New telecom operator Reliance Jio is estimated to have notched up a market share of around 10.5% in terms of total telecom revenue in India, broker Credit Suisse said. However, after deducting interconnect payments made to rivals, Jio’s share is likely at around 9%, it said. “We conclude Bharti and Vodafone+Idea may have lost at […]
BSNL, the state-owned telecommunications company, said it has decided to extent the benefits of all special recharges to its subscribers even when they’re roaming. So far, these special tariffs were available only in the home location. For example, STV 349 which offers unlimited voice call to any network only in home LSA, now the benefit […]
Reliance Jio, the telecom firm that has caught the country by storm, has started turning off the connections of those subscribers who have not recharged their mobile phones since the beginning of April. In April, it had introduced the Summer Surprise offer, and gave around four months of validity for each recharge. The validity of […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has started registrations for an open house discussion on its upcoming recommendations on net neutrality. The open house discussion will be held on Wednesday, August 30 at 9:30 AM in New Delhi. The venue has not been finalized yet, and is likely to be fixed after the regulator gets […]
Bharti Airtel is still testing its 4G voice or Voice over LTE service and a pan-India launch will take place only by January-March of 2018. “VoLTE is a very complex technology,” CEO Gopal Vittal said. “There is a lot of optimization. It has to be tested device by device,” he said, adding that it will […]
The license fees paid by telecom operators in India to the central government fell by 23% to 2,663 crore in the three months ended March compared to the previous three months, the government said. Compared to nine months earlier, the fall was 33%. Telecom access providers, such as Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular, have to […]
Bharti Airtel was forced to slash its data price by half to about Rs 60 per GB in the April to June period of 2017, the latest numbers revealed. In contrast, Bharti Airtel was charging around Rs 125 per GB in the three months from January to March of this year. A year ago, it […]
Bharti Airtel Limited reported a drop of 14% in its revenue for the first quarter, at Rs 21,958 crore. Adjusted for sale of its units, the drop was 11%, it said. Net profit fell 75% to 367 crore rupees for the first quarter. Operating profit was down 18%. India revenues for Q1’18 at Rs 17,244 […]
Reliance Jio chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the JioPhone, which aims to bring smartphone features to the candybar form factor. The phone will be given to anyone if they deposit Rs 1500 with the company. The user will get the Rs 1500 back when the device is returned after 36 months. “Net net, you pay nothing […]
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio will make a ‘significant announcement’ about the 4G wireless service provider’s offerings at 11 AM on Friday while delivering his annual speech at its parent’s annual general meeting. A live webcast of Mukesh Ambani’s speech at the AGM, at which he is expected to announce the launch of ultra-cheap […]
Telecom operator Reliance Communications said companies in the sector are facing cash flow issues due to what it called a ‘go slow’ approach taken by banks in disbursing loans. In an update on its ‘standstill agreement’ with its lenders, which provides it a window of seven months to complete a merger with local units of […]
Reliance Jio users are a happier lot than customers of other services, but call drops and network availability remain key concerns, according to a survey conducted by a market research firm Velocity MR. The firm conducted a study among more than 2000 smartphone users across the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad […]
A technology that has been around for almost a decade is now getting deployed on a large scale by Indian telecom operators to deploy 2G, 3G and 4G networks using the same base station. This could hit the revenue and growth prospects of telecom tower companies, while reducing the number of antennas mounted on each […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Netflix, the world’s biggest provider of video-on-demand services, rebuffed attempts by telecom companies to control viewership of online video and said consumers must be allowed to consume any legal content on the Internet without ‘gate keeping’ or interference by telecom providers. It said its position was that “gate-keepers should not be in a position to […]
The shareholders of Reliance Communications approved the demerger of the wireless operations of the company into Aircel Limited and Dishnet Wireless Limited, the Anil Ambani Group company said. The Scheme was also approved at a meeting called on the directions of the National Company Law Tribunal. The shareholders of Aircel Limited also approved the scheme on April 22nd. […]
Vodafone India said it would like to be given the power to manage the size of videos watched by users on its mobile network and lower it automatically “for overall quality welfare”. Participating in the discussions related to Net Neutrality and the powers to be given to telecom operators in traffic management, the company said it did […]
