The adjusted gross revenue (earnings from sale of telecom services) of the top three telecom companies in India - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular declined by 7.98 per cent, 5.14 per cent and 4.91 per cent respectively during third quarter of 2016-17.
India's first auction of 5G spectrum, that powers ultra-high data speeds, is currently underway with a total of 72 GHz (gigahertz) of radiowaves worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore up for bidding. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio, Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and a unit of billionaire Gautam Adani's flagship Adani Enterprises are in the race to bid for 5G spectrum, that offers speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time. In addition to powering ultra-low latency connections, which allow downloading full-length high-quality video or movie to a mobile device in a matter of seconds (even in crowded areas), Fifth Generation or 5G would enable solutions such as e-health, connected vehicles, more-immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences, life-saving use cases, and advanced mobile cloud gaming among others.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 46 per cent jump in net profit for the three months ended June on the back of bumper earnings from oil and telecom businesses. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate's consolidated net profit rose to Rs 17,955 crore during April-June period -- the first quarter of 2022-23 fiscal year -- from Rs 12,273 crore in the year-ago period, it said a stock exchange filing.
Leading stock exchange BSE on Tuesday postponed the removal of Jio Financial Services Ltd, the demerged non-banking financial services unit of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance group, from all the S&P BSE Indices to August 29. Earlier, the stock was scheduled to be removed from the indices on August 24. Jio Financial Services Ltd (JFSL) got listed on the bourses on Monday and hit the lower circuit for the second day in a row on Tuesday.
The incumbent operators faced the onslaught of free offers and cheaper rates from Jio.
Indian telcos have been able to garner over 20 million 5G customers in less than four months after the official launch of the service last October, according to industry estimates. With telecom operators like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel aggressively rolling out their 5G services in over 190 cities across the country to date, India is now only behind China and the US in terms of the number of cities in a country where 5G services have been extended. Top executives in telcos say that the number of 5G subscribers in India is a conservative estimate and that it will rise as the roll-out gains momentum.
Facing the brunt of farmer's ire over perception of it being a beneficiary of new farm laws, Reliance Industries on Monday said it neither buys foodgrains directly from farmers nor is it in the business of contract farming. In a statement, billionaire Mukesh Ambani's firm said its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) has filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana high court seeking "the urgent intervention of government authorities to bring a complete stop to the illegal acts of vandalism (of telecom towers) by miscreants." Reliance said it "has nothing whatsoever to do with the three farm laws currently debated in the country, and in no way benefits from them."
It reported adding 698,3146 subscribers in September, the lowest since it added 6.1 million in November 2017.
In the latest move, the telco has reduced validity for its Rs 309/509 packages from 84 days to 56
The alliance combines capabilities of both the companies to offer a set of solutions comprising connectivity, computing, storage solutions, and other technology services and applications required by Indian businesses, and will span the broad Reliance Industries ecosystem, including its existing and new businesses.
While the market for satellite broadband currently is small, the potential is large as an estimated 30 per cent of the country does not have reliable terrestrial broadband services.
Jio is in a neck and neck battle with Airtel, which added a similar number of subscribers as Jio in the 15 months from February 2017 to April 2018
Amazon will invest more than Rs 2,000 crore (about $233 million) in India in 2025 as it strengthens its logistics and safety standards, said the ecommerce company on Thursday.
The government is considering the option of handing over operations of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) to BSNL through an agreement, instead of pursuing a merger route, a source privy to the development said. A final call on this is likely to be taken in a month's time. The source said the option of handing over debt-laden MTNL's operations to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) through an agreement is being looked into.
The number of mobile phone connections in India rose by 1.96 million in March, after reducing by 1.06 million in February, latest data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed. The number of new connections have hit a 9-month high. In these past 9-months, the total number of wireless (mobile phone) subscriptions had reduced on 5 occasions, the data shows.
The latest deal would give Facebook deeper access to India, the second largest internet market after China.
Average data usage on Airtel India network grew about three fold to 2611 megabyte (about 2.5 GB) per customer from 904 MB on YoY basis. But the average revenue from the data services per customer declined by 22.7 per cent during the period.
Flipkart Group Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy on Monday said the firm was advancing preparations for a potential initial public offering (IPO) in India, which included shifting its holding company to India from Singapore. Speaking at an internal town hall, Krishnamurthy said the company's leadership structure is strengthening and that the steps toward relocating Flipkart's legal base to India are progressing as planned, according to people familiar with the matter.
Reliance Retail's digital commerce platform JioMart will morph into an e-marketplace offering multiple brands - from electronics, consumer durables, fashion and lifestyle, beauty, home, kitchen, and grocery - as it girds up to take on the likes of Amazon and Flipkart ahead of the festival season sales. India's largest retailer was in the process of onboarding third-party sellers these past few months, further increasing its selection across categories multifold. Its website and application offers general merchandise as well.
India's versatile media and entertainment industry can grow more than three-fold to $100 billion in the next decade, creating millions of jobs and a ripple effect across sectors, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday.
Trai has said the three operators were "intentionally denying and delaying" the provision of points of interconnects (PoIs) to Jio, "only to restrict a new entrant thus violating the terms and conditions of licence and regulations of the Authority which also caused a lot of inconvenience to the consumers."
Revenues of Airtel and Idea have been hit by falling realisation and analysts said margins would be affected by higher costs.
While the company insisted it had enough spectrum across circles, analysts said the company might soon need to acquire some spectrum to ensure uninterrupted service.
For existing customers, he announced that the current benefits will continue under a new tariff plan for another 12 months by payment of Rs 303 per month and a one-time joining fee of Rs 99.
Used smartphones are gaining popularity in the hinterland, the main market for JioPhone. Share of JioPhone in the feature phone market had shrunk from 47% in Q2 of 2018 to 28% a year after.
From January 1, all these iPhone users will get the Rs 1,499 plan completely free for 1 year, which equals value worth Rs 18,000
With seven million new subscribers, India accounted for the highest net addition of mobile subscriptions globally in the second quarter of 2023, according to the August edition of Ericsson Mobility. Among national markets, India was followed by China with five million and the US with three million subscribers. The subscriber penetration in India, however, stood at 79 per cent, compared to 120 per cent in China, the report said.
Evolving a common work ethic and culture will be critical so that the merged entity does not lose focus on the common enemy outside -- and instead becomes more obsessed with internal turf wars.
Vodafone Idea's (Vi's) subscriber loss reduced to a seven-month low in March, and alongside the company added 1.1 million broadband users after two months of net loss -- two things analysts have noted as key trends that need to be monitored. While Vi has been losing customers for more than two and a half years now, the churn reduced to below a million after five straight months in March, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) data has shown. "Jio's softer than usual subscriber growth in March, and VIL's slowing subscriber market share loss are key trends to keep an eye on going forward," global investment banking and financial services major UBS said in an analyst note.
Reliance Industries Ltd on Monday announced an agreement to invest alongside Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty in special purpose vehicles developing data centres in India. Reliance will hold a 33.33 per cent stake in each of the five Indian special purpose vehicles and become an equal partner, the company said in a statement. Digital Realty Trust, Inc is the largest provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions globally with 300+ data centres across 27 countries.
Among Sensex shares, HCLTech, Asian Paints, Maruti, JSW Steel, TCS, SBI, ITC and Bharti Airtel were the major losers. On the other hand, Bajaj Finserv, Mahindra & Mahindra, Titan, L&T and Wipro were the major gainers.
Manish Tiwary plans to take up a new role at another firm.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started a limited test use of WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest USD 5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report.
The effective cost of the fully made-in-India phone will be zero, as against the minimum Rs 3-4.5k cost for a smartphone, Ambani said.
At a time when exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were unloading Jio Financial Services from their portfolios, some active fund managers were placing large bets on the demerged financial services arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), a report by Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research shows. Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund and Quant Mutual Fund were the top MF buyers of the stock in August. They bought around 60 million shares each, together investing around Rs 2,800 crore.
Qatar's sovereign wealth fund is in early discussions to buy a minority stake in billionaire Mukesh Ambani's rapidly expanding retail unit for about $1 billion (Rs 8,200 crore), sources said. The Qatar Investment Authority is keen on tapping the fast-growing Indian market and has entered into a discussion to buy about 1 per cent stake in Reliance Retail Ventures, sources with knowledge of the matter said. Talks, sources said, are at a preliminary stage and being led by an executive director on the board of parent Reliance Industries Ltd.
Jio to charge users 6 paisa/min for voice calls made to rival phone networks. However, these charges are not applicable on calls made by Jio users to other Jio phones and to landline phones and calls made using WhatsApp, FaceTime and other such platforms.
Mobile operators with the exception of Reliance Jio are in a much worse financial condition than expected earlier. The combined borrowing of the four incumbent operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) - reached an all-time high of Rs 3.85 trillion at the end of March this year. The companies' combined debt was up 22.4 per cent year-on-year last financial year against 8.3 per cent growth in their borrowing in the previous year. As a result, the incumbent operators' debt-equity ratio shot up to an unsustainably high level of 6.83X at the end of March this year from 2.3X at the end of March 2020. This was largely due to big losses reported by all these companies last financial year. The four incumbent operators racked up combined net losses of Rs 70,000 crore in FY21.
Reliance has around 90,000 telecom towers now, half of which are operational and owned by the RIL and rest on lease.
'All three players in the market are haemorrhaging cash. Average consumer is consuming 12 gigabits (GB) at price points you don't see anywhere else.'
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