The government may liberalise external commercial borrowing rules in the next few days, especially for the infrastructure sector including capital-intensive ones like telecom, a Finance Ministry official said on Friday.
Tech Mahindra on Monday pipped IT giants Wipro and IBM to bag a Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) outsourcing deal spread over 10 years from new telecom player Etisalat DB, which is in the process starting mobile services in India.
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.
Announcing the rollout, Anil Ambani told reporters that the company has invested over Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) in the project, which was completed six months ahead of schedule. Reliance Communications mobile users will now have a choice of both CDMA and GSM services, Ambani said, adding, "the project was completed within 15 months", six months ahead of schedule.
To add to company's 'three-screen' strategy of mobile phones, IPTV and broadband.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgement on a petition filed by Tata Teleservices challenging the telecom tribunal's order, which classified the company's fixed wireless phone service 'Walky' as limited mobile. TDSAT had ruled that Walky service offered by Tatas was a mobile service, thus the private company was liable to pay a levy called Access Deficit Charge (ADC) to state-owned BSNL as per the interconnect order of telecom regulator Trai.
Bharti Airtel is rolling out last-mile connectivity with a target of reaching over 20 mn addressable households in 90-100 cities in the next 3 years
Curfew remained in force in Srinagar district, Anantnag town and Magam area of Budgam district as a precautionary measure even as normal life was paralysed for the 40th consecutive day on Wednesday in Kashmir where 63 persons have been killed in the ongoing unrest.
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.
Normal life remained paralysed for the 37th consecutive day due to curfew, restrictions and separatist sponsored strike.
Idea Cellular will have to furnish an undertaking that it will entertain all the liabilities whenever a final decision is taken by the courts
The new deal puts the enterprise value -- the sum of a company's market capitalisation plus debt minus cash - of this new-generation mobile services company floated by Delhi-headquartered real estate major Unitech at Rs 10,520 crore (Rs 105.2 billion), against Rs 11,620 crore (Rs 116.2 billion) in the agreement signed on October 28, 2008. At the adjusted rate, the company's equity value stands at Rs 9,100 crore (Rs 91 billion).
VMIL officials declined to comment on the development. According to sources close to the development, VMIL will sell stake to raise money for expanding Hungama, the content and mobile services arm. The Mumbai-based company has already held two to three rounds of meetings with these private equity investors. The company's valuation has been pegged at Rs 800 crore (Rs 8 billion). The funds raised would be used for Hungama's expansion.
Speaking at the sidelines of the launch of its pre-paid 3G mobile service, MTNL's CMD R S P Sinha said: "In the first year of operations, we want between 200,000 and 300,000 customers for our 3G services." Interestingly, after about six months of operations, MTNL has only 400 subscribers for its 3G service, which has been branded 'Jadoo'.
Bharti Telecom, the unlisted holding company of Bharti Airtel, may issue fresh equity to the MTN group to give it the 25 per cent economic interest in India's largest mobile service provider.
So, if the government is looking for a healthy industry, as it must, it will be better to clear the policy on M&As so that only those who really want 3G spectrum to offer 3G services will bid for it.
Deliberations by the government is being carried out to keep cost and charges at a level so as not to discourage subscribers willing to change their service provider, an optional facility, and at the same time make the service providers a viable business model. The charge is directly linked to the number of subscribers, who would seek the change in service provider out of the total mobile user base of about 400 million.
The department of telecommunication will soon write to companies, including Idea Cellular and Aircel to start landline operations.
The government is believed to have issued instructions to mobile service providers like Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone not to route certain Blackberry services unless the required monitoring system was put in place.According to officials in the Department of Telecom (DoT), Blackberry licensor Research-in-Motion (RIM) has sought time till April 18 to address issues raised by it relating to lawful interception of content sent through Blackberry device.
State-run telecom service provider MTNL on Friday said it will launch its 3G services in Mumbai next month, as it targets a user base of 1,00,000 for the third generation mobile service by year-end
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.
Bharti Airtel and United Breweries have expressed interest in acquiring, respectively, the Delhi and Bangalore or Mumbai teams in the impending Indian Premier League for Twenty20 cricket matches.
Mobile users can expect a sharp fall in tariffs and access to a range of sophisticated services if the government accepts recommendations by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to permit mobile virtual network operators.
Much before the Mumbai attacks, the wireless planning coordination wing of the communications ministry had asked for clearance from the security wing for allowing the launch of the handset given the doubts about the service being a risk to internal security. The concerns were aired ahead of the proposed visit of a top team of the BlackBerry promoters to India for discussions with the department of telecommunication on the long pending security issues.
The company recently received permission to launch GSM services within its existing license and is awaiting allocation of spectrum, the radio frequency that enables wireless communications, from the government. CDMA and GSM services cannot be operated on the same spectrum.
Rajan's last day at Tata Sons, where he has worked since the 1990s, will be March 31.
The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal will hear the petition, asking for a stay against the government order permitting crossover allotment, on Wednesday. In its petition, the COAI has said the DoT's decision has been taken with 'unseemly' haste to benefit a few operators that have made a 'backdoor entry' on the basis of 'invalid applications' given in February 2006.
The plan available for Rs 99 would allow users to make local calls at Rs 1 for the first minute, 60 paise for the second minute and 40 paise for the third minute onwards. Aircel, a part of Malaysia's Maxis Communication, is India's fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with 17 million users.
Jio had launched the inaugural free voice and data plan in September last year, and in December, extended the freebies till March 31, 2017
The company - Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions - provides around 20 SMS-based channels like news, Sensex, cricket, jokes, horoscope and Bollywood free-of-cost to subscribers, irrespective of the operator or the circle. Further, these services are available across all the 23 circles in the country.
A Get Ahead reader complains about the practices of his cellular service provider. We share his story and invite readers to discuss their experiences.
This will be the country's largest order for telecom equipment and one of the world's biggest. The installed production capacity of GSM electronics worldwide is 250 to 300 million lines annually, suggesting that the order could account for more than 10 per cent of global production over the next three years.
Bhupendra Kumar Modi of Spice Corp on Thursday sent an expression of interest to the new Satyam Computer Services board to acquire the fraud-hit company.
RComm will get GSM spectrum along with other players like Vodafone, Airtel and Idea. This move will bring RComm actively in the GSM field.
With the Supreme Court declining to intervene in the tax demand case against it Friday, mobile service company Vodafone faces a potential tax demand of up to $2 billion (Rs 9,800 crore) from the tax authorities.
The government is looking at reworking on the current spectrum policy to ensure efficient management of the radio wave.
There is no word on extending the February 6, 2018 deadline for linking mobile SIM cards with Aadhaar.
BBC World has tied up with six mobile service providers in India. The broadcaster would be looking to deliver video news clips on mobiles soon. BBC World News has a global weekly television audience of 78 million, an increase of 2 million over last year, while the website presently attracts 29 million people a month. The online version of the website presently attracts close to 1 million visitors every month. BBC has no plan to introduce an India-specific English web soon.
With the growth in economy driving a massive uptake in mobile services, China and India are among the fastest growing mobile market with the most number of new subscribers in the world, according to a report. Maintaining its position as the world's largest mobile market, China has surpassed India by adding the most new mobile subscribers in a single year to become the fastest growing mobile market. China boasted 86 mn additional mobile subscribers compared with India's 84 mn.
The merger will result in substantial cost and capex synergies with an estimated net present value of around USD 10 billion after integration costs and spectrum liberalisation payments, with estimated savings of USD 2.1 billion annually from the fourth year of the merger.
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