Idea Cellular completes merger with Vodafone India after NCLT nod

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The merger of Idea Cellular and Vodafone India has been completed, creating India's biggest telecom service provider with over 408 million subscribers, the two companies said today.

A new board has been constituted for the merged entity "Vodafone Idea Ltd' with 12 directors (including six independent directors) and Kumar Mangalam Birla as its Chairman. The board has appointed Balesh Sharma as the CEO, the companies said in a joint statement.

The combination will have all India revenue market share of 32.2 per cent and take the numero uno slot in nine telecom circles, it said adding that both Vodafone and Idea brands will continue.

The telecom giant will topple Bharti Airtel from its current pole position, and will have the firepower to take on competition in the Indian telecom market, which has intensified with the aggressive entry of Reliance Jio.

RCom planning to complete Rs 250-billion assets sale by August-end

Debt-ridden Reliance Communications is looking to complete the sale of its business assets worth Rs 250 billion by the end of this month and has also agreed to pay Rs 5.5 billion towards settlement to telecom gearmaker Ericsson by September-end.

Reliance Communications in a regulatory filing said that it has "agreed to pay a settlement amount of Rs 5.5 billion to Ericsson on or before September 30, 2018".

The Supreme Court of India on August 3 approved the settlement arrived at between RCom and Ericsson India Pvt Ltd over a payment dispute and asked the Anil Ambani-led firm to pay Rs 5.5 billion to the Indian arm of Swedish firm by September 30.

Ericsson India Pvt Ltd, which had signed a seven-year deal in 2014 to operate and manage RCom's nationwide telecom network, had alleged that it had not been paid the dues of over Rs 15 billion and challenged the debt-ridden firm before National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).

Singtel to increase stake in Bharti Telecom; invest Rs 26.49 billion

Singapore-based telecom operator Singtel will invest Rs 26.49 billion in Bharti Airtel Ltd, increasing its stake in the Indian telecom major to 48.9 per cent.

"Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) will invest Rs 26.49 billion in Bharti Telecom Limited (Bharti Telecom), the promoter company of Airtel through preferential allotment of shares," Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

The transaction is subject to the shareholders' approval of Bharti Telecom and the funds raised will be used towards debt reduction, it added.

"With this investment, Singtel's total stake (along with its affiliates) in Bharti Telecom will increase to 48.90 per cent," the statement said.

Jio revises plans, Rs 149 recharge will now offer 1GB per day

Reliance Jio updated its price chart for the third time in two weeks by slashing recharge rates by Rs 50 across the board and increasing the data limit available to users.

Jio has been consistently changing its price-points with a view to gain market share while slowly inching towards higher average revenue per user (ARPU). The new offer brings down the price of the cheapest data recharge to Rs 149 again.

A new category of data packs have been introduced to give users 1.5 GB data per day, effectively increasing data limits by 50 per cent, thus increasing the data limit of the Rs 198 starter pack up from 28 GB to 42 GB.

"The flagship Rs 399 plan will now provide 20 per cent additional data with enhanced validity of two additional weeks, increasing the current validity from 70 to 84 days," said the company in a statement.

The company is expected to announce more plans in the coming months.
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Jio impact: Bharti Airtel consolidated net income down 72%

Amid stiff competition from Reliance Jio Infocomm, Sunil Mittal-led telecom giant Bharti Airtel suffered a 72 per cent plunge in its net income during the quarter ended March 2017. The company’s net income dropped to Rs 373.4 crore, while its revenue slipped to Rs 21,934.6 crore, Bharti Airtel said on Tuesday.

India’s telecom sector has seen a massive churn in the past few months with the entry of Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio, especially as the latter has come up with attractive schemes and freebies and eaten into the subscriber base of older rivals like Bharti Artel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.
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Itel, Idea Cellular tie-up to offer 6 GB free data on various smart devices

Leading mobile brand from Transsion Holdings Conglomerate itel has partnered with Idea Cellular, one of the leading Indian mobile operators, to offer free one GB of Data per month for up to six months on specific models of itel smartphones.

The offer will be available starting from Wednesday on selected itel smartphone models under Wish series; it1409, it1407, it1508, it1508+ and Power Pro series; it1516+.

"With all aspects of our lives rapidly migrating onto a digital platform, internet connectivity has become a necessity instead of a luxury. The association with Idea Cellular, one of the most popular mobile networks with an extensive service outreach, is aimed at making digital connectivity more affordable and value-driven for both itel and Idea users. We are confident that a large number of consumers across the country will benefit from the partnership and the enhanced digital connectivity that it enables," said CEO itel Mobile, Sudhir Kumar.

In order to avail the offer, customers need to visit http://i4all.ideacellular.com/offers from their itel smartphones using an Idea SIM and click on 'Let's Get Started' button on the landing page. The website will capture the customer's mobile number and the IMEI of the itel device. (read more)

Delhi High Court gives RBI one more day to finalise stand on Tata-DoCoMo arbitration award

LATEST NEWS - The Delhi High Court on Tuesday allowed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) a further day to finalise its stand on the enforcement of the $ 1.18 billion Tata Sons-NTT DoCoMo arbitration award, now sought to be realised in favour of the Japanese telecom major through a settlement agreement arrived at by the two companies.

On March 8, Justice Muralidhar had directed the RBI to inform the court by March 14, of its stand on an intervention application filed by the central bank against the enforcement of the international arbitral award. The court's order had come on the backdrop of lengthy arguments made by the RBI on grounds of violations to Indian law and the disregard of regulatory considerations, which in the opinion of the banking regulator, were attempting to do something that was not permitted directly in an indirect manner. After hearing the arguments raised, the court had on that date, asked the RBI to take a final call on the matter and to inform the bench on all applicable laws in favour of its position, in case the regulator still chose to object to the settlement of the issue in line with the understanding arrived at by the companies.

In Tuesday's hearing, instead of clarifying its stance as directed, senior advocate Soli Sorabjee appeared on behalf of the RBI and sought the court's allowance for the central bank to again look into the matter "afresh", before clarifying its final position. On protests made by the DoCoMo and Tata and after highlighting the volume of arguments already made by the RBI, Justice Muralidhar denied the senior counsel's request and instead remarked, "This must be decided here and now. The RBI still hasn't told the court under what law, circular or regulation it may have an issue (against the enforcement)."(READ MORE)

Budget 2017: IT, telecom players expect more for cyber security, broadband

Latest News - With the government's push for digitisation across the board, the information & technology and telecom players are expecting a Union Budget that will try to strengthen cyber security and make broadband available to all that will in turn catalyse digital payments.

"As India digitalises rapidly, holistic approach to cyber security is a pre-requisite to foster and sustain trust of all the stakeholders -- consumers, businesses as well as government," said Sanjay Rohatgi, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan, Symantec.

"The government should consider setting aside at least eight per cent of its overall IT budget specifically for cyber security starting with the upcoming budget," Rohatgi said.

After the demonetisation in November 2016, the Indian government is trying hard to (Read More)

Jio, Airtel spar over interconnect issue

Latest News - A fresh round of war of words broke out between Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel on Monday, with the former alleging that its service continues to face congestion issues with some of the large operators, including Airtel, not providing adequate points of interconnection (PoI) — a charge the incumbent operator refuted.

Reliance Industries (RIL) in a statement said its telecom subsidiary Jio has garnered 72.4 million subscribers within four months of commencement of services but continues to face congestion issues as interconnect capacity provided by some large operators is "still way below requirement".

"The POI capacity provided by these operators is still way below requirement and is falling short of the customer addition pace of Jio, resulting in quality of service issues for Indian customers. The resultant call failure rates continue to be of the order of 175 calls failing out of every 1,000 calls from Jio to Airtel network when the QoS regulations mandate that no more than five calls out of every 1,000 calls can fail. Indian customers are still being denied the benefits of superior voice technology on Jio's state-of-the-art network," said the company in a post-result statement.

Replying to the allegation Airtel said, “About 60 million customers of Jio are making calls into the Airtel network. To meet this requirement, we have provided 21,557 PoIs to them which is much higher than their demand of 14,164 E1s for catering to 100 million customers. Approximately 17,000 PoIs of the total POIs provided are dedicated to the outgoing traffic of Jio. Jio has yet to activate all the E1s we have provided to them."(Read More)