Vodafone Idea, the country’s third largest mobile operator, has started deploying a revolutionary new approach to creating its cellular network, but has also encountered several challenges in doing so. The company is experimenting with the so-called ‘open radio access network’ or Open RAN technology, which is a break from the traditional one-box technology promoted by […]
The management of Chennai-based Sun TV Network seems to have abandoned the earlier ‘hybrid strategy’ for its digital platform and come to the conclusion that an advertising-led model will likely not work in the video-on-demand universe in the longer term. The company’s Sun NXT app has been by far the most aggressive player as far […]
Mahindra & Mahindra, the second-biggest Indian auto brand, is hoping that the valuable lessons that it has learnt from a series of less-than-spectacular product launches — reflected in the design and success of the new Thar 2020 — will be a harbinger of better luck in store for the company in 2021. Over the last […]
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has withdrawn the controversial Sec 118A of the Kerala Police Act, also known as the anti Fake News law, pending fine-tuning and further consultations. “Whoever makes, expresses, publishes or disseminates through any kind of mode of communication, any matter or subject for threatening, abusing, humiliating or defaming a person or […]
V-Mart, India’s largest chain of smaller-sized fashion stores, said it has started purchasing fresh stock from its suppliers after nearly six months of freeze on garment procurement. The company was hit hard when a nationwide lockdown was imposed by the central government in late March to control the spread of COVID-19, particularly as it had […]
The numbers released by India’s three telecom operators on their July-September performance show a remarkable trend reversal: For the first time ever, Reliance Jio was no longer the fastest growing data operator in India, losing the crown to Bharti Airtel. While Jio’s mobile data traffic went up by 220 million GBs in July-September compared to […]
Bharti Airtel, the former No.1 telecom provider of India, has doubled the pace of its 4G roll-out by adding nearly 333 new 4G base stations every day during the July-September period. That works to over 10,000 base stations per month, or almost 14 new 4G base stations per hour — including at night. In comparison, […]
Some of the gains made by the e-commerce sector during the COVID-19 lockdown is permanent and retailing will never be the same again even after the pandemic, said Sanjiv Mehta, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Unilever Ltd. As India’s largest supplier of consumer goods, HUL has a lot at stake in health and longevity […]
GTPL Hathway, one of India’s top cable TV and cable internet providers, indicated it was not overly worried about telecom players like Bharti Airtel luring away its local cable operator partners under their new LCO partnership strategy. Bharti Airtel had announced some weeks ago that it plans to authorize local cable operators (LCOs) to resell […]
Reliance Jio’s wired connectivity service, called Jio Fiber, has finally achieved what many thought was impossible — break the two-decade long declining trend in the number of wired phone connections in India. The number of wire-line connections in India started declining around two decades ago as mobile call tariffs fell sharply, spurring BSNL customers to […]
India’s communication ministry today said that there was no possibility of an operator being asked to pay the dues of another operator simply because it has entered into a spectrum sharing agreement with the other. This was clarified by Minister of State Sanjay Dhotre in reply to a question by MP K Subbarayan on whether […]
Lakhs of COVID-19 frontline staff may have been caught on Delhi Police’s traffic violator’s database during the nationwide lock-down from late March to May. According to the Union Home Ministry, Delhi Traffic Police issued around 14.5 lakh (1.45 million) electronic traffic tickets between March 25 to May 31 via its system of automatic road cameras […]
More than 18,000 jobs have been lost in India’s aviation sector over a four month period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said today. The biggest loss was among ground handling crews, with 8,466 people losing their jobs in this segment. The total number of ground handling crew, who are […]
Even as evening TV viewership has fallen back to its pre-COVID levels after the COVID-19 lockdown, overall TV viewership continues to remain elevated due to higher levels of daytime consumption in the era of work-from-home. According to numbers disclosed by Sunil Lulla, CEO of TV viewership measurement agency BARC, TV viewership in India has gone […]
Over the past three years, smartphone displays in India and the world have undergone a major transformation: While two years ago, nearly all of them were based on the 16:9 aspect ratio, today the sweet spot has shifted to 20:9. This is the result of the race to remove the bezels to make the phone […]
As Vodafone Idea unveils a new brand identity, the financial troubles facing the company has as thrown into question the very future of the Indian telecom operator. There has been speculation that American telco Verizon or online retail giant Amazon may infuse money into the operator, but such rumors have been quashed by the Indian […]
The Direct to Home (DTH) satellite broadcasting service has emerged as perhaps the only segment that has seen a clear benefit from the COVID-19 lock-down, with all three listed players seeing an increase in their customer revenue during the lock-down. The biggest jump in revenue was reported by Airtel Digital, which saw its revenue jump […]
Arvind Ltd, one of India’s biggest textile and garment manufactures, said its business revenue was down about 37% in August compared to the previous year due to the impact of the Coronavirus lockdown and it expects domestic market to remain subdued till early 2021. Revenue in August was at Rs 414 cr in August, compared […]
Department store chain Shoppers Stop, the pioneer of organized retail in India and one of the country’s largest retailers of fashion and beauty products, will connect its individual stores to its Amazon shopfront by next month as part of its omni-channel strategy. It also said it would focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns […]
Reliance Jio, which started wired broadband operations in September last year, has started speeding up the roll-out of its Jio Fiber service after an initial slow-down. The company started the service with around 8 lakh connections as of October end, most of which were converts from its trial service. Over the next two months, it […]
