Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Programmes offers pared-down web services on mobile phones along with Facebook' s own social network and messaging services cost free
Indian mobile operators led by Reliance Communications, BSNL and MTNL on Friday announced a bonanza for their users who are frequent travellers by waiving or nearly eliminating roaming charges.
While consumer electronics, technology, mobile phones, auto and sports-wear categories dominate the top 20, FMCG has only one entry in the list
Tamil Nadu Election Candidates, TN 2016, Deepika Election Live, Thanjavur Election are some of the apps keeping people hooked to their handsets.
The Department of Telecommunication and mobile service providers, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communications failed to reach a consensus on the spectrum issue during a meeting held on Wednesday. According to sources, Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani raised the issue of extra spectrum being held by GSM operators. He asked how over 6.2 MHz of radio waves have been given to GSM players beyond their contractual agreement.
Revenue jumped 54.5 per cent to Rs 156,291 crore.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications said on Tuesday the government's move to introduce mobile number portability would help GSM players Aircel, Idea and Spice as they enter new circles. The government had on Monday announced that the mobile number portability, under which users would be able to switch operators while retaining their existing cell phone numbers, would be allowed by next year.
Reliance Industries Ltd is expected to invest Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion), of the total Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) announced, in its telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm over the next two years, credit rating firm Moody's said on Monday. The investment in the telecom business is a credit negative for RIL because RJio will not generate any EBITDA (an indicator of cash flows) for at least next 12 months, it said. Moody's added however that RJio will be a formidable competitor in the sector making it a credit negative for top telecom operators already in the field. "Based on RIL's March 2014 annual report, we estimate that it has already invested about Rs 400 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) in Reliance Jio, and we expect RIL to invest the next Rs 300 billion in Reliance Jio over the next two years," Moody's Investors Service said in a statement. RIL recently announced that it will launch commercial 4G telecom service of RJio in 2015 entailing investment of Rs 70,000 crore. RIL has said that RJio will initially cover about 5,000 towns and cities accounting for over 90 per cent of urban India, as well as over 215,000 villages in India and the target is to expand this to over 600,000 villages. Moody's said RJio will be a "formidable competitor in India's telecom sector" as it will enter the business with financial muscle. RJio's entry into highly competitive telecom sector is also credit negative for incumbent mobile operators and market leaders Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India because "it will undoubtedly result in intensified competition that will lead to declines in average revenue per user and margins". But, it also said that strong spectrum holding of incumbents; existing large subscriber-bases and well- established brand equity; offering 2G and 3G services (apart from 4G services being launched) as well as marketing and distribution architecture mitigate much of the near-term competitive threat from Reliance Jio for them. "Furthermore, given issues of language and literacy, large parts of rural India remain a substantially voice-based market where near-term demand for 4G services may be muted," Moody's said.
Ericsson to manage day-to-day ops across wireline and wireless network.
Making its foray into mobile content outsourcing, the CDMA major, Reliance Communications, has signed its first contract with a Singapore-based GSM service provider.
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.
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.
Pointing out to the 133-acre Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City on the outskirts of the financial capital, he said there is huge realty play opportunity that RCom's erstwhile corporate headquarters possesses, and pegged the potential value creation at the site at Rs 25,000 crore.
'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.'
Attempts to access the website opened up a page with the message: This site has been blocked as per instructions from the Department of Telecommunications
Having lost the battle for Hutchison Essar, Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications is drawing up plans to invest up to $2.5 billion.
Modelled loosely around the National Highway System of the US, he in 2001 launched the Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South & East-West Corridor projects to build 4/6 lane highways between four top metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata as well as from Srinagar to Kanyakumari and Porbandar to Silchar.
Bharti Airtel announced on Tuesday it would hive off its mobile tower and infrastructure business into a 100 per cent subsidiary.
India's booming mobile services market will see investments of over Rs 100,000 crore (around $24 billion) by 2010, the fastest investment ramp-up seen in any telecom market globally even as analysts predict a bruising battle that will see tariffs fall sharply.
Telecom service provider Reliance Communications on Monday introduced two new Classic colour phones with FM radio, aiming to tap a higher market share in this segment.
The figure is based on the base price of spectrum for the upcoming auction fixed by the TRAI and on the assumption that there will be no bidding war.
The Reliance decision was challenged by various GSM-mobile phone firms and there is an attempt to create a split in their ranks -- Maxis Aircel has already withdrawn from the court case, and it is likely another one or two firms will follow as they've been made to believe this improves their chances of getting spectrum.
According to reports, the deal, if successful, could fetch Hutchison as much as $14 billion and would be Asia's largest private equity deal.
The transaction - the second one in less than a year - is seen as an effort to restore investor faith in the company following a dismal performance by its UK subsidiary, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive.
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.
The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai group is setting up a DVD and VCD rental and distribution business, leveraging a range of delivery channels from retail stores, the internet and mobile phones.
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.
Thomas Ninad's bank account was defrauded of Rs 14 lakh under mysterious circumstances.
Analysts expect RIL to report consolidated revenue of Rs 1.40 trillion and 10 analysts expect RIL's net income to be Rs 9,629 crore
The CDMA-based mobile subscriber base of private operators touched 80.68 lakh (8.06 million), adding 343,000 customers in June this year.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met over 40 CEOs across broad swathes of industry, ranging from makers of mobile devices, auto components, food products to telecom networking equipment and pharmaceuticals. The agenda: To discuss how to make India an integral part of the global supply chain. The focus of the discussion would be the much touted yet not so well understood production-linked incentive scheme (PLI), the centrepiece of the government's drive to massively boost the manufacturing sector. To do so, the government has created a war chest of over Rs 197,000 crore to be paid out as incentives to over 14 industries in five years. There are three objectives to the scheme, two explicitly stated, one implied.
American technology giant Apple's chief executive Tim Cook on Wednesday met ICICI Bank's top brass at the country's largest private sector lender's corporate headquarters in Mumbai.
The 40 per cent market share cap suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is likely to make mergers between existing telecom operators extremely tough.
Company targets sale of one million handsets a year.
With telecom disruptor Reliance Jio not raising tariffs, incumbents Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are focusing on the minimum monthly recharge and higher first recharge offers to ensure they retain only loyal and revenue-incremental subscribers, reports Romita Majumdar.
Mukesh Ambani said the Digital India initiative has the potential to transform the lives of 1.2 billion Indians using the power of digital technology.
According to analysts, most of the growth in the smartphone space will come from existing users, who will be lured to upgrade their handsets as new features and technologies turn existing features redundant, says Arnab Dutta.
LG Electronics on Friday introduced its ultra-light weight CDMA mobile handset 'LG RD 2330' in the domestic market.
