Electronics major has tied up with Reliance Comm and Tata Tele.
RComm has decided to raise the retirement age of its employees from 58 to 65 years. This move is seen as part of its expansion plan and difficulty of recruiting sufficient staff.
The British teleco is bidding hard for cellular operator Hutchison Essar. At stake: the world's fastest growing mobile market-and Vodafone's reputation.
Rival bidders Vodafone and Reliance Communications are studying the possibility of taking an indirect route to acquire control of Hutchison Essar to skirt the right of first refusal claimed by the Essar group.
Delhi HC has refused to stay the process of spectrum allotment to RCom, giving a major setback to GSM operators.
Anil Ambani severely criticised the attitude of GSM operators and raised the issue of returning the extra spectrum again.
Passing an interim order, Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal also directed BSNL to restore RCom's inter- connection within 48 hours of such payment. TDSAT Chairman Justice Arun Kumar said: "I am of a view that the petitioner (Rcom) should deposit an amount of 65 per cent of disputed claim in one week and respondent should restore the connection with 48 hours of the deposit."
Among the sectoral indices, realty and metal indices lead the rally.
With Bharti Airtel making it to the list of top-ten advertisers of the year, cellular phone service providers as a category have overthrown fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) products such as toilet soaps and shampoos to emerge as the top advertising category on television in 2007.
The slowdown in capital expansion is clearly seen in the current financial year. Large sectors such as cement, metal, oil and gas, power and telecom have provided negligible funds in the first quarter for their capex plans.
Essar holds the key for the future of telecom joint venture Hutch-Essar, as domestic and global firms, including Reliance Communications and British giant Vodafone, reportedly vie with each other to acquire the country's third-largest mobile operator
At present, the cheapest business phone (with personal digital assistants) is priced at Rs 15,000, while high-end phones are available around Rs 13,000.
Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Authority had on December 12 refused to stay the government's process of awarding new licences and allocating airwaves to mobile firms, a decision which existing GSM players say would hurt them Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular are the major GSM players in Cellular Operators Association of India, but it is learnt that there is no consensus within the lobby group over moving the high court.
Upping the ante in the ongoing spectrum war, Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani has shot off a missive to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), accusing GSM operators of having cornered spectrum under the valuable 900 MHz.
In his letter dated October 19, Anil Ambani points out that while the top three GSM players -- Bharti, Vodafone-Essar and Idea Cellular -- have acquired an additional 52 million subscribers in the past few years without allocation of any additional spectrum, something they have constantly told the government that they do not have sufficiently.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to have left it to telecom minister A Raja to resolve the tangle over allocation of spectrum, an issue that has brought industry bigwigs like Reliance Communications' Anil Ambani and Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal face to face.
The COAI decision comes in the wake of Anil Ambani group company Reliance Communications and two other CDMA players receiving approvals to offer GSM services in their respective circles of operation from the Department of Telecom on Friday.
Powered by surging markets, seven companies, Reliance Communications (R-Com) and stock market debutant DLF among them, have joined the Rs 1 trillion (Rs 1,00,000 crore) club in terms of market capitalisation. New entrants are hard-core engineering and mining companies like National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) and Bhel - both in the public sector - and L & T. Bharti Airtel, SBI and ICICI Bank are other entrants.
However, operators said the chief beneficiary would be the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, which have already been given the spectrum for 3G services, as well as Reliance Communications, which is still to roll out its 2G GSM network.
Under this initiative, ICICI Bank's customers can transfer money anytime and anywhere in the country to people having an account in the bank using their Reliance mobile phones, it said.
The service, first of its kind in the country, is expected to be launched shortly, if not within a week.
Telecom service providers (TSPs) have begun to monitor and prevent spam calls since May 1, with the help of an artificial intelligence and machine language-based system acting on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) latest directive on the matter, its officials told Business Standard. Touted as the first big technological measure against the growing menace of unsolicited commercial communications, all TSPs have confirmed to Trai that they have rolled out the AI/ML tool. The filter system works on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform used by TSPs, and is set to go for incremental updates, rules for which will soon be released, they added.
RCom's stock opened the day on a positive note and further gained 3.74 per cent to Rs 143.90 on the BSE.
Telkom Kenya has a monopoly on landline services in the country. If an Indian company wins the bid, it will enable the company to enter the country's telecom market, according to news reports in international press.
The licensor has asked Bharti Airtel, Hutch, Reliance Communications and BSNL why they should not be asked to pay Rs 50 crore or Rs 500 million (per circle) as penalty for violation of the licensing agreement, official sources said.
A deal between MTN and RCom could be announced this weekend despite threats of legal action to block the deal, the Wall Street Journal said in a report in its online edition on Thursday, quoting two unnamed people familiar with the situation. The report added that the two companies are "getting very close to announcing the deal. If there are no last-minute disagreements, the announcement may come as early as Sunday or sometime next week."
US-based Qualcomm, the dominant supplier of the chips that drive code division multiple access mobile phones, and Reliance Communications have agreed to expand the use of the technology in India.
Anil Ambani has won Lebanon-based M1 Chief Executive Officer Azmi Mikati's approval for a possible merger of Reliance Communications and South Africa's MTN Group following a meeting between the two.
Telcos may have begun their WiMAX rollouts, but the results are yet to show. Consider this. Tata Teleservices which deployed its first WiMAX network in Bangalore in March, and is expecting to gather a subcsriber base of about 2 lakh by the end of the year, has enrolled just about 7,000 customers in the city.
Reliance Communications has received a $750 million (Rs 3,000 crore) loan from China Development Bank that would be invested in building a nationwide GSM footprint for the telephony major. The Anil Ambani group company has received the loan for a ten-year period and at a rate of Libor (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate) plus 80 basis points. RCom had received the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approvals for the loan, sources close to the development 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.
B K Modi-controlled Spice Mobile is all set to launch its GSM phone for Rs 800 this month. Branded as the 'People's Phone', the handset, a very basic model, doesn't have a display screen. Spice officials believe the company will sell around one million units in India and 10 million globally over the next 12 months.
The July-September quarter results of software companies in the engineering research and development (ER&D) segment were broadly in line with expectations, though there have been cuts in revenue growth guidance. While results were a mixed bag, and there are cautionary views on the near-term outlook, brokerages and global consulting firms highlight the strong growth trajectory for the sector. They expect this segment of the software sector to grow by 8-12 per cent going forward.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications, which offers GSM and CDMA mobile services, said it added 1.62 million new mobile users in March.A company official said the net additions from January to March this year stood at 4.83 million. RCom, the country's largest CDMA operator, added 1.6 million mobile users each for the first two months.
The company has enhanced validity and talk-time of its already launched GSM tariff plans. Under the new offer, subscribers would be able to make local calls at 50 paise per minute (Re 1 earlier) and STD calls at 75 paise per minute (Rs 1.50 earlier). It had also extended validity for lifetime (licence period of the company).
"We will start our GSM services soon. We have got spectrum in 13 circles in one or two months. We expect to get spectrum in all the circles barring one or two," TTSL managing director Anil Sardana said. RCom has launched GSM services in 11,000 towns, which would be extended to 22,000 towns in the next few months.
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