Bharti Airtel’s attempts to avoid paying “voice conversion charge” on the spectrum that it is purchasing from internet service provider Tikona Digital could end up unintentionally benefiting arch rival Reliance Jio. Reliance Jio was forced to pay around Rs 1,650 cr four years ago to the government after telecom players protested that the company did […]
Fierce competition from new entrant Reliance Jio is pushing the incumbent telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone India to accelerate negotiations to allow them to use each other’s full networks. As of now, these operators only share ‘passive’ or ‘dead’ infrastructure such as the physical tower and generator sets. Active infrastructure — or […]
Reliance Jio, the 4G operator that has taken the market by storm, has deployed the extra spectrum that it bought last year, increasing the total spectrum in use in most markets by 20-25%. In most circles, Jio is operating with about 40-50 MHz of spectrum, and with the new spectrum, this has gone up to […]
India’s largest telecom services company by revenue and spectrum holding, Bharti Airtel, will start diverting its 2G spectrum to add to its 4G network in the second half of the ongoing financial year, the company’s CEO said. The move will help increase 4G capacity of the operator by adding a carrier (5 MHz block) of […]
Idea Cellular, the telecom company controlled by the Aditya Birla group, said it will spend Rs 6,000 cr to expand its 3G and 4G services in the current financial year. The planned investment of Rs 6,000 cr has been “earmarked for expanding broadband coverage (and to) increase wireless data capacity” and for the launch of […]
Airtel Broadband, India’s second largest wired broadband service, will upgrade nearly all its DSL customers to its new ‘V Fiber’ vectorization technology that offers speeds of 40 Mbps, compared to 4-8 Mbps under the traditional ADSL 2 technology. Company CEO Gopal Vittal said this would make the copper-based offering more competitive with fiber-based offerings from […]
It is not every day that a new entrant forces the established players in the market to overhaul their business models. But Reliance Jio seems to be doing just that, and rivals like Bharti Airtel are proving to be quick, if slightly unwilling, learners. In the three months from January to March this year, Airtel saw […]
Wireless data prices in India, which crashed from Rs 250 per GB to about Rs 10 per GB after the entry of Reliance Jio, will continue to remain under pressure for at least two more years, said analyst firm Credit Suisse. That is the minimum amount of time that the new entrant will take to […]
If you thought the fight over net neutrality was over with the sending of 1 mln emails to the TRAI two years ago, think again. The telecom service providers, who lost out that in the first round, are back. This time, however, their demands are more subtle, and focused on getting specific services exempted from […]
Bharti Airtel said it would provide 100 GB of free high-speed data to anyone who purchases Amazon’s Fire TV Stick in India. The offer is available to Airtel customers on broadband as well as ‘4G Home Wifi’, but not to normal, handset-based 4G users. The data quota can be availed in buckets of 35 GB […]
Complaints against all telecom providers except Bharti Airtel dropped in 2016, possibly in reaction to the emergence of new operator Reliance Jio and the explosion of 4G data capacity. The total number of complaints lodged with the regulator TRAI against telecom firms dropped 15% in 2016 to 19,774 from 23,293 in 2015 and 20,386 in […]
India’s largest telecom services company by revenue — Bharti Airtel — is in the process of rolling out new plans including one that offers 2 GB of data per day at just Rs 349 in addition to unlimited calling for 28 days, according to the offers found by users on their MyAirtel apps. The same […]
A video of a working Reliance Jio ‘DTH’ TV has been leaked by a Gujarat-based Youtube user, even as Airtel unveiled its own ‘Internet TV’ today. The Youtube user demonstrates a working set-top-box, complete with HD channels and various other features. Even though the uploader calls it Jio DTH, there is nothing in the video […]
Airtel Digital TV launched what it called India’s first hybrid set-top-box with built-in Android and a host of advanced gaming and Internet functions at a price of Rs 4999. Customers can also get one year of free subscription by paying Rs 3,000 extra. It will be available online exclusively on Amazon India starting April 12, […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s network benchmarking app MySpeed is no longer listed on the Android Play Store. The link for the app throws an error saying ‘the requested URL was not found on this server’. It is not clear whether TRAI pulled the application or whether it was taken down by Google. It […]
With the prospect of the entry of Reliance Jio into the cable and broadband market, Ortel Communications — the largest cable network in Orissa and an emerging player in neighboring states, has slashed its broadband rates. The company has removed all its sub-1 Mbps plans and replaced them with plans having speeds of 1 Mbps […]
Reliance Jio has officially withdrawn its Summer Surprise offer on its website and put up a new banner saying that it will be introducing new plans soon. “We are updating our tariff packs and will be soon introducing more exciting offers,” the company says on its website in place of the Summer Surprise details, as […]
Free services from Reliance Jio, the telecom services arm of Reliance Industries, brought down the amount of money paid by telecom subscribers in India by about Rs 4,400 cr in just the last three months of 2016, an analysis of the sector data revealed. The numbers indicate that the company’s free offers have helped Indians save a […]
Reliance Jio’s withdrawal of its Summer Surprise Offer is unlikely to make any difference to most of its customers, and the company may even come up with a new version of the plan to comply with the ban. “The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised Jio to withdraw the 3 months complimentary benefits of Summer […]
MySpeed, the speedtesting platform operated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, has revealed a sharp dip in wireless data speeds across operators in March compared to the previous month. The declines were visible in both 4G as well as 3G services, but were more pronounced in 3G networks, which typically have one-tenth the data […]
