural India.
In the latter half of the year, there would be some economic recovery and return to normal business conditions.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said that although there is a huge gap in the prices of spectrum for 2G and 3G services, the whole issue needs to be seen in proper perspective.
Market breadth turned negative with 1,779 declines over 884 advances on the BSE
A basic problem is that the cost of spectrum and licences relative to earnings is too high.
Not just in the fight against COVID-19, but also in politics, economics and society, observes Ajit Balakrishnan.
Yes Bank was the top gainer in the Sensex pack rising 5.80 per cent, followed by Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Bank and Tata Steel.
'The question is: Who misrepresented the facts to the then PM? It was not A Raja but Pulok Chatterjee, in consultation with T K A Nair, as he had suppressed the most relevant and controversial part of the letter of A Raja from the then Prime Minister,' says the special CBI judge in his 2G spectrum case verdict.
Zuckerberg is kicking off a tour of Europe on Monday.
About 10,000 engineers of state-run telecom firm BSNL in the country started an indefinite strike from Tuesday, demanding absorption of officers on deputation at the PSU and transparent human resource policy.
