Telecommunication companies buying airwaves in an Indian auction next month will pay 5 per cent of their revenue as an annual fee.
Successful bidders will have to pay 25 per cent of the amount upfront for sub 1 GHz, and 50 per cent upfront for higher frequency bands.
After a long wait, Tata Teleservices on Thursday launched the premium Blackberry mobile services that offers customers e-mail, SMS messaging and Internet-based applications.
Nivedita Mookerji explains why a timely rollout of 5G may not be easy in India.
The books of these companies had come under a cloud after it was alleged that many of them had not been paying the goverment's share of revenue by showing the revenue earned under other categories. Under a suggestion of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, a special audit of all the integrated telecom companies will be undertaken once in 3-5 years.
The telecom tower-transmission business is going to see a shake-up with cash-rich and independent companies moving in with aggressive plans.
Revenue decline has left the operators with little money to service their mostly 3G and partly 4G infrastructure leading to poor data and voice quality.
The telecom regulator in the second ultimatum to GSM operators, including Bharti, Vodafone and BSNL, has given August 21 as the deadline to give interconnections to the RCom GSM network. Trai has cited it as a licencing condition to provide interconnection among the service provider implying if a mobile operator does not give interconnection to another based on mutual commercial agreement, it is a violation of license condition attracting penalty.
Given the escalating cost of doing business, the revenue opportunity is decreasing and consolidation is an inevitable part of the industry.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries
The government on Friday unveiled long awaited Unified Licence norms that provide for delinking of spectrum from operational permits and allows companies to offer services using any technology.
After 3G auctions, analysts worried over the likely rise in debt and pressure on margins
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.
Solicitor General of India Goolam Vahanvati has said no further allotment of spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz should be made to telecom operators till the report of the committee on its pricing and allocation is received.If the opinion is acted upon, it would affect companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular and Aircel, which have applied for extra spectrum in other circles.
The government has ruled out banning Blackberry services in India. This was stated by the telecom secretary in New Delhi on Friday.Security agencies had said that they should have access to data that are being encrypted by services like BlackBerry on mobile phones and then decrypted when the phone reaches its destination. The government had cited security concerns as it could not monitor the content on RIM's servers, which were located in Canada and other foreign locations.
These businessmen represent the top five firms that have taken loans from the crisis-hit Yes Bank and these debts were either in the red or were stressed, officials said.
3G technology is the latest in mobile communications. 3G stands for 'third generation'. It is the next big revolution in the Indian telecom arena, with all big mobile firms -- Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance Communications -- in the fray to get a portion of the lucrative pie.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Operators continued aggressive bidding in 900 MHz band
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Though the controversy over the security of BlackBerry services is yet to be resolved, the four operators that offer these services - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, BPL Mobile and Reliance Communications - have added over 50,000 customers in the four months since the problems began. Before this, the push-mail service, which was introduced in India in October 2004, had 400,000 subscribers according to industry estimates.
COAI sid the huge volume of traffic from RJio will pull down the weighted average voice realisation for other operators from 30-40 paise to 22-25 paise per minute or lower
A total of 41 companies had applied for the permit
The government is believed to have issued instructions to mobile service providers like Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone not to route certain Blackberry services unless the required monitoring system was put in place.According to officials in the Department of Telecom (DoT), Blackberry licensor Research-in-Motion (RIM) has sought time till April 18 to address issues raised by it relating to lawful interception of content sent through Blackberry device.
The Anil Ambani group company is in advanced talks with France Telecom for a branding, marketing and franchisee agreement. The company plans to launch the brand by the second quarter of FY09, according to sources close to the development. Initially, the Orange may be launched on RCom's CDMA network -- spanning across 23,000 towns and 5 lakh villages in India -- and later extended to its 8 GSM circles. The Indian company has a total of 44.5 million subscribers in India.
The companies are looking at tapping solar power, wind energy and bio-fuels, including fish and vegetable oil, to run base transceiver systems in areas with poor power supply.
Traditional heavy spenders on cricket properties Vodafone, car maker Hyundai Motors, Reliance Communications and soft drink major Coca-Cola have decided to stay out of the bidding for the sponsorship of the Indian cricket team with the Board of Control for Cricket in India setting a steep base price to Rs 510 crore for a four-year deal for one of cricket's most coveted sponsorships.
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.
India Inc's quarterly net profit reached a record high of Rs 1.64 trillion in the third quarter ended December 31, 2020, mainly due to gains from higher commodity prices and a big swing in banks' earnings. The combined net profit of 3,323 listed companies that have declared results so far was up 68.6 per cent year-on-year (YoY). In comparison, earnings were up six times (534 per cent) in the second quarter and 6.5 per cent in the corresponding period last year.
The auction started off with the 36th round this morning. At the end of 35 rounds on Friday, bids worth around Rs 54,600 crore had been received by the government.
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.
Corporate giant Tatas on Tuesday asked the government to seek surrender of excess spectrum lying with GSM operators, a line being aggressively pursued by Reliance Communications chief Anil Ambani. With this, the top two CDMA players have joined forces against GSM operators like Bharti and Vodafone to seek return of spectrum beyond the contractual amount of 6.2 Mhz.
With the objective of making the country a manufacturing hub for domestic and foreign companies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is launching the NDA government's "Make in India" campaign today.
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.
The Department of Telecommunications has called a meeting of the heads of all leading telecom companies offering GSM technology services on November 21 to resolve contentious issues that have arisen following recent changes in telecom policy.
Even as telecom services are being restored in Kashmir Valley, mobile operators are offering free calling facility in the region.
GSM operators (excluding Reliance Telecom) in the country added 6.3 million subscribers in August, taking the total number of users to 225.6 million. In July, the total GSM subscriber base in the country was 219.30 million.
Anil Ambani severely criticised the attitude of GSM operators and raised the issue of returning the extra spectrum again.
In his letter dated October 19, Anil Ambani points out that while the top three GSM players -- Bharti, Vodafone-Essar and Idea Cellular -- have acquired an additional 52 million subscribers in the past few years without allocation of any additional spectrum, something they have constantly told the government that they do not have sufficiently.
The race for Hutch-Essar, the country's fourth largest mobile service provider, quickened on Wednesday with Hong-Kong based Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd formally informing the 4 companies in the fray to submit their bids by Friday
