India's total telephone subscriber base reached 1,321.31 million by the end of February 2026, marking a 0.56 per cent monthly growth, primarily fuelled by a significant surge in broadband adoption.
Mobile phone service providers alone jointly reported gross revenue of Rs 55,164.18 crore (RS 551.64 billion).
App-based communication services providers and Indian telcos are at loggerheads over the SIM-binding directions issued by the department of telecom, which are to be complied with by the end of February 2026.
Aditya Birla Telecom Ltd (ABTL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Idea Cellular, will offload 20 per cent to Providence Equity Partners, a US buyout firm, for Rs 2,560 crore. This takes Providence's total investment in Idea Cellular to $1.04 billion, which is the largest private equity investment in an Indian telecom service provider. The deal values ABTL at Rs 12,800 crore.
GSM service provider Idea Cellular will invest an additional $400 million (Rs 1,600 crore) for rolling out telecom services in four new circles - Mumbai, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Orissa - for which it has received spectrum from the Department of Telecommunications.
Telecom operators Vodafone and Idea Cellular on Monday said they will resume 3G services in circles where they don't have spectrum through intra-circle roaming (ICR) pacts with other operators.
Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular on Monday made an open offer to the shareholders of Spice Communications for acquiring additional 20 per cent stake in the telecom services provider for about Rs 1,066.63 crore (Rs 10.66 billion).
Vi partners SpaceX-rival AST SpaceMobile for satcom service on smartphones
With the new entity coming in force, Bharti Airtel will lose the tag of India's biggest telecom service provider to the new entity.
The move by three major telecom service providers - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular - to set up a consortium for passive infrastructure is gaining ground, but independent telecom infrastructure providers are yet to be convinced.
The new telecom players in the country, which had received licences in January 2008 and were subsequently allocated spectrum, are ready to roll out services in the next three to four months.
India's third-largest telecom operator Vodafone Idea (Vi) has secured a 10-year breather on adjusted gross revenue (AGR) payments from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). This is expected to ease pressure on its balance sheet and enable the company to raise bank debt for capital expenditure.
GSM service provider Idea Cellular might get spectrum to start operations in the Mumbai circle by the end of the year, with the ministry of telecom close to clearing its application.
A new board has been constituted for the merged entity 'Vodafone Idea Ltd' with 12 directors (including six independent directors) and Kumar Mangalam Birla as its Chairman. The board has appointed Balesh Sharma as the CEO, the companies said in a joint statement. The combination will have an all-India revenue market share of 32.2 per cent and take the numero uno slot in nine telecom circles, it said adding that both Vodafone and Idea brands will continue.
Telecom services providers have urged the Ministry of Finance to suspend the universal service obligation (USOF) till the existing corpus is exhausted. In their Budget recommendations, they have also pressed for an exemption from the service tax on "assignment of right to use natural resources" and the slashing of Customs duty on telecom equipment to zero. The Cellular Operators Association of India (Coai), which represents private sector telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, called for abolishment of USOF levy.
Adjusted gross revenue of the industry has grown just 5.3 per cent during the financial year ended March 31
RCom and Tata Teleservices are the top net losers of subscribers under mobile number portability (MNP) services.
Excise duties on mobile phones to be 1% without CENVAT credit or 6% with CENVAT credit. This provision will have marginal impact on telcos.
While Vodafone will hold 45.1% of the shares in the new entity, to be renamed at a later stage, Kumar Mangalam Birla and other promoters of Idea group will hold 26%. Vodafone India will also transfer 4.9% of its shareholding to Idea's promoters for a cash consideration of Rs 38.74 lakh crores.
Continuing to push back against the stringent quality of service (QoS) norms brought in by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), telcos have informed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that collection and submission of monthly and site-to-cell-level data should be eased, officials and industry sources said. In place since October last year, the QoS norms call for data for network availability, call drop, voice packet drop rate in uplink and downlink, among other parameters, to be collected at the cell level.
The consolidated revenue increased 20 per cent to Rs 8,422 cr
Telecom regulator TRAI has asked Hutch and Idea Cellular to stop charging higher rates for calls made to the mobile networks of state-owned BSNL and MTNL as compared to the same made to private GSM operators.\n
Idea Cellular, the GSM service provider of the Aditya Birla group, has roped in global telecom major Ericsson as equipment supplier for its GSM network in the Mumbai circle.
A recent note based on the audit said telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular had demanded additional spectrum, based on subscriber-linked criteria for meeting the quality parameters of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India before the spectrum auction decision was taken.
Leading telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has urged the government not to change existing spectrum allocation criteria and to continue with the additional 2G spectrum allocation policy based on subscriber figures.
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that there were 31 complaints of call drops against the company in 2015
With at least seven more mobile service providers planning to launch operations in the Mumbai circle, following in the footsteps of GSM player Idea Cellular, the market is slated to become the country's most competitive and fierce telecom zone.
In July 2012, TDSAT gave split verdict where one of the bench member ruled in favour and other member ordered against it.
"If we are not getting anything then I think it is end of story for Vodafone Idea," Kumar Mangalam Birla said at the HT Leadership Summit when asked about the future of Vodafone Idea in absence of a government relief on payment of Rs 53,038 crore dues.
Vodafone's operating loss from India business jumped to 692 million euros in April-September from 133 million euros in the same period last year.
The company at present provides monthly mobile services at starting price of Rs 24 without data, and plans with data service starts from Rs 33 onward. It did not disclose the quantum of hike.
The new proposals will lead to complex processes and huge costs for telecom service providers, without any substantial benefits: COAI
Justice Rajiv Shakdher, referring to a Supreme Court order on a plea of Bharti Cellular Ltd in a similar case, asked the Department of Telecommunications not to take any coercive steps in pursuance of its notices issued to the telecom companies asking them to stop providing 3G services to mobile users in the circles for which they lacked licences.
The adjusted gross revenue (earnings from sale of telecom services) of the top three telecom companies in India - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular declined by 7.98 per cent, 5.14 per cent and 4.91 per cent respectively during third quarter of 2016-17.
Justice Rajiv Shakdhar asked the telecom company and five others including Birla to file their responses within four weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on August 5.
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.''
Govt files case alleging telco breached directive not to get new customers in areas where it did not have 3G spectrum licence.
Department of Telecom had sought the legal opinion of the matter from the government's counsel.
TRAI may recommend the DoT to levy one-time non-refundable fee of Rs 50,000 per operator for each service area in which they opt for spectrum sharing.
The DoT estimates that it will receive Rs 29,524 cr in revenue from the telecom industry in FY18, which is 38% less than the Budget revenue target of Rs 47,300 cr for FY18
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