Telecom companies in India continued to purge inactive subscribers in December, with Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications losing 16 million, or about 12% of its mobile subscribers, during the month. The trend has been continuing since June this year, when India’s total mobile subscriber base hit a record of close to 935 million, or about 77% […]
The era of fast growth and bulging profits are over for the Indian telecom sector, at least for the short and medium term, said India Ratings, an associate of global ratings agency Fitch. The ratings agency maintained its ‘negative outlook’ on the sector, pointing out that costs are likely to remain high in the immediate […]
Will the Reserve Bank of India cut policy interest rates for the first time in almost a year even as price inflation remains above its comfort zone? Hit by slowing growth and declining demand, the industry sure hopes so. The RBI has been raising interest rates steadily for the last four years. Its official lending […]
The starting price for a quad-core smartphone has just fallen from about Rs 30,000 to Rs 11,000 – thanks to the new Karbonn Smart Titanium 1. Karbonn Mobiles has become the first Indian vendor to offer a phone with a quad-core processor – something that was restricted to the likes of Samsung (with its Galaxy […]
The government of India on Tuesday gave the industry a glimpse of what is in store under its ‘New Telecom Policy’ of 2011. According to people who were present in a round table conference organized on Tuesday, telecom minister Sibal reiterated that he will indeed carry out all the reforms he had promised when he […]
Falling commodity prices will slightly improve profit margins, while overall revenue in Indian corporate sector is likely to have increased 11-13% in the last three months of 2012, Crisil Research said. Crisil’s forecast is neither too gloomy, nor too rosy, as it points to strong volume growth only in 11 out of 28 key sectors […]
If you felt your recent flight landing at Tirupathi was a bit shaky, you may not have been totally wrong. According to the list of disciplinary actions taken by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), firefighting personnel were found handling air traffic control at the Tirupathi airport during a checking earlier this year. According to […]
If you are wondering why Ubuntu, arguably the third most popular operating system for the PC, thinks it can take on Android, the top mobile OS also built on top of Linux – the answer may lie in two aspects – speed and a hybrid nature. Ubuntu says its phone will be “blazingly fast” as, […]
Sales of tablets doubled in the July-September quarter in India, compared to the previous three months, as shipments of Samsung’s tablets almost quadrupled, research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR) said in its quarterly report. According to CyberMedia Research estimates, total shipments for the India Tablet PC market are expected to close at 3 million units in […]
CRISIL Research has predicted a GDP growth rate of 6.7 percent in the coming financial year, compared to its estimate of 5.5 percent in the current year, based on more stable global economic trends, crude price at $100 per barrel and normal monsoon. The rupee will rise to 51-52 per dollar in the next 14-15 […]
China and India will be the hottest markets for mobile advertisements in the immediate future as an exploding smartphone and tablet population in these countries are targeted by brands, Gartner has predicted. The research agency also admitted that the growth of mobile advertisements has been faster than it initially anticipated, partly due to the rapid […]
Market leader Airtel also leads in generating the largest number of consumer complaints to the telecom regulator, junior telecom minister Sachin Pilot said on Wednesday. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Pilot said Airtel accounted for roughly one third (32.5%) of all the complaints received by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against […]
The oil companies have increased the quota of LPG cylinders for the six months from September 14, 2012 to March 2013 to a total of 5 cylinders, responding to the government decision today. They have also decided to increase the price of diesel by about 65 paise from the night of January 17 and by […]
Micromax, which is placed third in the number of mobile phones sold in India, however, seems to be the hot favorite for those who buy their phones from online vendors, going by numbers from Snapdeal.com, one of India’s top online retailers. The Gurgaon-based company is among the few Indian brands that has survived the initial […]
BSNL, the former telecom monopoly of India, has lost nearly 8 lakh mobile subscribers, or about 1.5 percent of its active mobile base, due to number portability as of the end of October, government of India’s numbers revealed. There was also a sudden spike in October this year in the number of telecom subscribers using […]
India’s mobile subscriber base, which has grown consistently for the last two decades, has fallen by 30 million in just four months, primarily due to pressure on the operators to ensure full documentation of their subscribers and deactivate zombie accounts. Starting from June, India’s mobile operators, including Tata DoCoMo, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, […]
Bharti Airtel leads in the number of mobile base stations in India, while Vodafone comes second and BSNL is placed third, according to official numbers. In all, India had a total of 736,654 mobile base stations as of the end of October, 2012. The highest number of mobile base stations are in Maharashtra, followed by […]
The ‘3G roaming’ controversy, which continues to cast a shadow over services to lakhs of 3G customers in India, may be nearing an end soon. The controversy, involving the sharing of 3G infrastructure between operators, has the potential to disrupt the Indian 3G market in the coming weeks as the government decides to either crack […]
Anil Ambani group’s Reliance Communications, one of India’s biggest telecom operators, has joined the list of operators who will offer free or cheap unlimited data access to those who use Facebook services on mobile. While many others like Aircel offer free or unlimited access to Facebook on mobile, Reliance Communications has decided to offer unlimited […]
The alleviation of the alleged harmful effects of mobile towers (EMR) on human health has become more complicated with the Department of Telecom rebuffing a suggestion by the Ministry of Environment and Forests on the subject. Apparently piqued over a recent directive by the environment ministry seeking new limits on the number of cellular towers, […]
