Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal on Thursday said he had reached out to Vodafone's Nick Read after bold telecom reforms were announced by the government and will also speak to RIL's Mukesh Ambani, as the telecom czar vowed to take the lead in bringing the industry together to unleash India's telecom dream. Mittal exhorted the industry to collaborate in areas such as infrastructure sharing to reduce costs but vehemently ruled out possibility of any cartelisation among players. Amid reports of its potential tie-ups with handset makers to counter Jio's upcoming ultra low-cost smartphone, Mittal said Airtel is in a state of "readiness" on an affordable smartphone "should a need arise".
Doha-based Qatar Foundation Endowment has bought five per cent stake for $1.18 billion in Bharti Airtel.
Vodafone's revenues for the third quarter have gone up by 16%, thanks to good performance in emerging markets including India.
There have been several positive signals in Bharti Airtel with revenue market share (RMS) growth, better visibility of profits from Africa, and enough free cash flow to pursue deleveraging. Airtel's 4G and 5G data subscriber net additions were 5.6 million in Q1FY24, and 24.5 million in the last 12 months. Airtel currently has 230 million data subscribers on 4G/5G, which is about 70 per cent penetration of its base of 339 million subscribers.
While some are relatively new in this business, Vodafone, which has 1.8 million touch points in the country, has been offering basic banking and payment services through its pre-paid mobile digital semi-closed wallet called M-Pesa since 2012.
The Indian government has asked a federal court in Washington to dismiss Britain's Cairn Energy suit seeking enforcement of a $1.2 billion arbitral award, saying it had sovereign immunity under US law. Cairn had in May asked a US federal court to force Air India to pay a $1.26 billion arbitration award the firm had won in December. The government on August 13 filed a 'Motion to Dismiss' petition in the US District Court for the District of Colombia, saying it lacked subject matter jurisdiction in the dispute between Cairn and the Indian tax authority, according to a filing seen by PTI.
The letter was also forwarded to Mukherjee, Law Minister Salman Khurshid and Commerce and Industry Ministry Anand Sharma.
The Telecommunications Bill, 2023, which was passed by a voice vote after a short debate, also allows the Centre to take possession of a telecom network in case of any public emergency or in the interest of public safety.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has directed Vodafone Essar Mobile Services to refund value-added service (VAS) charges that were levied without "explicit consent". However, the regulator did not specify the amount the GSM major has to refund to the consumers.
Vodafone can mitigate risks of money-laundering through M-Pesa by making sure the funds are being traced.
As per the latest data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Vodafone Idea -- born last year from the merger of older operators Vodafone India and Idea Cellular -- continues to be the largest operator with 38.75 crore consumers and 33.36 per cent market share in the wireless segment as on May 31, 2019.
Jaitley sets condition of 50% assets for applicability of capital gain tax.
The trio has been voicing their criticism of Trai's recommendations and have asked the government to dump the report, which according to them are 'retrograde' and 'absurd'.
Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin on Wednesday discussions with Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, who asked the UK telecom giant to follow best commercial practices in its bid to acquire Hutch-Essar.
Vodafone, which is offering the iconic Apple iPhone in India along with Airtel, has tied up with Axis Bank and Barclays to offer the phone on six or 12 equated monthly installments (EMIs) for customers who may find the Rs 31,000 to Rs 36,000 price tag too steep.
Recently, the government had appointed former Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti as arbitrator in the tax dispute case.
Besides Vodafone, several other major MNCs like Nokia and Shell were locked in tax dispute with the revenue department.
Active subscriber base declined by 2.2 million on a month-on-month (MoM) basis to 970.2 million in August 2019, on the back of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea losing customers. Jio was the only operator to add 7.2 million active subscribers in the same month.
The two companies were earlier expecting to complete the merger formalities and regulatory approvals by June 30 and to start operating as one entity from July 1.
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)'.
The social impact of this could be worse as 300 million subscribers may face the annoyance of network shutdown and churn.
The number of mobile phone connections in India rose by 1.96 million in March, after reducing by 1.06 million in February, latest data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed. The number of new connections have hit a 9-month high. In these past 9-months, the total number of wireless (mobile phone) subscriptions had reduced on 5 occasions, the data shows.
Telecom gearmaker Nokia will boost its manufacturing capacity in India by 1.5x over the next few years to support the 5G services roll-out, said Tarun Chhabra, the company's country head of mobile networks business. Nokia is supplying network equipment to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio for their 5G networks from its plant in Chennai. Vodafone Idea is yet to finalise its contract as it awaits fresh funding.
A rare bonhomie among three private telecom companies in raising tariffs coming on the back of a bailout package by the government may have helped the telecom sector avert a crisis but the challenges haven't ceased to exist as the industry faces a cash-guzzling task of rolling out 5G networks in the coming months. The sector that provides direct and indirect employment to millions is projected to see Rs 1.3 lakh crore to Rs 2.3 lakh crore of investments in the coming years in creating robust infrastructure and building telecom and network products that have been incentivised by the government through PLI and other initiatives. After years of cut-throat competition and the apex court ruling on payment of past statutory dues left some players in the lurch, billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel and struggling Vodafone Idea almost in tandem raised tariffs, taking the plunge they had long been talking about.
However, the number of transactions declined to 76 in January-March this year from 110 in the year-ago quarter.
Reliance Jio has sent a second legal opinion to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on the subject of the potential allocation of satellite spectrum. The letter is written by retired Supreme Court Justice L Nageshwara Rao and argues in favour of auctions, stating that any other method for allocating spectrum apart from auctions could be constitutionally unsound. Business Standard has reviewed the letter.
The fall represented the second straight month of decline in subscribers. Users in the segment had reduced by 3.66 million in September, shrinking for the first time in seven months.
'All three players in the market are haemorrhaging cash. Average consumer is consuming 12 gigabits (GB) at price points you don't see anywhere else.'
Vodafone Idea's (Vi's) search for a lifeline has turned longer and tougher even as it continues to lose customers and delay vendor payments. Vi's much-needed Rs 1,600-crore fundraising plan got stuck due to the government's silence on picking up a proposed 33 per cent equity in the financially stressed telco. The development spells further trouble for the company, which has an overall debt pile of Rs 2.2 trillion, including hefty dues to the government.
Supreme Court Chief Justice SH Kapadia has ruled on Friday that the tax deparment has no jurisdiction over Vodafone's purchase of mobile assets in India.
The Indian mobile market has been witnessing a rate war with the entry of new players
Faced with prospect of its assets across the globe being seized just like Pakistan and Venezuela, the government decided to scrap retrospective taxation but the international embarrassment could have been avoided had 'attached' shares of Britain's Cairn Energy Plc not been sold, according to tax and legal experts. On Thursday, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to scrap the tax rule that gave the tax department power to go 50 years back and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India. The 2012 legislation was used to levy a cumulative of Rs 1.10 lakh crore of tax on 17 entities, including UK telecom giant Vodafone, but substantial punitive action was taken only in the case of Cairn.
Spectrum auction on Thursday entered the 10th day of bidding and started off from Rs 61,091.83 crore (Rs 610.91 billion) in terms of value.
Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal on Wednesday asserted that a large nation like India needs three private players in the telecom sector, and hoped the government would take measures to offer relief to the industry that is facing "serious financial stress". The comments assume significance in the backdrop of Vodafone Idea's desperate struggle to stay afloat. Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla had in June this year offered to hand over the group's stake in debt-laden Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) to the government or any other entity to ensure that the company remains a going concern.
India is believed to have challenged in a court in The Hague an arbitration tribunal verdict that overturned its demand for Rs 10,247 crore in back taxes from Cairn Energy Plc -- the second time in three months that it has refused to accept an international award against retrospective tax.
Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, India's leading cellular service providers, in collaboration with Research In Motion, on Friday launched the new BlackBerry Pearl 8110 smartphone with built-in global positioning system in the Indian market.
Domestic quarterly earnings, global trends and foreign fund trading activity would dictate the movement in equity markets, which may face volatility amid the scheduled monthly derivatives expiry this week, analysts said. Equity markets took a breather last week. The BSE Sensex declined 298.22 points or 0.48 per cent and the Nifty dipped 111.4 points or 0.60 per cent.
'We showcased about 20 use cases in 5G trials in Pune and Gandhinagar and some of them were interesting and innovative.' 'However, which ones will take off and which ones would not be relevant, we don't know yet.'
Airtel says to avail alternative routes to keep services on.
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