India's economic image is not affected due to Adani Group's recent decision to pull out Rs 20,000 crore FPO (follow-on public offers) amid allegations of financial wrongdoings, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
The empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on telecom headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday decided to impose a one-time fee on incumbent operators prospectively for spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz in GSM and 2.5 MHz in CDMA.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
RBI's exercise will take into account standards of governance, the viability of the payment bank (PB) business model, and changes, if any, if needed.
Airtel reported a 19 per cent rise in its ARPU in the March quarter, as it removed the non-paying users from its network.
The telecom industry, he said, is vital to the nation and the digital agenda of the government.
Country's second largest telecom player Vodafone has launched Rs 5 per day scheme offering free incoming calls, cheaper outgoing calls and SMS rates during national roaming.
Airtel had previously responded to the DoT's order by offering to pay Rs 10,000 crore by February 20 and the remaining before March 17. Airtel owes nearly Rs 35,586 crore, including licence fee and spectrum usage charge, to the government.
The much-awaited auction for 3G spectrum has begun. Top telecom operators including Bharti, Vodafone, Idea, RCom and Tatas are in the fray.
All the top telecom firms, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Aircel, RCom and Tatas would be participating in the e-auction process, the first of its kind in the world, to acquire 3G spectrum for which the auction begins on April 9.
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.
DoT officials said instructions have been issued to Idea and Vodafone to provide the requisite information to IB at the earliest.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.
The dispute over the tax payable for its purchase in 2007 of the 67 per cent stake in Hutch is on an amount of Rs 11,200 crore (Rs 112 billion).
The 3G spectrum auction evoked an excellent response from mobile operators on day one on Friday, with the reserve price of Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion) for pan-India operations escalating nearly 12 per cent to Rs 3,913.81 crore (Rs 39.138 billion).
Country accounts for 38% of telco's global user base, 10% of total revenue
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.
BSNL, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications, who also provide GSM technology-based services, are not part of the report.
After 3G auctions, analysts worried over the likely rise in debt and pressure on margins
The minister said the companies have given representation which is being examined by the DoT before taking a final decision.
The bids for pan-India 3G telephony spectrum touched Rs 8,382 crore (Rs 83.82 billion), up 140 per cent from the base price, on the 14th day of auction on Monday.
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.
With the Adanis submitting an earnest money deposit (EMD) of just Rs 100 crore on Monday for the upcoming 5G spectrum auction, the apprehension among the rivals that the group is nursing ambitions of being an all-India mobile player has been allayed at least for now. Based on its EMD, analysts say it can buy spectrum worth just Rs 900 crore, whose use will be limited to enterprises and captive networks -- that too is likely only in a few circles where it has its infrastructure like ports, airports, and power stations. While getting all-India millimetre band spectrum of 400 MHz (which costs Rs 2,800 crore) is ruled out, it might choose circles like Gujarat and Mumbai to start with.
Taking the government head on, four GSM mobile operators -- Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Spice -- have decided to "unitedly" approach the Delhi High Court against telecom tribunal TDSAT's interim order not to stay the spectrum allocation process.
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.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde took note of the submissions by a battery of senior lawyers including A M Singhvi and C A Sundaram and said it will list the fresh pleas "sometime in next week" before the same bench which had heard the earlier petition in the high-stake matter.
Total wireless subscribers increased from 1.1 billion, in January to 1.2 billion in February, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.72 per cent.
Come September, the company will launch its Time Travel -- Journey 1 album with Sonu Nigam to be released on Nokia's 5130
The company has booked around 350 spots for the 2015 tournament.
The move comes against the backdrop of the US and some of its allies banning the purchase of Chinese telecom gear over security concerns and pressuring other countries to follow suit.
Based on industry estimates, telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and BSNL, are expected to invest over $10 billion on buying 5G telecom equipment in the next five years as they transition from non-standalone networks to standalone 5G networks.
Vodafone Idea, the promoter of Aditya Bira Idea Payments Bank, said in a notification to the exchanges late on Friday that the board of the bank approved winding up the business, subject to approval from the Reserve Bank of India.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has initiated discussions with banks to address financial stress in the telecom sector, particularly Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) that urgently requires fund infusion to stay afloat. There was a meeting of DOT officials and senior bankers on Friday on the issue of Vodafone, sources said, adding that banks have been asked to look for a solution within the prudential guidelines. According to sources, senior officials from the country's biggest lenders State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda were also present among others in the meeting. More such meetings are expected to take place in the coming days, they said.
Idea Cellular has gone off the beaten track in its 3G growth strategy.
The Centre had earlier urged the top court that up to 20 years be given to telecom companies for the payment of dues in staggered manner.
Telecom infrastructure player Indus Towers has been largely ignored by investors with occasional bursts of trading when there's news flow. For example, the stock fell from Rs 188 (Jan 1, 2023) to Rs 135 (Jan 27) and then bounced back to Rs 165 in early February as the Government of India (GoI) converted Vodafone Idea's (Vi) debt into equity and Bharti Airtel pushed up its direct stake in Indus to 47.95 per cent. The cash-strapped Vi holds 21 per cent stake in Indus Towers and Indus also has substantial receivables to come in from Vi which is a negative overhang.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the applications filed by telecom majors, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, seeking rectification of the alleged errors in calculation of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) related dues payable by them. "All the miscellaneous applications are dismissed," a bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao said while pronouncing the order. The telecom companies had submitted before the apex court that arithmetical errors in the calculation be rectified and there are cases of duplication of entries.
Top companies have grabbed a bigger pie of their sectors in the pandemic period, leading to a further rise in market concentration in many industries as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI score, which indicates competitive intensity in an industry (or a lack of it), reached a new high in FY21 as bigger firms raised their revenue market shares either organically or through mergers and acquisitions. A higher HHI score indicates a rise in market concentration in favour of a few firms while a lower score means that the industry's revenue is more evenly divided among many companies
All Sensex components ended in green, with Bajaj Finserv, HCL Tech, Bharti Airtel, IndusInd Bank, L&T, TCS, ONGC and ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance and SBI gaining up to 6.64 per cent.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has bluntly told the government there is no reason for its members to roll out 5G networks as they will be unviable if 'captive private wireless networks' are allowed to be run by enterprises. The COAI, which has Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as its key members, has written to Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying there is 'no business case for the roll out of 5G networks'. Permitting such captive networks will 'diminish the revenue so much that there will be no viable business case left for the telecom service providers and there will not remain any need for 5G network roll out by telecom service providers (TSPs)'.
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