Coming Soon: Airtel Broadband via cable operators

Bharti Airtel, which announced a program to partner with cable operators after Reliance Jio acquired Den and Hathway, said it has cracked the best model for the partnership and is planning to rapidly expand the program in the next 6-12 months. Airtel announced its cable operator collaborative program in late 2018, and has been trying […]

COVID 19 trips Bharti Airtel’s user growth, pricing pressure seen

Despite the extreme disruption caused by the COVID-19, Bharti Airtel reported a decent set of numbers for the Apr-Jun period, though the pandemic clearly slowed down the growth of Airtel’s 4G service and exerted pressure on realizations. PANDEMIC FREEZE While the company has been reporting strong increases in the number of 4G users in recent […]

Tata Communications wins Type B license in Saudi Arabia

Tata Communications, a provider of connectivity services to companies and other enterprises, said it has won a ‘Type B’ telecom license in Saudi Arabia to bolster its enterprise offering in the Middle East. Tata Communications is already providing some telecom services in the country, but as a foreign service provider. With the new license, it […]

GTPL’s hybrid Android set-top-box launch delayed by 3 months

GTPL Hathway, the country’s second biggest cable feed provider, has been forced to postpone the launch of its hybrid Android set-top-box for the second time after the COVID-19 pandemic hit its supply line. The company had originally planned to launch a new Android-based set-top-box, similar Tata Sky Binge+ and Airtel XStream, on April 1, but […]

Reliance Jio claims to have developed in-house 5G solution

In a shocking announcement, Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom player, announced that it has developed a fully in-house 5G telecom solution that can be deployed as early as next year. “I have great pride in announcing, that Jio has designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch,” Reliance Jio Chairman Mukesh Ambani said today […]

Vodafone Idea loses 63.53 lakh subscribers in March

Vodafone Idea lost a whopping 63.53 lakh (6.35 million) subscribers in March — one of the highest ever monthly shrinkage of its user base. March 2020 also saw Bharti Airtel lose 12.62 lakh subscribers. During the month, Reliance Jio added 46.88 lakh users, which is comparatively lower than the numbers that the company had been […]

ACT Fibernet beats Jio, Airtel, Hathway as India’s fastest growing broadband network

Notwithstanding the looming threat from Reliance Jio, private equity-funded ACT Fibernet has emerged as the fastest growing wired broadband player in India in recent months. For the first three months of 2020, the company added nine times as many fiber broadband subscribers as Reliance Jio and nearly twice as many as Bharti Airtel. Reliance Jio, […]

Vodafone Idea kicks off cost optimization plan 2.0

Having reached the cost-saving target of its merger one year ahead of schedule, Vodafone Idea said it has now kicked off another cost-reduction plan. PLAN 1.0 The company said it reduced its operating expenses during the January-March period by around Rs 2,100 cr compared to before the merger, which works out to savings of Rs […]

One-third of Airtel users on VoLTE network – Nokia

Global telecom equipment provider Nokia today said its VoLTE service on Bharti Airtel’s Indian mobile network now supports 110 million users, or about 32% of the company’s total subscriber base. With this, said the Finland-based telecom gear maker, Bharti Airtel’s network has become its Nokia’s biggest VoLTE deployment anywhere in the world. It also makes […]

Full list of Chinese apps banned in India, with GoI statement

As the China’s People’s Liberation Army continues to amass weapons at the Indian border, Government of India has sought to secure the country’s IT infrastructure by banning all the major and popular Chinese apps available in India at present. The following is the full-text of the statement given by the government of India explaining the […]

COVID reforms to boost mobile manufacturing – Dixon Technologies

Dixon Technologies, India’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronic items, has lauded the recently announced incentive scheme for mobile manufacturing in India, and said it is already able to sense strong interest from global smartphone manufacturers. From being a consuming state, India has — over the last 10 years — managed to get the majority of […]

Star Utsav, Sony Pal, Zee Anmol, Rishtey back on DD Free Dish

Prasar Bharti, India’s public broadcaster which operates DD Free Dish satellite TV service, has given five slots on the DTH platform to major private sector broadcasters such as Star India, Sony Pictures Networks, TV18 Broadcast and Zee Entertainment Enterprises. Two slots have been allocated to Zee Entertainment Enterprises, while one each has been allocated to […]

K-FON, Kerala’s fiber network, to be ready by Dec

Kerala Fiber Optic Network, a high-speed broadband service from Kerala government, will start operations by the end of the year, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said today. The Rs 1,000 crore project was announced around two years ago with a December 2020 deadline. Vijayan said he has spoken with the consortium of companies that are putting […]

Reliance Jio hikes data price by removing data-only plan

Data costs on Reliance Jio network have gone up again as the operator has withdrawn its only data-only data and has made it mandatory for all consumers to also activate a voice pack to consume data services. The only data-only plan it had on offer — Jio Cricket Pack — used to give 2 GB […]

Cable companies feel the pain of Supreme Court’s AGR judgment

After oil producers, metro rail operators, pipeline operators, power distributors and railways, it is the turn of cable operators to feel the impact of the AGR judgment of a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra last year. In October last year, the bench had ruled that any company that took a license from […]