Bharti Airtel News

connected vehicles is likely to spur demand for embedded sims (e-sims) by as much as 3 million over the next 12-18 months. This, industry experts said, would drive growth in enterprise business for telecom operators. Experts predict the widespread adoption of e-SIMs in automobiles will quadruple the demand for semiconductor chips by 2025. “We believe that the number of OEM (original equipment maker) fitment connected vehicles could increase by around 2-3 million over the next 12-18 months,” a spokesperson for Bharti Airtel said, adding that demand for e-sims is led by manufacturers’ focus on launching internet-enabled vehicles with connectivity and smart features at the core of the product offering. Currently, the e-sim market for telcos is just less than 1% of enterprise revenues of telcos, according to industry estimates.

Jio AirFiber – could create a whopping $4 billion to $9 billion annual revenue opportunity if it sees wide acceptance of around 50-to-100 million homes, say analysts. They added that the current pricing of Jio AirFiber is not disruptive versus competition as rival Bharti Airtel’s comparable 100 Mbps 5G-FWA offering is at a 12% discount, albeit without digital channels and OTT apps. While Airtel’s FWA service is at a 33% premium to Jio AirFiber’s base plan of Rs 599 a month, it offers faster speeds of 100 Mbps compared to 30 Mbps on Jio’s. “Jio has ambitious plans with Jio AirFiber, with a target of 200 million homes…if there is wide acceptance of 5G FWA with bundled home entertainment services, it could be a significant revenue opportunity, especially as (home) broadband average revenue per user (ARPU) at Rs 600, is 3-4x higher vs mobile,” brokerage CLSA said in a note. A 5G-based FWA service uses airwaves instead of cables/fibre to provide fixed broadband access, using a next-gen mobile broadband technology.

Reliance Jio on Tuesday launched its fixed wireless access (FWA) device — Jio AirFiber — in eight cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune, just over a month after rival Bharti Airtel introduced its own device in two cities, as both telcos make initial attempts at monetising their 5G services. «Our extensive fiber-to-the-home service JioFiber, already serves over 10 million customers...With JioAirFiber, we are expanding our addressable market to rapidly cover every home in our country with similar quality of service,» Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio, said in a statement. A fixed wireless device uses radio frequencies instead of cables/fibres to provide fixed broadband access, using technologies like 5G. Simply put, these are portable broadband devices, much like dongles but with better coverage and speeds. The Jio AirFiber service has been launched with multiple plans ranging from 30 Mbps speeds to 1000 Mbps speeds, all available in blocks of six months and 12 months, the telco said in the statement. The plans are available in two buckets — Jio AirFiber and Jio AirFiber Max.

Vodafone Idea has introduced Vi Priority, a service aimed at retaining its high paying post-paid customers, as it finds the segment increasingly vulnerable to poaching by competitors Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio which have rolled out 5G services in various parts of the country. The new feature is available for post-paid subscribers of plans of ₹699 and above a month and includes facilities such as premium call centre service and priority service at all physical Vi stories, the telecom operator said.

G20 Summit dinner on Saturday evening. The government clarification came in the wake of reports that around 500 leading businessmen had been invited for the event at the ‘brand-new $300-million venue in the shape of a conch shell’. “This claim is misleading.

Reliance Jio will launch its fixed wireless access offering — Jio AirFiber — on September 19, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said. While Jio, with 50 million 5G users, is on track to have a pan-India coverage of the next-gen technology by December 2023, the telco will be among the first globally to develop 6G capabilities, he said. The launch of Jio AirFiber — coming shortly after rival Bharti Airtel commercially launched its own device — is expected to help expand Jio's addressable market over the next three years to over 200 million high-paying homes and premises, Ambani said, addressing shareholders of Jio's parent Reliance Industries at a virtual annual general meeting on Monday. «Our extensive optical fibre presence puts us in close proximity to over 200 million premises.

telecom industry saw overall active subscribers decline by 0.6 million in June after six consecutive quarters of additions, dragged by Vodafone Idea's (VIL) highest loss of active subscribers — 2.5 million — in 10 months. This, analysts said, indicated continued market share shifts to stronger rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, both having added active subscribers.

Reliance Jio, India’s telecom market leader, may launch its fixed wireless access (FWA) device offering – Jio AirFiber — for the consumer market in the festive quarter at an up to 20% discount from the current options in the market, industry executives and analysts said. This will be the first mainline effort by Jio to monetise 5G after the data top pack it introduced early this year. “We should hear the announcement during the upcoming AGM (annual general meeting). Traditionally, Jio has launched new products with big bang offers and this may be no different,” said a person in the know. Jio did not respond to queries sent on the matter by ET at press time. The telco is said to have started consumer trials across cities where its 5G rollout has completed and stabilised. It has also sent out devices to selected users, including employees, for testing in the home environment in preparation for the launch, those in the know added.

PD Vaghela, chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), said a joint committee of regulators comprising the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the ministries of home and consumer affairs is also trying to combat phishing and digital fraud. “We are working with the ministries of education, health, MSME and agriculture for development of 5G use cases…,” Vaghela said at the fourth edition of the ETTelecom Digital Telco Summit, 2023 on Friday. “The ministries will bring specific domain knowledge while we will enable coordination between telecom companies, sector experts and resolve regulatory issues.” He said the Trai Center for Studies & Research is exploring collaborative efforts with academic and research institutions to drive development of India-specific use cases and will start working with the respective verticals from September. To complement these efforts, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), too, is working with several central ministries to use 5G for driving tech convergence across industry sectors.

Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea, and Bharti Airtel, India’s top three telcos, are expected to add up to 25% more employees to their existing workforce in Financial Year (FY) 2024, The Economic Times reported. The demand for telecommunications jobs is seeing a rise due to 5G technology.

Reliance Jio Infocomm will pay ₹7,864 crore this week to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) towards its second instalment for 5G spectrum acquired in last year's auction, as it scales up the roll out of its next-gen mobile broadband services nationally by the year-end. The Mukesh Ambani-led telecom market leader was the largest 5G spectrum buyer in the July 2022 auction, acquiring airwaves worth ₹88,078 crore, including those in the coveted 700 MHz band.

Bharti Airtel, telecom giant on Monday announced its plan to launch ‘Airtel Xstream AirFiber,’ India’s first fixed wireless access (FWA) offering 5G for consumers in Delhi and Mumbai, said the company in its exchange filling. All Xstream AirFiber devices will be manufactured in India under the “Make in India” programme, said the company. Airtel's new launch will be India’s first 5G wireless Wi-Fi solution that will offer internet to consumers in fiber-dark areas. The company hopes to address the last-mile connectivity issue present in both rural and urban India where access to fiber infrastructure is a challenge. At present, fiber-to-home internet services are only connecting only 34 million homes in India, and a very large number of customers struggle for fiber access. The company said that the AirFiber service will be available at a plan starting at Rs 799, which offers up to 100Mbps speed. The plan can be availed for a duration of six months with a one-time refundable security deposit of Rs. 2500.

Airtel's improving subscriber mix, cost-led margin improvement, and improving free cash flow generation in the June quarter were strong enough reasons for the US brokerage to reiterate a buy. Hong Kong-based CLSA too maintained a 'Buy' stance on the counter, arguing for a favourable risk-to-reward ratio. The stock jumped nearly 2% on the NSE to attain its day's high of Rs 482.

Bharti Airtel says that it exited the quarter with an industry-high ARPU of Rs 200, compared to Rs 193 in Q4FY23 and Rs 183 in Q1FY23. «We continue to deliver industry leading ARPU along with growing average data usage per data customer at 21.1 GBs/month,» the company statement read.Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal had earlier indicated that the average revenue per user (ARPU) needs to reach at least Rs 300, and prices are expected to increase with 5G but will still remain affordable.

Q1 results today: Amid falling stock market due to weak global market cues after Fitch downgraded US credit rating from AAA+ to AAA, stock market experts are suggesting stock specific approach to intraday trading members. For long term investors too, Q1 results 2023 is an important trigger as it would help them understand the fundamentals of the company to find out quality stock at discounted levels.

JioBharat internet-enabled phone could garner around 100 million users in the next two-three years, BoFA Securities said in a research note. «If RIL/Karbonn are able to scale up production of these phones, then we see the phone to have potential and could garner around 100 million users in next 2-3 years.

Counterpoint Research said India's mobile industry crossed a significant milestone of 100 million 5G smartphone sales in May 2023, surpassing 4G smartphone shipments per month for the first time. The research firm expects the active install base of 5G handsets to cross 140 million by the end of 2023. The surge in 5G handset sales is being driven by affordability.

Reliance Jio's plan to launch a 4G phone at a market-low price of $12 to capture the broadly untapped entry-level 2G market in India will disrupt the bottom of the consumer pyramid, but not spark a price war reminiscent of its first such move in 2016, analysts said on Tuesday. Jio, late on Monday, unveiled an entry-level phone, called Jio Bharat, that is equipped with internet services such as digital payments to reach the roughly 250 million 2G users yet to migrate to smartphones.

Reliance Jio revealed plans to launch a $12 4G phone to capture the broadly untapped entry-level 2G market in India. The new phone could drive Jio's subscriber additions by 20-22 million annually, boosting its revenue and operating earnings by 2-3% in the next fiscal year, analysts at Jefferies wrote in a note. It could also hit the revenue and operating earnings of rival Bharti Airtel by 1-2% during this period, the analysts added.

Solana tanked 4 per cent, followed by 3 per cent fall in Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Dogecoin, Luna and Avalanche. The global cryptocurrency market cap was trading almost lower at $1.88 trillion mark, with marginal gains in the last 24 hours. However, the total cryptocurrency trading volume zoomed about 18 per cent to $106.72 billion.What's cooking in India?Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal has backed FM Nirmala Sitharaman’s recent call for governments worldwide to evolve a suitable global regulatory regime to track new age cryptocurrencies which can pose serious problems.

Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal has backed FM Nirmala Sitharaman’s recent call for governments worldwide to evolve a suitable global regulatory regime to track new age crypto-currencies which can pose serious problems. “The world will move to crypto-currencies as it’s a fine technology, but nation states must collectively evolve a suitable global regulation to legitimise it and ensure such digital fund transfers happen in a safe environment, and that wrong people don’t benefit from it, especially as these transactions can’t be traced or tracked,” Mittal said at the Times Network India Economic Conclave 2022, Thursday. The telecom billionaire added that India is amongst the most important nations in a deeply-divided world as it has consistently valued its democratic system. This, he said, is also reflected in the fact that Indians today are CEOs of several top Fortune 500 countries, instead of anyone from neighbouring China, largely since MNCs across the world prefer to choose leaders from countries that have cherished democratic values and systems. “Do you really see even one Chinese heading an MNC today, there is none.”