In a major setback to over 2,200 technocrats from the telecom cadre services, government on Thursday closed all negotiations on the issue of their absorption into telecom PSUs BSNL and MTNL, saying that the deadline has expired.
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday said they must offer good services to the customers if they want any help from the government.
The telecom and banking departments along with the railways accounted for the maximum number of public grievances among the various arms of the government in the last three years.
Reliance Jio has suggested an alternative plan to the The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) under which spectrum required by non-geostationary orbit satellite (NGSO) operators to run their gateway terminals should be auctioned geographically, based on districts, rather than circles as done for mobile services. For spectrum which would be required to connect user terminals (like individual homes), Jio has suggested it should be auctioned frequency-wise and exclusively to an operator at a pan-India level. The move is significant as the auctioning of satellite space spectrum has been vehemently opposed by low earth orbit satellite operators (satellites which circle at low altitudes of 200-2000 km).
For Paris-headquartered IT services major Capgemini, India has always been the backbone of its services delivery for its global clients, but the company is focused on driving more value from India as it gears up its engineering research and development (R&D) presence worldwide with its acquisition of Altran Technologies. The company, which has about 149,000 employees in India, is looking to hire 60,000 associates this year. Of them, 30,000 will be recruits from campuses and the rest lateral entrants. For Ashwin Yardi, chief executive officer India, Capgemini, the focus is to make sure that the India unit is aligned with the global plans of repositioning the company as a hub of engineering R&D, operational technology, and IT.
This decision was taken at Executive Council meeting of National Association of Software and Service Companies held in Pune.
Defending the continuation of Universal Service Obligation support, a fund to subsidise unprofitable operations of otherwise profit making telecom PSUs like BSNL, the government on Tuesday said USO exists for all players and not for BSNL alone.
Sabse has several patents in the arena of call-control and switching of calls.
FLAG Telecom, a Reliance group company has denied media reports alleging that it has resorted to high pricing impacting the growth of Indian business process outsourcing units and information technology enabled services.
Etisalat, which is mulling an Indian foray, has since started discussions with several telecom companies including the Videocon Group's Datacom Solutions and Essar-controlled Loop Telecom for equity. Ravi Sharma, CEO of Datacom confirmed that Etilasat was one of the companies to which the company was talking but declined to offer details. Loop Telecom declined to comment.
Telenor of Norway and Sistema of Russia - on Friday asserted that they would take legal measures.
Telecom users will be able to avail free roaming and keep their phone numbers even if they switch service providers anywhere in the country, as per the draft New Telecom Policy unveiled by the government said on Monday.
RCom and Aircel will hold 50 per cent each in the new company
Indian software firms are being courted by American and European companies for research and developing solutions for fourth generation telecom products designed for deployment across the world, Kiran Karnik
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.
Reliance Industries, which holds pan-India 4G telecom spectrum for data services, has applied for a licence to offer mobile telephony.
'We want to prove to the world that they will get the best code written from a small place like Wayanad.'
Currently, ISPs pay only Re 1 as annual licence fee while Internet telecom service providers, or telecom operators providing Internet services, pay 6 per cent of their annual gross revenue as licence fee.
The government on Thursday made it clear that BlackBerry services may be banned if its maker, Research-in-Motion, fails to provide a monitoring solution in the next five days.
Corporate India is busy restructuring - through mergers, demergers and splits. That seems to be the new normal as CXOs and boards brainstorm on how to create assets and value. The pitch rose significantly during the third quarter of this financial year (FY24), translating into $32.9-billion worth of such deals - the highest quarterly total since the HDFC Bank-HDFC merger announced in FY22 Q2.
Newer telecom operators and dual technology entities are opposing the department of telecommunications (DoT)'s decision to ask the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to give its view on whether the price of spectrum being offered in the coming 2G auction should be valid for 10 years instead of 20 years.
Titan, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Power Grid, NTPC and Tata Motors were among the among the major gainers. Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Nestle, JSW Steel, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra and Maruti were the major laggards.
Swan Telecom, which has received licences to operate mobile phone services in 13 out of the 22 telecom circles in India, is in talks with foreign companies for diluting 26 per cent of its equity for around $470 million.
The auction for the 5G spectrum is likely to take place around April-May next year, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. While relief measures announced in September this year for telecom operators marked the first set of reforms, the government will bring out a series of further reforms and "telecom regulatory structure should change in coming 2-3 years", Vaishnaw said. Speaking at the 'Times Now Summit 2021', the minister said India's telecom sector regulation has to be benchmarked with the global best, and added that "so, we will come with a series of reforms in this, such that the global benchmark of regulations is achieved in India".
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday carried out searches at the Vodafone office in Mumbai and Airtel office in Gurgaon after registering a case against ex-Telecom Secretary Shyamal Ghosh and the two telecom service providers for alleged irregularities in spectrum allocation during tenure of Pramod Mahajan as Telecom Minister.
Following a directive from telecom regulator TRAI, private cellular operator Hutch has stopped offering push-to-talk services to its subscribers with effect from March 9.
The decision is likely to bring additional amount of about Rs 1,500 crore or Rs 15 billion (including interest) in the books of MTNL as refund from government for the pension that the PSU paid to its employees.
Alphabet Inc's Google has paid Rs 33,737 crore for a 7.73 per cent stake in Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL) digital subsidiary, Jio Platforms Ltd, joining the list of global investors such as Facebook, billionaire Mukesh Ambani's firm said. The transaction also marks the US technology giant's biggest-ever investment in an Indian company. With this, Jio Platforms has raised a total of Rs 1.52 lakh crore by selling nearly 33 per cent stake to 13 financial and strategic investors in just 11 weeks.
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.
Max India on Monday said it would completely exit from the telecom business by divesting its meagre stake of about two per cent in the cellular operator Hutchison India to raise funds for its healthcare and insurance services.
For ensuring secure mobile phone equipment in the country, Government has recently issued a template of agreement between service providers and vendors to address security concerns, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Wednesday.
Communications Minister A Raja met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday and briefed him about the developments in the telecom sector including recent policy decision like introduction of number portability and releasing spectrum for third generation (3G) mobile services. The meeting lasted for about 25 minutes, official sources confirmed but did not give details.
The 78-year-old Naveen is on the cusp of creating history. He must win the forthcoming Assembly polls to become India's longest-serving chief minister, a record held by Sikkim's Pawan Kumar Chamling.
India's overall imports from Taiwan during April-February rose by 34 per cent to $7.5 billion.
Blackberry services have become a bone of contention between government and telecom service providers, who are questioning the rationale behind making them respondent to the concern of security agencies.
NavIC consists of a constellation of seven satellites and a network of ground stations and is touted to be more accurate than GPS.
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