Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday pressed for bridging the digital divide "both among nations and within nations", saying connectivity and communications have become the fundamental rights of every person. Also, there is a need to bring back the economies around the globe. Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum, he said it is difficult to imagine what India would have been without the 4G telecom network during the pandemic. "The digital divide must be bridged, both among nations and within nations.
Some buyers are insisting on a clause in the agreement that the whole deal hinges on physical verification at a later date with some part of payment kept in escrow.
Chinese mobile brands are deeply entrenched in the Indian market. A move to bar them may send a bold diplomatic message. But its cost for the local industry is anybody's guess. In the event that Chinese brands face curbs, two handset makers - Samsung and Apple - squarely stand to gain.
India's telecom sector has been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies. India could go back to a private sector duopoly with just Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel surviving the mayhem. The third player, Vodafone Idea, could be history.
Leading microchip providers Qualcomm and Intel say the chip shortage might last anything between four months to a year, perhaps even two years, depending on the various product categories - mobile devices, ICE, electric vehicles, appliances, data centres. Prakash Mallya, MD, Intel India and vice president, sales and marketing and communications group, said the spike in demand was huge, and cut across segments from PCs, phones, appliances and auto leading to the shortage.
Consumers can expect a 5G launch in the country soon. Telecom companies (telcos) say if auctions take place on time - the target is July - they would be able to offer some services in a few cities by the end of this year and a full roll-out from 2023. But the question is: will 5G turn the tables for telcos financially? Will average revenue per user (ARPU) improve? Will mobile consumers upgrade to 5G quickly and pay more? Will the expanded functions that 5G enables drum up sufficient revenues? In simple terms, will telcos make more money?
Reliance Jio had proposed that besides satellite connectivity, In-Flight Connectivity can be provided using cellular network as well.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, recently stated that he sees India in the same position that China was seven to ten years ago
A user will need to buy a 4G-enabled handset and then upgrade his or her existing 2G/3G SIM card to a USIM (Universal SIM)/4G SIM.
The company at present provides monthly mobile services at starting price of Rs 24 without data, and plans with data service starts from Rs 33 onward. It did not disclose the quantum of hike.
Consolidated revenue rose to a record Rs 163,854 crore.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India -- a global first -- with about a million users.
The brokerage reduced its target price for the company to Rs 995 per share from Rs 1,350 apiece. Credit Suisse said RIL's liabilities increased from $19 billion to $65 billion in four years.
In March this year, Worldline India launched Vabox (Voice Alert Box): merchants will now get instant audio alerts on the settlement of UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments via QR codes in languages of their choice when customers check out. "They needn't worry whether the amount has been credited to their account," says Gulshan Pruthi, the firm's executive vice-president. The French payments giant will roll out 500,000 Vaboxes in the initial phase.
Bulk of these customers use 2G phones and are still focused on voice services and might prove useful for both Bharti Airtel and the Idea-Vodafone combine.
'If they are taking marquee locations and, say, are paying 50 per cent higher rent, those locations will see a spurt in rates as well.'
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
How Bajaj, Colgate, Raymonds, Zee lost out.. Strategic errors have hurt many companies, says adguru Sandeep Goyal.
Earlier, Ambani had announced that RIL's telecom arm Jio will strive to make India free of 2G by migrating from feature phones to an affordable smartphone.
After initial success, data use is stagnating and getting consumers to spend additional money for high-speed internet is proving to be difficult for telcos.
Apart from digital advertising revenue, both companies want to reach out to the 'next billion' Indian customers. After all, around half of the 1.3 billion population is still not on the net and this represents a challenge as well as an opportunity.
If Vodafone Idea shuts, a bulk of the high-paying ARPU customers will move to Airtel as Reliance Jio does not have a comprehensive postpaid offering like it, and have aggressively preferred to play in the prepaid market. The bulk of Vodafone Idea customers use 2G phones and only a few of them use data. It will be easier for Airtel to woo these customers as they can shift seamlessly to its 2G network without changing handsets or even SIM cards,
Text messaging services of all telecom operators also remained suspended in Lucknow and some other parts of UP. In Assam, services were restored 10 days after being banned.
Reliance announced a rights issue of Rs 53,125 crore, which it said was the biggest in India.
Airtel offers 4G service in 1800 Mhz band frequency while other companies are yet to roll out their services.
From PhonePe to Jio, everyone wants to be a Super App but it is still unclear if they will actually work in India.
Reliance Communications could become a much more formidable opponent.
The sharing agreement will provide more bandwidth for RJIL to provide its high-speed 4G services.
To make the scheme attractive, the government has announced a rate structure wherein the operators may take the optical fibre on lease and provide broadband connectivity to customers.
Reliance has significant investments in telecom, consumer retail and media businesses in India.
Vodafone-Idea (Vi) has said the key hurdle it faces in raising fresh funding, despite interest from investors, is the 'pricing situation' which is also the reason why it has asked the Department of Telecommunica-tions (DoT) for another extension of the moratorium on payment of spectrum instalment by one more year. Responding to a question during an analysts' call on Friday after its quarterly results on the reason for the delay in fund-raising nine months after it was announced, CEO & MD Ravinder Takkar said: "We are in discussions with investors. There is continued interest in investing in the telecom sector in the country. "The biggest hurdle is that the overall industry is under stress because of the pricing situation." He said that once tariffs go up, it will create a significant amount of confidence.
Everyday consumerables, such as grocery and order-in food items are the key buyout sector, analysts say, and a major reason for kirana stores' digitisation push.
Reliance Industries Ltd, whose offering of rock-bottom tariffs shook up the telecom industry, is looking to repeat the feat in the green energy business, where its billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani sees promise to outshine all existing growth engines in 5-7 years. Having pledged Rs 6 lakh crore on green energy, Ambani says RIL will scale up investments in this business which will start going live in the next 12 months. "Over the next 12 months our investments across the Green Energy value chain will gradually start going live, scaling up over the next couple of years," Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, said in the company's latest annual report.
Flipkart, the e-commerce company owned by Walmart, is intensifying its efforts to achieve profitability as it is eyeing a valuation of approximately $60 billion at the time of its initial public offering (IPO), now planned in 2025-2026, instead of this year, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm might consider listing in the US or any other geography, including India. The company, which counts the likes of Amazon and Reliance's JioMart among its competitors in India's burgeoning e-commerce market, had also contemplated launching an IPO in 2022-2023.
Trends like bundled offers and 4G-LTE feature phones could become mainstream in 2018
These customers will be unable to meet the lowest recharge requirements for Jio, meaning they will either exit the market or migrate to BSNL/MTNL.
The device is already great. But its real capabilities will be unleashed after the iOS 11 is rolled out, says Abhik Sen.
Companies are playing the price game to woo customers.
The Note 7 features 5.7-inch display, 12MP rear and 5MP front camera, 64GB onboard memory and 3,500 mAh battery
Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile phone operator in the country.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances