No Ayyappa To Help: BJP’s vote share falls 31.5% in Pala bypoll

Five months, it seems, is a long time in politics, certainly long enough for the electorate in Kerala to forgive, if not forget, the Left Front’s decision to ‘desecrate’ the holy shrine of Sabarimala. The Left Front has emerged as the undisputed and unexpected winner in today’s results of the high-profile Pala by-election, but it […]

India’s water position vulnerable vs China: Brahma Chellaney

China’s use of water as an “unconventional weapon” of warfare against India is a major geopolitical and environmental concern for New Delhi, strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney warned, as he recalled how Beijing’s refusal to provide New Delhi with hydrological data in 2017 had caused “preventable deaths.” “As an upper-stream state, China is obliged to […]

Politicians face backlash for supporting illegal flats in Maradu

The demolition of five illegal high-rise apartment buildings in Kochi has snowballed into a major controversy, with some of the state’s prominent politicians who openly supported the illegal buildings now coming under fire from social media and even their own colleagues. The initial response of the political community in the state was one of support […]

Kerala Electricity Board to offer free fiber internet

Kerala State Electricity Board, the public sector power distribution monopoly that is used by major broadband operators to hang their cables, has decided to start a fiber-to-the-home service on its own. The service, to be called K Fone, will also include a free-tier, which will come with limited data allowance and will be provided to […]

Tata Sky slashes monthly charge under TRAI tariff scheme

Tata Sky, a premium satellite TV provider in India, has unveiled a scheme by which heavy customers can bring down their monthly network fee by up to Rs 300. However, to get the lower network charge — also known as network capacity fee or NCF — a subscriber must buy some television channels picked by […]

Can Airtel Xstream’s open approach beat Jio’s walled garden?

When cellular telephony started in India, Bharti and Reliance took two divergent approaches towards launching cellular services — Airtel decided to focus on providing the services, leaving third party players to provide the hardware, while Reliance decided went with CDMA, a technology in which everything was more tightly controlled. Despite the obvious technological shortcomings of […]

Discovery sues TRAI again over latest move to cut TV channel prices

Discovery Communications, India’s biggest provider of infotainment content, has taken broadcasting regulator TRAI to the Delhi High Court for the second time in three years for trying to bring down prices of individual TV channels. TRAI had earlier this month announced a move to force channel owners to bring the prices of their individual channels […]

Chidambaram’s Arrest: A Breakdown in Lutyen’s Consensus?

The arrest of former finance minister P Chidambaram has thrown many critics of the current administration into a quandary. On the one hand, they know that there may be some truth to the allegations of corruption made by the investigating agencies. They would, therefore, like nothing better than for corrupt politicians to be probed just […]

Arasu Cable cuts NCF to ₹35/month vs ₹130 by Tata Sky, Airtel Digital etc

Arasu Cable, the government-owned cable feed provider in Tamil Nadu, has become the first big player to drastically reduce the monthly network charge under TRAI’s new tariff order, throwing a challenge to the likes of Tata Sky, Dish TV, Hathway and Sun Direct. Arasu Cable’s new base plan of Rs 130 contains six broadcaster packs […]

Tech-savvy scammers try to steal flood relief donations

Even as a large part of the country grapples with torrential rain and floods, scammers have set up fake bank IDs to get their hands on at least a part of the donations meant for disaster relief. For example, the original UPI ID for donating to Kerala’s disaster relief fund is keralacmdrf@sbi. However, given that […]

Jio’s Gigafiber Box, built on Android, will support some apps

Jio Box, the heart of the new GigaFiber service from Reliance Jio, is built on Android TV operating system and will support some third party apps, according to sources. However, it is not clear whether the box will support all apps that run on Android TV operating system and whether it will come with Google […]

Reliance Jio GigaFiber to offer free cable TV + broadband at Rs 500/month

Reliance Jio GigaFiber, the new wired broadband and cable TV service from India’s biggest telecom operator by volumes, is likely to offer free cable TV and high-speed broadband for Rs 500 per month. The customer is likely to have to make an initial upfront payment of around Rs 3,000, which would enable him to avail […]

Vodafone Idea says 4G speed up 50-70%, but perception sticks

Vodafone Idea CEO Balesh Sharma today said the company had managed to increase the speeds of its 4G networks by 50-70% in around half of its circles where it has merged Idea and Vodafone networks together. However, said Sharma, the market is yet to fully appreciate the improvement in speeds because of the experience that […]

Vodafone Idea’s ‘minimum recharge plans’ starts to hurt

When Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel started cutting off the incoming call facility of low-spending customers around 4-5 months ago, the idea was to force these customers to stop using one of the SIM cards for incoming only. The idea was that if customers are forced to recharge their legacy numbers once every month for […]

GTPL targets higher share of cable fees, no brand merger with Jio

Gujarat-based cable feed provider and broadband operator GTPL Hathway said it will try to retain a higher share of what consumers pay every month, and is not currently looking to bring its broadband business under the Reliance Jio brand. In its cable feed business, GTPL retains only about Rs 30 out of the Rs 130 […]

Vistara, Air Asia lead losses in FY19; Vistara loses Rs 1.33/km

Air India Express, the no frills airline that is part of the Air India family, was the only one to make money in the financial year gone by, while others lost between 3 paise to 2.88 rupees for every kilometer that their passengers traveled during the year. As expected, the biggest loser among the big […]

We expect TRAI to tweak the new tariff order – GTPL

GTPL Hathway, one of the country’s largest cable feed providers and the biggest MSO in Gujarat, said it expects media regulator TRAI to make further changes to the TV tariff order introduced in February this year. Speaking to analysts after announcing the quarterly earnings of the cable feed provider, officials — including MD Aniruddhasinhji Jadega […]

ICICI Bank tops in banking fraud hits; SBI, HDFC Bank follow

ICICI Bank, one of India’s top three lenders, has emerged as the No.1 target of bank fraudsters last year in terms of the sheer number of such incidents, overtaking bigger rival State Bank of India. ICICI Bank reported 374 medium and large sized incidents of fraud, beating back SBI, which came in with 338 such […]

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