The government said on Wednesday that the Telegraph Act would be amended to incorporate cellular service providers to get a share from the Universal Service Obligation Fund to connect all villages, highways and rail network.\n\n
Narendra Modi's vision to see Gujarat being counted a major IT hub of the country received a boost as 19 companies signed MoUs to total an investment of Rs 11,067 crore (Rs 110.67 billion) on Friday.
State-owned BSNL has rationalised the call charges from its public call office booths under which local and intra-circle calls to any network will be Re 1 per minute for a 60-second pulse, while STD calls will be cheaper by 50 paise.
The mobile user base is expected to grow to 815 million this year, from 755 million connections in 2013.
Leading telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel Ltd on Friday posted a 79 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 934 crore (Rs 9. 34 billion) for the quarter ended September 30 as compared to the corresponding quarter last year.
The main thrust of the policy is on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the overall economy.
The telecom services provider had a net profit of Rs 1,395.14 crore (Rs 13.95 billion) in the third quarter of FY'08, RCom said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. RCom's total income rose by 18.75 per cent to Rs 5,671.82 crore (Rs 56.71 billion) for the quarter under review from Rs 4,776.26 crore (rs 47.76 billion) in the corresponding period last fiscal.
The CDMA-based mobile subscriber base of private operators touched 80.68 lakh (8.06 million), adding 343,000 customers in June this year.
American tech billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday said his proposed visit to India has been postponed due to "very heavy Tesla obligations". The electric carmaker Tesla CEO -- who was expected to be in India on April 21 and 22 and scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- wrote on X that he is looking forward to coming to India later this year.
Analyst are cautious about the performance of IT services sector from January to March quarter (Q4) of FY24 and the first half (H1) of FY25. While the Bloomberg consensus on revenue implies the market is expecting 2-3 per cent growth on a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) basis for the IT majors through FY25, the H1FY25 is likely to see even flatter returns, and Q4FY24 is likely to be poor. There is likely to be some recovery in the second half (H2FY25) but even so, there's a chance that the market will be overall disappointed.
Issuing its recommendations on Net neutrality, Trai has also suggested a multi-stakeholder body comprising telecom and Internet service providers, content providers, civil society organisation and consumer representatives for monitoring and investigation of violations.
Telecom service provider BPL Mobile on Monday launched 'Project Rapid Growth' and said it will invest Rs 625 crore (Rs 6.25 billion) during the current fiscal to add 1.5 million wirefree consumers and capture 35 per cent market share in new customer
A government panel on Net neutrality has proposed to regulate domestic calls made using Internet-based calling applications such as Skype, WhatsApp and Viber at par with phone call services offered by telecom operators.
BSNL, MTNL launch free night calling to win back consumers lost to mobile boom
Call rates to be reduced by 35%, text charges by 80%.
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had told Parliament in November that Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and other telecom companies owe the government as much as Rs 1.47 lakh crore in past statutory dues.
India's leading private sector telecom services provider, Bharti Airtel on Friday reported a whopping 98 per cent net profit at Rs 1,353 crore (Rs 13.53 billion) for the fourth quarter ended March 31, compared to the same period last year.
UK-based Vodafone Group has ruled out selling its around 5 per cent stake in the holding company of Bharti Airtel in the near future as there is no buyer.
TouchTel, the private fixed line telecom service provider in Delhi and Haryana announced up to 70 per cent reduction in international long distance tariffs for calls to the UK, US and Europe.
BSNL is to invest around Rs 932 crore for infrastructure development in Maharashtra circle, even as the telecom services provider is expecting a 17.4% increase in revenue to post Rs 3,075 crore by March 2004 from the circle.
Nasscom recommended that there should be 'no double dipping'.
Trai has invited comments till January 7 on its paper on differential data pricing.
Delhi High Court says it can do so under the TRAI Act, rejects petitions filed by telecom associations.
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.
Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced that it has scrapped the minimum recharge plan of Rs 99 in seven circles -- Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Northeast, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh (West). In these circles, the price of the entry-level plan now would be Rs 155. This 57 per cent increase in Airtel's entry-level plan comes two months after the telco discontinued the Rs 99 plan in Haryana and Odisha in November last year.
The top four Indian IT firms have cash reserves of nearly $15 billion with TCS alone holding $5.9 billion in reserves, followed by Infosys with $3.6 billion, and Wipro with $3.4 billion. HCL Technologies has cash reserves of $1.75 billion.
Value-added services (VAS) and mobile-content providers may soon come under a licensing regime. Security concerns regarding VAS have come to the forefront in the ongoing debate over security issues surrounding Blackberry services in India.
A DoT panel has backed net neutrality and made some recommendations to push the cause
The total outstanding dues against Bharti Airtel is Rs 11,235.50 crore.
While Airtel's India wireless operational performance was one of its worst in recent times, Jio surprised the Street by reporting a higher expected operating and net profit.
India has now around one billion mobile subscribers, he added.
Bharti Airtel, the country's largest mobile operator, has already joined the global Seamless Alliance to provide in-flight connectivity.
Conversion of debt of the stressed telecom player Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) into equity could be an option to emerge out of the crisis, lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI) have suggested to Department of Telecommunications (DoT). DoT had called senior bank officials on Friday to discuss the stress in the telecom sector arising out of the Supreme Court order last month on the adjusted gross revenue (AGR)-related dues payable by telecom majors, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, sources said. The top court has given a time period of 10 years to telecom service providers struggling to pay Rs 93,520 crore of AGR-related dues to clear their outstanding amount to the government.
In August 2021, Nick Read, chief executive of Vodafone Plc at the time, did not mince his words while speaking about the India business in an earnings call. Replying to an analyst's question on Vodafone Idea, a venture with the Aditya Birla Group that had piled on huge debts and worrisome losses, Read described it as a highly stressed situation that "they (Vodafone Idea) are trying to navigate... "We, as a group, try to provide them as much practical support as we can, but I want to make it very clear, we are not putting any additional equity into India.''
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