The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked Vodafone Idea (Vi) to come back to it with a business plan soon in light of its decision not to launch 5G services for now (unlike its competitors Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel) and in view of its assessment of the possible impact of BSNL's impending launch of 4G in a few months and then 5G by August 15. "We are worried about Vi as we want to have three private players and one government player in the market. "The global trend now is to have two to three players.
With the interconnect usage charges (IUC) regime for domestic voice calls coming to an end, Reliance Jio on Thursday said that all calls from its network to other networks anywhere in India will be free from January 1, 2021. As per the telecom regulator's directions, 'Bill and Keep' regime is being implemented in the country from January 1, 2021, thereby ending IUC charges for all domestic voice calls, it said in a statement.
Ambani's wealth jumped $3.59 billion in the past 24 hours, while Adani added $2.96 billion to his net worth.
Jio had almost three times higher speed than its nearest rival Bharti Airtel.
Sector regulator Trai on Tuesday directed telecom operators to "immediately" enable port out SMS facility for all mobile users requiring it, irrespective of value of their tariff offer, vouchers, or plans they have opted for. Trai's stern missive on smooth network portability, assumes significance as Reliance Jio had recently written to the regulator complaining that the new tariff structure of Vodafone Idea (VIL) allegedly restricts entry-level customers to port out their mobile number from its network. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a strong note of telecom service companies not providing outgoing SMS facility in certain prepaid vouchers.
Reliance Industries Ltd, the nation's most valuable company, on Thursday said it has raised $4 billion (around Rs 30,000 crore) in debt through the largest ever foreign currency bond issuance by an Indian entity. The oil-to-telecom conglomerate plans to use the proceeds of the three tranche issues to retire existing borrowings. The issue was "nearly 3 times oversubscribed with a peak order book aggregating around $11.5 billion," the company said in a statement. This is the largest ever foreign currency bond transaction in India, eclipsing ONGC Videsh Ltd's $2.2 billion US dollar bonds issue of 2014.
Disney-Star is positioning IPL as a "big-screen experience" where families and friends can come together over a game of cricket, much the way football is consumed in Europe and other parts of the world.
Despite the $11.7 billion raised by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) through stake sales, venture investments in 2020 have declined by a fifth to $28.9 billion till September, consultancy firm EY said in a report on Thursday. Since mid-March, coronavirus infections started getting reported in the country, which has now become the second highest globally in terms of numbers. The lockdowns severely dented economic activity, leading to a 23.9 per cent contraction in the gross domestic product (GDP) for the April-June period and expectations of a 9.5 per cent contraction by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for 2020-21.
Bidding for the sixth round of spectrum auction for radiowaves worth Rs 3.92 lakh crore will start from March 1, according to a notice issued by the Department of Telecom on Wednesday. The long-awaited spectrum auction is being held after a gap of four years and over two years after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) calculated and recommended base price for the radiowaves. The DoT has fixed January 12 for the pre-bid conference and January 28 as the last date for seeking clarification to the notice.
The Tata group's tryst with mobile services, with either CDMA or GSM technology, did not really fly, forcing it to close operations and write off losses. Now the group is back in the big game, this time straddling the telecom equipment, network and technology space in India as well as the global market. To this end, it is leveraging the opportunities that flow from 5G technology through open radio access network, or O-RAN. Recently, the Tata Sons' subsidiary Panatone Finvest acquired 43.3 per cent in Bengaluru-based telecom equipment manufacturer Tejas Network for Rs 1,850 crore and announced it would buy another 26 per cent of the voting capital through an open offer.
Adani Enterprises' proposed Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) fundraising via fresh issue of equity shares through a public offer would be the fourth biggest by Indian companies, excluding banks and non-banking financial companies.
Tata Steel was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rallying nearly 4 per cent, followed by Bajaj Finance, M&M, Bajaj Finserv and Reliance Industries. NSE Nifty advanced 33.95 points to a fresh high of 16,563.05.
Discussing the prospect of more reform earlier this month, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced a delay in the 5G spectrum auction. India's telecom sector regulation has to be benchmarked with the global best, he said. It's another matter that many countries have either introduced or are about to roll out 5G services that will enable cutting-edge tech in diverse areas. For India, too, it will mean a lot for healthcare, robotics and unleashing a new chapter in Digital India perhaps.
Reliance's big-bang entry across the solar ecosystem will cut dependence on Chinese imports drastically. And Ambani's repeated emphasis that RIL's new energy foray will be 'a truly global business' points that his group is playing not just for a share of the Indian pie but to be the OEM in the larger 5,000 GW global market by 2030, points out Shailesh Dobhal.
Reliance Industries has approved the demerger of power, financial and telecommunication services, the three entities that went to Anil Ambani as part of the settlement he reached with elder brother Mukesh.
Sliding for the fourth straight day, the BSE Sensex shed 152 points in choppy trade on Wednesday amid mixed global cues ahead of the US Federal Reserve's policy decision.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
RIL is setting up infrastructure for a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce offering - internally called the New Commerce - to simultaneously launch pan-India by October-November.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Kanimozhi on Thursday sought the dismissal of a Central Bureau of Investigation plea seeking special court's permission to summon some additional witnesses, including Enforcement Directorate Deputy Director Rajeshwar Singh, in the 2G spectrum allocation case.
As many as 2,000 chips are annually designed in India by semi-conductor and fabless companies, Intel India managing director Prakash Mallya said in a conversation with Business Standard. Mallya was reiterating the importance of India in the semi-conductor sweepstakes. "As much as 90 per cent of the semi-conductor companies have a design footprint in India.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's four-year-old telecom venture Reliance Jio has been ranked the fifth strongest brand globally behind the likes of Ferrari and Coca-Cola. The Brand Finance's Global 500 ranking of the strongest brands globally, which determined the relative strength of brands, is topped by WeChat, according to its annual report on most valuable and strongest global brands.
Global markets trends, inflation, release of industrial output data and quarterly earnings will dictate movement of the equity benchmarks this week, analysts said, adding that volatility might continue amid slew of announcements of macroeconomic data at the global level too. Moreover, foreign fund movement, crude oil prices and trend in rupee would also act as major drivers for the equity market, they added. "The direction of global equity markets along with movement in dollar index and crude oil prices will continue to dominate while inflation numbers of the USA on May 11 and inflation and IIP numbers of India on May 12 will also cause volatility in the market," said Santosh Meena, head of research, Swastika Investmart Ltd.
Make no mistake, Reliance's entry into Indian e-commerce cannot be taken lightly. It is akin to a combine of AT&T and Wal-Mart challenging Amazon on its home turf, says Shailesh Dobhal.
'There is definitely a skill war, or a talent war going on.'
Equity markets will look for directions from global trends, ongoing quarterly earnings and investment patterns of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in a holiday-shortened week ahead and may encounter volatility amid the scheduled monthly derivatives expiry, according to analysts. Equity markets will remain closed on Wednesday on account of 'Republic Day'. "This week is a holiday-shortened one and it's going to be critical due to the list of events and data that are lined up.
If the apex court decides on a 15-year repayment tenure, it would pose a grave challenge for the debt ridden VIL.
Mukesh Ambani said, by March 2017, it will cover 90 per cent of India's population
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown may have put the best of funds on a backfoot of deal activity, RIL, however, has been an outlier. With 10 different investors brought in for its telecom venture Jio Platforms, RIL undertook 12 different transactions since April this year.
Is self-reliance the right approach in a mega-buck game, or better to be part of a network? asks T N Ninan.
UBS said RIL's $10 billion petchem capex by 2016 will drive 12 per cent volume CAGR.
Reliance has significant investments in telecom, consumer retail and media businesses in India.
The Cabinet approved giving Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea Ltd and Reliance Jio an option to avail of a two-year moratorium on payments they were supposed to make in yearly installments for the spectrum bought in auctions.
Just a few weeks ago, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw did some tough talking with the senior managers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, the ailing state-owned telecom service provider. The message was clear: They had to perform, quit by taking the voluntary retirement package or be compulsorily retired from service. The terse message from an otherwise polite and soft-spoken minister came just days after he announced a second and bigger package of Rs 1.64 trillion as part of a four-year turnaround plan for BSNL.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared utilisation of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) for provision of mobile connectivity in 7,287 uncovered villages across five states at an estimated cost of Rs 6,466 crore. Briefing media on the Cabinet decisions, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said these uncovered villages of 44 aspirational districts across five states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Odisha will get 4G-based mobile services.
Reliance Jio retained its top position with the highest average data download speed of 21.9 megabit per second among 4G service providers in October, according to the latest data published by telecom regulator Trai. However, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea network have been continuously recording an increase in data download speed thereby reducing the gap with the Jio network. After a marginal dip in 4G data download speed, the Jio network in October resumed the speed level of 21.9 mbps it had recorded in June, while Airtel and Vodafone Idea (VIL) have registered close to two and half times jump in data download speed on their network.
The question mark over Vodafone Idea's survival is gone after the government's telecom package, managing director and chief executive officer Ravinder Takkar said in an interaction recently. The extended moratorium for spectrum payments and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues has indeed ensured that Vodafone Idea survives, at least for the time being, but questions remain. Answers to those questions may determine the future of Vodafone Idea and its power to stay in a difficult telecom market in the coming years.
The company has made payment in compliance with Telecom Department's instructions for self assessment, Mittal said, adding that the Supreme Court had not mentioned specific amounts.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is in the process of issuing a show-cause notice to Vodafone Idea (Vi) for delaying the payment of licence fee. Companies pay 8 per cent of their adjusted gross revenue as licence fee. This also includes a universal service obligation levy. The fee is collected from each of the 22 telecom circles in the country on a quarterly basis.
Jio's spectrum trading pact with Airtel has enabled India's largest telco to top-up its holding in three key circles and yielded potential savings of about $400 million, according to a report. It is pertinent to mention here that Reliance Jio has signed an agreement with Bharti Airtel to acquire a portion of spectrum in 800 MHz band for Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Mumbai circles at an aggregate value of Rs 1,497 crore -- marking the first such deal between the two telecom giants that otherwise compete fiercely in the market. Market analysts have termed the deal "mutually beneficial" and "win-win for both". UBS in a note cited Jio's spectrum buys in the 800 MHz band in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Mumbai in the recently-concluded auctions.
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