With interest rates at multi-year lows, Bharti Airtel has used money raised from the market to prepay liabilities associated with its spectrum purchases during the auction of 2014. Under India’s spectrum auction rules, winners can opt to pay the majority of their obligations in the form of instalments over a period 10 years or more, […]
Vodafone Idea said it achieved speeds of over 4,000 Mbps during its test deployment of 5G on the trial spectrum handed over by Department of Telecom. In comparison, in the early days of 4G, the maximum speeds achieved were in the range of around 200 Mbps. The company released two speedtest results — presumably using […]
Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecom companies, has selected Tejas Networks, a provider network equipment and services, to expand its fiber network in major cities for 5G and broadband applications, the latter said. “Tejas will supply, install and support its state-of-the-art TJ1600 DWDM/OTN products for extending Airtel’s optical networks towards the edge, supporting 5G […]
Vodafone Idea is hoping that it will be able to do a better job of convincing Supreme Court of India to allow the government to rectify the mathematical and compilation that crept into the calculation of its humongous regulatory levies that now threaten its very existence. A Supreme Court bench headed by Arun Mishra had […]
Bharti Airtel said it has closed its deal to transfer CDMA spectrum to Reliance Jio Infocomm and received the money. “Airtel has received Rs. 1004.8 crores (net of tax) from Jio for the proposed transfer. In addition, Jio will assume future liabilities of Rs. 469.3 crores relating to the spectrum,” the Gurgaon-based company said. The […]
Bharti Airtel, formerly India’s biggest telecom operator, announced plans to take its fiber-based broadband services to nearly every town in India over the next three years, except for the smallest of the small. The company, which is currently launching its fiber services in more than 1 new town per day, said it plans to take […]
Bharti Airtel, which this month increased its minimum monthly recharge price from Rs 49 to Rs 79, said it plans to continue with the price increases, targeting to take the average amount paid a single customer from Rs 146 to Rs 200 over the next six months. From this month, the company increased its minimum […]
Kerala Vision, the ISP with the largest network in Kerala, has unveiled a new set of tariffs, after its primary competitor BSNL converted its 449 promotional scheme into a regular scheme with unlimited validity. BSNL last week converted its 449 promotional broadband scheme — which was initially valid only for six months — into a […]
Vodafone Idea CEO Ravinder Takkar has urged competitors Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio to gradually move away from daily data plans, and said such plans made ‘no sense’ as consumers don’t use data uniformly. Daily data or unlimited plans were introduced by Reliance Jio as part of its Welcome Offer when it launched its services […]
Railtel Corporation of India, the telecom unit of Indian Railways, said it does not expect to lose subscribers to rival operators like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, even as it promised to take its RailWire services to even the tiniest of towns this year. RailTel Chairman and Managing Director Punit Chawla said his company is […]
Bharti Airtel said its Africa unit, Airtel Africa, has sold around 1,400 telecom towers in Tanzania to a joint venture company of SBA Communications Corp and Paradigm Infrastructure Ltd for $175 mn, or around Rs 1,280 cr. SBA Communications Corp is a leading global independent owner and operator of wireless communications infrastructure, while Paradigm is […]
Bharti Airtel reported yet another strong quarter of financial and operational performance as it continued to benefit from increased demand for connectivity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that has constrained face-to-face meetings. In an effort to tap demand for high-speed services, the number of cities in which the company is offering its wired […]
Bharti Airtel’s new strategy of tying up with cable operators has helped the company significantly speed up subscriber acquisitions in its wired broadband business and narrow the gap with Reliance Jio, which continues to be India’s fastest growing provider. Since introducing a new, collaborative model of joint roll-out with cable operators, Bharti Airtel’s monthly wired […]
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel seems to have borrowed a leaf from rival Reliance Jio in announcing a restructuring of its business that puts its digital business at center stage, while moving the pipe or connectivity business to a separate, wholly owned subsidiary. This is the opposite of how things stand now. At present, the connectivity […]
Bharti Airtel said it was selling spectrum worth around Rs 1,500 cr to Reliance Jio. The sold spectrum is in the CDMA band (800 MHz). Jio is currently the only telecom player in India to use that band for delivering 4G services. It is likely that Bharti Airtel got hold of that spectrum as part […]
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel said US-based payments processor Mastercard will invest $100 mln (Rs 730 cr) into its Africa mobile payments business. The announcement comes two weeks after TPG Group invested $200 mn in Airtel Money Africa. The latest agreement values Airtel Africa’s mobile money business at $2.65bn on a cash and debt free basis, […]
Kerala Cable TV Operators’ Association, the biggest organization of local cable operators in Kerala, will inaugurate its much-awaited voice calling service on Thursday, March 25. This will make it possibly the first cable TV operators’ association in the entire country to diversify into voice services. It was one of the first to branch out into […]
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has raised $1.25 billion (Rs 9,050 cr) via dollar-denominated bonds from a clutch of international investors, tying up funds ahead of impending auctions of 5G spectrum. The debt was raised at considerably low interest rates, though they carry the risk of the US currency appreciating in value against the Indian rupee. […]
Bharti Airtel has announced its entry into the lucrative, Rs 30,000 cr digital advertising market in India, making it the most serious competitor yet to Google and Facebook, which together control about 90% of the market at present. While Google leverages its access to search data and Facebook taps its access to behavioral data on […]
In a further commitment to rolling out Open RAN technologies, telecom operator Bharti Airtel announced a tie-up with hardware and chipset provider Qualcomm Inc. It said Qualcomm will provide technology to support the roll-out of 5G using the open technology. Qualcomm is a maker of semiconductors or chips that are used by other equipment makers, […]
