The country's wireless subscriber base fell to 87.05 crore at the end of September, registering the first drop in five months, after Reliance Communications deactivated services of over 1 crore "unprofitable" users.
Ambani siblings' war intensified on Saturday with the younger Anil's group warning to retaliate in case Mukesh-led Reliance Industries goes legal with its claim on the potential multi-billion dollar amalgamation deal that the former is pursuing with South African telecom giant MTN.
The battle between the Ambani brothers flared up again today -- this time over the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group's (ADAG's) bid to seal a merger deal with South African telecom company, MTN.
The issue of spectrum allocation has become murkier, with the Association of United Service Providers of India (Auspi) -- the CDMA operators' body -- slamming the move by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to allocate additional spectrum to existing private GSM operators.
At present, the cheapest business phone (with personal digital assistants) is priced at Rs 15,000, while high-end phones are available around Rs 13,000.
A possible merger of Reliance Communications of India and South Africa's MTN could see Anil Ambani become the enlarged group's chairman and biggest shareholder with a stake of almost 35 per cent.
French telecom infrastructure player Alcatel has bagged an approximately $350 million (roughly Rs 1,400 crore) contract from FLAG Telecom, a subsidiary of Reliance Communications (RCom), to build a fully IP-enabled Trans-Pacific undersea cable.
The move should help as many as 25 aspirants, including Unitech, Parsvnath, DLF, HFCL and Shyam Telecom, seeking to enter the lucrative GSM mobile services space.
Two regional CDMA players - HFCL in Punjab and Shyam Telecom in Rajasthan - have deposited fee for their GSM spectrum as per the dual technology permitted by the government. HFCL deposited Rs 151.75 crore (Rs 1.51 billion) for Punjab circle, while Shyam gave about Rs 32 crore for the Rajasthan circle.
The company has won the award under the 'Operator Leadership' category for having demonstrated leadership in the wireless community through the expansion of 3G CDMA system deployments and the unique implementation of 3G CDMA technologies in a specific market, a release issued by the company stated.
Tata Teleservices spokesperson confirmed the development, and said: "We have written to theDoT seeking clarity on the issue."
In a move that will result in further snowballing of the spectrum issue, British telecom major Vodafone has termed the Reliance Communications' (RCom) allegations "as false and inconsistent with the facts".
The battle for subscribers in the direct-to-home (DTH) market is hotting up with Reliance Communications (RCom) close to finalising a bulk deal with the country's leading TV manufacturers -- LG Electronics, Samsung India and Sanyo -- which will be offered to customers at a hefty discount bundled with a DTH package.
Corporate giant Tatas on Tuesday asked the government to seek surrender of excess spectrum lying with GSM operators, a line being aggressively pursued by Reliance Communications chief Anil Ambani. With this, the top two CDMA players have joined forces against GSM operators like Bharti and Vodafone to seek return of spectrum beyond the contractual amount of 6.2 Mhz.
The FIR was lodged by the Lucknow Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee after an emergent meeting held in Lucknow on Monday, official sources said on Tuesday.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications on Saturday reacted sharply to rival Bharti Airtel's statement that others have equal opportunity to succeed, saying "if Bharti honestly believes in competition, it should welcome entry of RCom and other new players in GSM" segment.
Tata Steel and Anil Ambani-led& Reliance Communications raised $1.375 billion through overseas borrowings and convertible bonds in September, according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India. Tata Steel, which early this year acquired Anglo-Dutch firm Corus to become the sixth-largest maker of the alloy, raised $875 million for overseas acquisition through foreign currency convertible bonds.
Spectrum auction ends, brings Rs 1.09 tln to govt kitty.
The Department of Telecommunication and mobile service providers, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communications failed to reach a consensus on the spectrum issue during a meeting held on Wednesday. According to sources, Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani raised the issue of extra spectrum being held by GSM operators. He asked how over 6.2 MHz of radio waves have been given to GSM players beyond their contractual agreement.
The Department of Telecommunications has called a meeting of the heads of all leading telecom companies offering GSM technology services on November 21 to resolve contentious issues that have arisen following recent changes in telecom policy.
The NSE Nifty is at 5,148, up 82 points. The prominent gainers were HDFC Bank, Wipro, HUL, NTPC, Sterlite and Tata Power, up 1-2% each.
Virtually bringing the entire industry into the picture, telecom tribunal TDSAT on Monday directed Reliance Communications, HFCL, Shyam Telelinks, BSNL and MTNL to become a party to a petition challenging changes to spectrum allocation norms among others.
Telecom service provider Reliance Communications on Friday said it has launched an international calling card for the United States and Canada through which users can make calls to these countries at a rate of Rs 1.99 per minute.
The company will also make a $500 million (Rs 2,000 crore) investment through the acquired company in the next 2-3 years to build and acquire WiMax networks across 50 countries. Worldwide interoperability for microwave access or WiMax is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless data over long distances through various mediums. This is the third acquisition by the company as it had acquired US-based ethernet services provider Yipes Holdings for $300 million.
Jio is in a neck and neck battle with Airtel, which added a similar number of subscribers as Jio in the 15 months from February 2017 to April 2018
As the reports trickled that the permission for the use of twin-technology would benefit the aspiring Reliance Communication, an Anil Ambani group company, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) shot a letter to the government saying that such a permission was against the existing policy and is tantamount to favouring a few.
Liquor and airline baron Vijay Mallya, auto major Hero Honda and leading telecom company Reliance Communications have started negotiations with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to buy the rights of teams that will play in the Twenty20 tourney, which was announced to counter Subhash Chandra's Indian Cricket League (ICL).
The company has enhanced validity and talk-time of its already launched GSM tariff plans. Under the new offer, subscribers would be able to make local calls at 50 paise per minute (Re 1 earlier) and STD calls at 75 paise per minute (Rs 1.50 earlier). It had also extended validity for lifetime (licence period of the company).
Leading TV channels will see a blackout of spot advertising from midnight tonight after Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Airtel, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Reliance Communications, among others, directed their media-buying agencies not to book such advertisements on 16 news and entertainment channels, including NDTV, Network 18, Zee News, Star News, starting October 16.
Going by application dates, companies like Spice, Birla-promoted Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications (through Swan and Cheetah) and Hindustan Futuristic are in the lead for licences in different circles. The only new player in the list is the little-known ByCell.Several incumbents like Idea Cellular, Maxis-Aircell, owned by a Malaysian promoter, and Vodafone-Essar lead the list of applicants for initial spectrum allocation since they already hold licences.
Analysts expect that Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications (RCom) and Idea Cellular will post over 50 per cent annual growth in revenues (year-on-year) and more than 10 per cent sequential growth (over the previous quarter). Bharti continues to lead in the subscriber addition race (2.1 million in August).
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has received permission to offer CDMA services across the country (except Delhi and Mumbai) under the crossover technology policy. Under the policy, existing GSM operators are allowed to offer CDMA service and vice versa within the same licence after paying a fee.BSNL is the third company after Reliance Communications (which is in CDMA and wanted to operate GSM service) and Tata Teleservices (similar to Reliance) which has been given licences
Programmes offers pared-down web services on mobile phones along with Facebook' s own social network and messaging services cost free
Reliance Big TV, a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, will offer 202 channels initially and increase the bouque to 330-350 over a period of time, company CEO Arun Kapoor said in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Nokia, that has already begun manufacturing of 5G equipment at its Chennai plant, is also readying for exporting the products to several key markets like the US.
However, operators said the chief beneficiary would be the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, which have already been given the spectrum for 3G services, as well as Reliance Communications, which is still to roll out its 2G GSM network.
"We will start our GSM services soon. We have got spectrum in 13 circles in one or two months. We expect to get spectrum in all the circles barring one or two," TTSL managing director Anil Sardana said. RCom has launched GSM services in 11,000 towns, which would be extended to 22,000 towns in the next few months.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Communication on Sunday launched GSM services in Mumbai and offered free talk-time worth Rs 900 spread over three months. "New subscribers would get Rs 10 talk-time every day for the first 90 days and we have offered tariffs of Re 1 a minute for local calls. STD would cost Rs 1.50 per minute on any network," Dinesh Gulati, the head of Western region, said. After consuming Rs 10 during the day, the subscribers can use top up cards.
The Department of Telecommunications has received 21 bids from telecom operators and infrastructure service providers for the Rs 2,395 crore (Rs 23.95 billion) rural telephony project.
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