Subscribers of Direct-to-Home satellite services on all existing plans, including long-duration packs, will be migrated to schemes compliant with TRAI’s tariff order on TV channels from 29 Dec, according to Dish TV, India’s biggest DTH operator. The company said the TRAI rules are applicable to all customers and there is no exemption for any category, […]
Consumers can expect to see a sharp fall in channel prices in days ahead, going by the trend revealed by Discovery Communications, one of the first broadcasters to publish channel prices under TRAI’s new tariff order. TRAI has mandated a new tariff structure for cable and DTH sectors in India under which they have to […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has started implementing the tariff order issued last year with effect from today. The move follows the refusal of the Madras High Court to strike down the TRAI tariff orders issued early last year. “Having complied with the judicial mandates in the matter, the (tariff orders).. as upheld by […]
Taking the fight up a notch, Star India, the biggest television broadcaster in the country, has threatened to disconnect all its 56 channels currently aired by Airtel Digital, India’s second-biggest DTH network. “Dear Airtel Digital customer, your favorite channel.. along with all 56 channels in Star India bouquet is likely to be disconnected on Airtel […]
The Telecom Regulator’s subscriber addition numbers for November showed that new operator Reliance Jio continued to lead the charts in terms of net subscriber addition, but rivals like Idea Cellular and Vodafone too have come back on the growth path. Part of the reason for the reversal in the fortunes of Idea and Vodafone could […]
Telecom minister Manoj Sinha today said the government is committed to the “the fundamental principles and concept of net neutrality” and is studying the recommendations of the telecom regulator in this regard. The government is keen to ensure “non-discriminatory access to internet,” Sinha added. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had, a month ago, sent […]
After regulating Internet and broadband services for years, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India seems to have decided to enter the broadband era by using technology to stream its ‘open house’ discussions to the public. The regulator is streaming its latest open house discussion on spam calls and SMSes to the public via its twitter […]
India’s telecom regulator TRAI has issued its recommendations on Net Neutrality in India. The recommendations are largely along expected lines, and prevent telecom companies from slowing down the Internet to ease the traffic of their video apps, messengers and other ‘over-the-top’ services. The move comes even as an Indian-origin bureaucrat in the US is facing […]
Reliance Jio, India’s newest operator, added 5.94 mln subscribers in September, breaking a declining trend in net additions and taking the total subscriber number to 138.62 mln (13.86 cr). Even as the company increased its subscriber numbers, it was also able to reduce the proportion of inactive or switched-off users on the network. SEPTEMBER BLUES […]
As expected, incumbent telecom operators have expressed their disappointment with the regulator going ahead with cutting the interconnect charges paid by one operator to another at the time of handing off internetwork calls. The operators are likely to approach the government and the court against the move to reduce interconnect charges to 6 paise per […]
Operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL and Idea Cellular are likely to cut call tariffs for 2G and 3G users after TRAI decision to cut ‘termination charges’ to 6 paise per minute from 14 paise. More importantly, the bet that Mukesh Ambani placed by making voice free seems to be paying off as his […]
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 […]
After Zee Entertainment, it is the turn of Sun TV to slash its channel prices with effect from Sept 1 in anticipation of the implementation of new channel pricing rules by TRAI. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had, three months ago, announced that media companies and cable and DTH companies will no longer be […]
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 […]
Zee Entertainment, one of the four big broadcasting groups of India, has become the first player to bring its channel prices in line with an upcoming regulation issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Zee’s new tariff card prices its channels a fraction of what they are being sold for in the market at […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
