Who is to take their place? Will a new generation of entrepreneurs start up with better business sense, or at least better luck? But the so-called unicorns are mostly copy-cat entrepreneurs whose cash flow is funded by overseas (including Chinese) money, notes T N Ninan.
BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap indices hit their fresh lifetime highs for the second day in a row
But the road map of telecom will be decided by one thing: Whether Jio sticks to its ambitious plan and whether incumbents have enough financial muscle or ability to raise money every year to ensure that Jio does not reach its target, says Surajeet Das Gupta.
The Anil Ambani group on Friday asked market regulator SEBI to probe hammering down of shares of Reliance Communications and other companies by rivals and charged RIL with attempting to derail ongoing talks for a deal with South African telecom giant MTN.
Coal India was the biggest gainer on both Sensex and Nifty
The decision of the Telecom Commission to approve in-flight connectivity won't just bring cheer to the chat-friendly passengers, but even more to the telecom industry facing severe financial stress, says Nivedita Mookerji.
The defence ministry has lost sight of what it intended to achieve -- which was to nurture private defence firms that would compete on equal terms with the 9 defence PSUs and the 41 Ordnance Factory Board factories.
SBI was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, jumping around 3 per cent, followed by Kotak Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Auto, Tech Mahindra, UltraTech Cement and PowerGrid. NSE Nifty rose 36.40 points to 15,337.85.
Google is believed to be in talks to take on a lease of 500 GB bandwidth; this, according to industry sources, puts the deal size at around $80-100 million (Rs 320-400 crore).
Three Japanese submarine cable construction companies have been short-listed by Flag Telecom, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications
Analysts remain confident RIL's refining and petrochemical segment will continue to support growth.
Trai has announced that it may fix prices of pay channels on the direct-to-home (DTH) platform in line with the Rs 5 per channel cap on conditional access system (CAS) services in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. This move will lower the fees but hit the income of broadcasters from DTH companies. However, new DTH entrants will benefit from the move as their cost of content will decrease. For the 2 existing DTH companies, Dish TV & Tata Sky, the current rates are likely to continue.
Multiple triggers such as asset sales, pickup in energy cash flows, increased traction in omni-channel retail, and rise in ARPUs could further drive the stock.
India's huge digital prowess and potential will play a huge role in enabling digital lending, says Romita Majumdar.
Says, Jio unlikely to gain 2% revenue market share in 2017
Bharti's ratings headroom is likely to improve with an equity infusion, planned asset sales and growing EBITDA from Africa.
Telecom companies that bought spectrum in the 2G auction of November last year would lose around Rs 4,000 crore
Reliance Jio saw fall in speeds from 7.2 mbps in September to 6 mbps in October, according to CLSA report.
Analysts say that Jio's substantial slowing down in net additions is possibly because the company has dramatically reduced its bundled 4G feature phone offering, which contributed an average 30-40 per cent of its net additions.
The problem is simple: None of the incumbent players, including Vodafone Idea, has a similar offer to challenge Jio and ensure that its 2G customers do not migrate.
Regulators will need to allow the model to evolve to allow profits to flow, says Una Gulani.
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
The company is targeting 100 million subscribers in shortest possible time, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said
The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 61 points at 16,782. It finally ended with a gain of 405 points at 17,126. Bharti Airtel zoomed 9.6% to Rs 925 and RCom soared 8.3% to Rs 577. ICICI Bank surged 4.5%, HDFC and SBI rallied 4% each, Satyam, NTPC and Larsen & Toubro were up over 1% each and ITC, ONGC, R-Energy, Wipro, Tata Steel, BHEL and M&M were other gainers. ACC dropped nearly 2% to Rs 783 while Maruti and DLF were down around 1%.
Chinese telcos hold 60-100 MHz of spectrum, while Indian companies hold 13-15 MHz of spectrum.
Other gainers included Kotak Bank, HCL Tech, ONGC, Asian Paints, Vedanta, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance, Maruti and TCS, gaining up to 1.41 per cent. Sun Pharma was the top loser, cracking 8.58 per cent.
Private telecom company Reliance Infocomm on Wednesday launched an 'incoming only' recharge voucher for subscribers, who do not have much outgoing call needs.
Reliance Jio Infocomm has announced that it would launch commercial 4G services in 6 to 8 weeks.
The CPI(M) on Friday renewed its demand for sacking of TRAI chief Pradeep Baijal and a full-scale probe into the entire 'scam.'\n
Some leading Indian companies are likely to see their earnings declining if the Indian currency depreciates further, analysts and finance heads say.
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.
The Rs 51 per GB data versus industry norm of Rs 250-plus comes with the caveat of an upfront payment of Rs 1,498 for a year
Bharti Airtel called the prices exorbitant while Vodafone Idea wants the auctions take place in 2020. The auctions need to happen when the infrastructure is ready for the roll out, be it in terms of fiberisation levels, or optimisation of equipment and software etc. Spending a hefty amount on a technology (airwaves) that at present offers limited returns is not going to be a priority for the incumbent telcos.
Extending its new device plus data plan to more smartphones, the operator is keen to capture the youth's attention.
Payments banks will mainly deal in remittance services and accept deposits of up to Rs 1 lakh.
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,
At its current stock price, RIL now has 8.4 per cent weight in the Sensex against Infosys' 8.8 per cent.
What worked for Airtel was that its data traffic growth was 13 per cent sequentially and its average data usage was even higher than Jio's at 11.9 gigabyte per month per user.
Karunanidhi was convinced that using the 2G cases against the DMK and reopening the fodder case against Lalu Prasad Yadav were products of the Congress leadership's short-sightedness. A revealing excerpt from A S Panneerselvan's Karunanidhi: A Life.
