Jio Music no more, gets replaced by JioSaavn

Reliance Jio has pulled its enormously popular Jio Music app and replaced it with JioSaavn, a new app based largely on Saavn, a competitor that the company had acquired in March. Users who have enabled auto-updating of their apps will be upgraded to the new application automatically. With over 100 mln (10 cr) downloads, Jio […]

Vodafone Idea withdraws all prepaid recharges, to have only 5 schemes

Vodafone Idea, India’s No.1 telecom operator, said it has decided to withdraw all existing recharges and replace them with five coupons with specific validity. The recharge balance has to be used within the validity period, or it will be lost. With this, a customer has to spend at least Rs 35 per month to keep […]

Broadband plans could soon come with free DTH

Dish TV said it is looking at bundling its DTH plans with broadband plans from other players. “..that is certainly on the cards looking at partnership with different broadband players that will happen as required,” said Managing Director Jawahar Goel in an interaction with investors after the company’s results announcement for the second quarter. The […]

Bharti Airtel overtakes Vodafone Idea in mobile broadband

Bharti Airtel overtook the combined Vodafone-Idea entity in mobile broadband users in August due to a steep, 20% fall in Vodafone India’s wireless broadband users in the month. The sharp decline of 12.5 mln mobile broadband users on Vodafone’s network in August was at odds from the usual course, when the company used to add […]

Jio GigaFiber to be launched in 1,500 cities – Mukesh Ambani

India’s biggest billionaire and chairman of telecom operator Reliance Jio said today his company is rolling out fiber connectivity in 1,500 cities in India — an apparent uptick from the 1,100 cities announced four months ago. Pointing out that India is ranked at 134th in the global ranking for fixed broadband penetration, Ambani said Jio is determined to […]

Airtel ends ‘lifetime free incoming’; to charge Rs 35/month

Bharti Airtel said it has stopped the policy of allowing users to continue on its network even if they spend nothing on outgoing calls and use their numbers only for receiving incoming calls. The company said it has done this by removing many of its existing prepaid vouchers and plans, and replacing them with ‘minimum […]

Bharti Airtel says open to partnering with cable operators for broadband

Bharti Airtel today said that it was ‘open to’ partnering with cable operators to get access to last mile connections to customers for its broadband service. “We would be open to looking at partnerships to expand our access to the last mile,” said CEO Gopal Vittal. The comment came in the context of Reliance Jio […]

Reliance Jio thunders through estimates, doubles data traffic in 1 yr

Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator, has seen its data traffic double to 2.6 billion GBs per month this September from 1.3 billion GBs a year ago, according to the company’s quarterly update. Surprisingly, the 100% growth in data consumption has outpaced the 83% jump in subscribers. Analysts and observers had expected the company’s data consumption […]

Mukesh Ambani extends his hand to Local Cable Operators as he snaps up Den, Hathway

Reliance Industries made a strong pitch to the thousands of local cable operators associated with cable feed providers Den Networks and Hathway Cable and Datacom as it announced its purchase of the two companies. Reliance will spend Rs 2,290 cr for a 66% stake in Den Networks, and Rs 2,940 cr for a 51.3% stake […]

RIL to announce Hathway, Den acquisitions tomorrow – CNBC

CNBC TV18, controlled by Reliance Industries, reported that the diversified company is likely to announce its acquisition of two of India’s top cable companies, Den Networks and Hathway Cable and Datacom, tomorrow. The TV channel, controlled by Reliance via a trust, said the acquisition is likely to be announced along with RIL’s second-quarter results on […]

Star agrees to share cricket matches with Reliance’s JioTV

Star India has agreed to share the feed of cricket matches involving India with Reliance Jio’s live TV app JioTV. Till now, JioTV users had to install Star’s Hotstar app to watch any of the network’s sports channels. The sharing agreement is valid for five years, said Reliance Jio, without divulging the financial details behind […]

Reliance Retail reveals how to install WhatsApp on Jiophone

Users of Jiophone, India’s highest selling mobile device, can install WhatsApp messenger starting from today, Reliance Retail said. The software can be installed by going to the phone’s appstore and downloading it. “WhatsApp will be available on the JioPhone AppStore starting 10th September, 2018 and will be rolled out on all JioPhones by 20th September, […]

RCom completes sale of 1.8 lakh km of fiber to Reliance Jio

Two days after announcing the completon of a transaction to sell some of its physical assets to Reliance Jio, Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications said it has sold its fibre-based assets to Jio. Like in the previous case, the company did not specifically mention the amount that it would generate from the transaction, but said the […]

Reliance Jio and SBI announce new partnerships

Reliance Jio and State Bank of India today announced further deepening of their financial relationship, including deeper penetration of SBI services into Jio’s customer care app MyJio. “MyJio, one of India’s largest over-the-top (OTT) mobile applications will now bring in financial services capabilities of SBI and Jio Payments Bank,” the telecom operator said. In return, […]

No more price cuts, says Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel said it expects prices in India’s telecom sector to start climbing again in around six months or so, and indicated it has no stomach for further price competition with newcomer Reliance Jio. The comments by company officials come a few months after Reliance Jio slashed its 4G prices citing actions from rivals such […]

Reliance Jio’s Q1 revenue, EBIT up 14% QoQ, PAT up 20%, RIL EBIT up 30%

Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries, continued to post strong numbers. For the Apr-Jun quarter, Reliance Industries reported a 15% sequential jump in both revenue and EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) for its digital services division, which houses Jio operations. Digital services revenue for Reliance Industries rose to 9,653 cr for the […]

Reliance Industries 10 rupees away from $100 bln market cap, after TCS

Three months after Tata Consultancy Services became the first Indian company to achieve a market capitalization of $100 bln (Rs 6.85 lakh cr), Reliance Industries is close to the $100 bln mark as well. At present, there are only around 100 companies in the world whose shares are worth $100 bln or more, including the […]

Analyst calls Reliance Jio’s GigaFiber targets unrealistic

Market tracker CyberMedia Research has called Reliance Jio’s 4G and GigaFiber broadband subscriber targets unrealistic, and said it did not see the company meeting the year-end target of 300 mln for its 4G service or the 50 mln target for its fiber broadband service. “We at CMR feel Jio might slow down around 260-275 million […]

Does Jio GigaFiber & GigaTV mark the end of Cable & DTH industry?

India’s cable company stocks have fallen by about 15%-25% since Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom company by volumes, yesterday announced the commencement of its long-awaited fiber broadband and TV service from August 15. It is feared that the company’s entry can lead to widespread shutdowns and losses in the cable and broadband industry, similar to […]