The acquisitions were made in areas which are closely related to Reliance's key businesses - telecom, internet, retail, digital, media, education, digital, chemicals and energy.
Sources say companies will have to keep the market share of merged entities below 50% in all circles
Global rating agency Fitch on Tuesday said the imminent entry of Reliance Jio into the telecom space will see a likely 20 per cent fall in data tariffs, but will not have any impact on the credit profile of the top four incumbents in the medium term as their revenue is on an uptick on rising voice tariffs and improving regulatory environment.
The government is considering withdrawing legal cases against telecom companies, involving disputes of about Rs 40,000 crore, a source said on Tuesday. In line with this, the Department of Telecom has already filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court in a case against Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Communications to take an informed decision whether to proceed with the present appeal or not, the source said. DoT has said the telecom sector is passing through a financial stress due to various circumstances and telecom services providers are making losses.
India's largest telecom operator Reliance Jio gained over 79 lakh mobile users in March, comfortably surpassing the combined net adds by rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea during the month, according to data released by TRAI on Friday. Bharti Airtel added 40.5 lakh wireless users, and interestingly Vodafone Idea gained 10.8 lakh customers during March (compared to the previous month). Reliance Jio added a staggering 79.18 lakh wireless subscribers in March, taking its customers base to about 42.29 crore.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd has bought Britain's iconic country club and luxury golf resort, Stoke Park, for 57 million pounds (about Rs 592 crore). The acquisition adds to Reliance's current stake in Oberoi hotels and hotel/managed residences in Mumbai that it's developing. Over the past four years, Reliance has announced $3.3 billion in acquisitions with 14 per cent in retail, 80 per cent in technology, media, and telecom (TMT) sector, and 6 per cent in energy. The UK-based firm, which owns a hotel and golf course in Buckinghamshire, UK, will add to Reliance's consumer and hospitality assets, the firm said in a filing late on Thursday.
Demand for 1,800-MHz weak but govt secures a combined Rs 42k cr on Day-1
Based on industry estimates, telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and BSNL, are expected to invest over $10 billion on buying 5G telecom equipment in the next five years as they transition from non-standalone networks to standalone 5G networks.
It emerges that Vi has probably offered good data quality despite being short on spectrum and infrastructure due to its stretched finances. Did the two companies that merged face the heat due to price wars? Probably. Did the government's tough stance in demanding its "due" share of telecom revenues hurt the company? Certainly!
A rare bonhomie among three private telecom companies in raising tariffs coming on the back of a bailout package by the government may have helped the telecom sector avert a crisis but the challenges haven't ceased to exist as the industry faces a cash-guzzling task of rolling out 5G networks in the coming months. The sector that provides direct and indirect employment to millions is projected to see Rs 1.3 lakh crore to Rs 2.3 lakh crore of investments in the coming years in creating robust infrastructure and building telecom and network products that have been incentivised by the government through PLI and other initiatives. After years of cut-throat competition and the apex court ruling on payment of past statutory dues left some players in the lurch, billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel and struggling Vodafone Idea almost in tandem raised tariffs, taking the plunge they had long been talking about.
India's telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.17 billion in October with Bharti Airtel maintaining its leadership in mobile subscriber addition that accounts for over 98 per cent of total connections in the country, according to the monthly report released by sector regulator Trai on Wednesday. This is the second consecutive month when Airtel added highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company added 3.67 million new customers in October, taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million in October 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) report said.
Kotak Bank rose the most among Sensex scrips, spurting 2.92 per cent amid reports that LIC will up its stake in the private lender to 10 per cent. Gains in HCL Tech, TCS, Infosys, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance and Titan helped Sensex close in the green. NSE Nifty edged higher by 27.50 points to end at 17,053.95.
The users of 5G-enabled Apple iPhones will be able to try 5G telecom services - wherever available publicly in the country - from next week, both on standalone (Reliance Jio) and non-standalone networks (Bharti Airtel). Airtel and Jio customers who download the iOS 16 Beta software update as part of its 'Apple Beta Software Program' can try the service and send their feedback to the company. The final updated software will become available sometime in December.
Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) CEO Ravinder Takkar did some plain speaking. In an analyst call after its quarterly results recently, Takkar said that the main stumbling block to raising fresh capital from investors is "pricing" - telecom tariffs, in other words. Nine months ago, the telecom company's board had cleared a proposal for raising Rs 25,000 crore from investors, after the promoters made it clear that they were not ready to pump in more money. But potential investors are concerned that without clarity on tariff hikes (there have been none for more than 18 months) they might just lose their money. The lack of visibility on raising tariffs has also impelled VIL to request the Department of Telecom (DoT) for a fresh reprieve by extending the two-year moratorium on paying its spectrum instalment of Rs 8,200 crore for another year till FY23.
The Union Cabinet has approved the modalities for holding 5G spectrum auctions, and 72097.85 MHz of radio waves will be put on the block by July-end, an official release said on Wednesday.
Exuding confidence in setting up a profitable banking venture, industrialist Anil Ambani on Tuesday said the proposed bank will help lower Reliance Capital's debt to one-fourth of current levels and would be listed as a separate entity in three years.
Banking and telecom will see the highest impact of this transition.
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.
The CMM was appointed as commissioner to record 84-year-old Ammal's testimony by a Special CBI Court, holding trial in the case, in the wake of the Supreme Court's direction.
Airtel CEO said, the 5G ecosystem is yet to develop in India and the prices are very high. Telecom companies including Vodafone Idea (VI) and Reliance Jio have also said that the current prices are exorbitant.
Debt-ridden telecom operator Vodafone Idea has decided to defer payment of additional adjusted gross revenues of Rs 8,837 crore dues by a period of four years. The company in a late night filing on June 22, said that the DoT on June 15, has raised adjusted gross revenue (AGR) demand for additional two financial years beyond 2016-17, which were not covered under the Supreme court order on the statutory dues. Vodafone Idea (VIL) in the filing said that its board of directors "has approved the exercise of the option of deferment of the AGR related dues by a period of four years with immediate effect, in accordance with the said DoT Letter.
The fixed line broadband will offer "ultra high-definition entertainment on large screen TVs, multi-party video conferencing from your living room, voice-activated virtual assistants, virtual reality gaming, digital shopping, immersive experiences," Ambani said.
Benchmark equity indices Sensex and Nifty closed higher on Friday after two days of fall, helped by buying in metal, telecom and auto stocks amid a firm trend in global markets. Automakers led by Maruti Suzuki India, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra reporting robust wholesales of passenger vehicles and GST collections crossing Rs 1.50 lakh crore for the third straight month in May also added to the optimism. The 30-share BSE Sensex climbed 118.57 points or 0.19 per cent to settle at 62,547.11.
Akash Ambani's first big job as he takes over as chairman of Reliance Jio, the group's telecom arm, is a no-brainer - he has to get his company through the long-awaited 5G auctions that are a few weeks away. But his bigger job, analysts said, will be to lead the transformation of the telecom company into a tech giant, a process that is underway as it seeks to list in the US. Insiders said there has been plenty of debate within the company's top executives on the auction strategy.
Will open radio access network technology (O-RAN) disrupt the way 5G networks roll out in the country? After all, it promises to offer a substantially lower capital cost, enables the choice of an array of vendors, and provides more network flexibility - all very important for telcos who expect to invest over Rs 60,000 crore to roll out a pan-India 5G network and that's without spectrum costs. But more importantly, it counters the stranglehold of global telecom gear makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung over telcos to whom they sell propriety technology and bundled hardware and software.
Powered by a rally in index heavyweight Reliance Industries, equity benchmark Sensex broke its four-session losing run to close above the 55,000-mark on Thursday despite a weak trend overseas. Investors made a cautious return to IT, pharma and bank stocks after their recent sell-off. However, a depreciating rupee and persistent foreign fund outflows capped the gains, traders said. Overcoming a lacklustre start, the 30-share BSE Sensex surged 427.79 points or 0.78 per cent to close at 55,320.28.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
Mukesh and Anil will announce two more infrastructure-sharing agreements by mid-June.
In a meeting on Thursday evening, the RCom management, led by CEO Punit Garg, requested the bank representatives to release Rs 260 crore it received as I-T refund so that it could repay the dues to Ericsson.
Equity benchmarks began the week on a downbeat note on Monday, weighed by heavy selling in market heavyweight Reliance Industries and persisting weakness in global bourses. The rupee plunged to its lifetime low against the US dollar amid unabated foreign fund outflows, underscoring the risk-off sentiment prevailing globally as central banks embark on policy tightening to tame soaring inflation. Slipping for the second straight session, the 30-share BSE Sensex shed 364.91 points or 0.67 per cent to close at 54,470.67.
The government is planning to roll out 5G testbed in early January to enable small and medium enterprises and other industry players to test their solutions on a working platform, a top Department of Telecom official said on Thursday. For the promotion of 5G indigenous technology, DoT in March 2018, had approved a multi-institute collaborative project to set up an indigenous 5G Test Bed at a total cost of Rs 224 crore. A testbed consists of a specific environment including hardware, software, operating system, and network configuration to test a product or service.
Eleven start-ups completed a programme launched by Gennext Ventures.
The government is looking at a time frame within the first two weeks of July to kick off and complete the upcoming 5G auctions, according to discussions between officials and stakeholders. It is expected that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will give its recommendations on the base price by March, after which the necessary cabinet clearances will be given. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had earlier looked at undertaking the auction in the first quarter of 2022 but decided to push it back. Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had also said that the auctions are likely to take place in April-May.
5G ambulances will not just allow remote consultation, but would also be able to transit data and video to hospitals in real time, saving precious time for critical patients. 5G technology would also support the development of new educational applications, improve agriculture productivity, and aid search and rescue missions with high resolution cameras in disaster recovery zones.
Business conglomerate Adani Group's chairman Gautam Adani is now the world's second-richest person after overtaking Louis Vuitton's Bernard Arnault, according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List. At the time of writing this report, Gautam Adani's net worth was $153.9 billion, compared to Arnault's net worth of $153.7 billion. Adani is now just behind business magnate Elon Musk, according to Forbes' data.
Sensex ends 134.91 pts down at 28,709.87; Nifty falls 44.70 pts at 8,712.05.
An opportunity to enter a burgeoning sector at a low valuation and favourable policies are propelling some of India's largest corporate groups to scoop up drone start-ups. "Indian corporations lost the race in aerospace and space tech. "No one wants to miss the bus this time. "These are seasoned businessmen and they realise that the market cap of tech companies with problem-solving capabilities will exponentially rise in future," says Vipul Singh, CEO of Aarav Unmanned Systems (AUS).
They are cheaper to build, costing around Rs 10 lakh each as against Rs 20-25 lakh for a traditional ground-based tower and even less than the Rs 12-15 lakh needed for a tower mounted on a roof top.
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