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BSNL expansion plans hit roadblock
Clouds over 3G auction success
GST rollout date likely on Jan 8
Telecom Sector |
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Assocham wants core industry status for aviation sector
NSE not ready to extend trading hrs
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BSNL expansion plans hit roadblock
New Delhi, December 25 The objection to expansion plans comes from two government nominees even after major supplier Ericsson lowered the price for the equipment substantially Joint secretary JS Deepak and a senior DoT official PK Mittal, have raised some proprietary issues concerning the tender that was cleared in early 2009. The BSNL board would now have a relook on the issue as cancellation or any delay in the contract could hit BSNL hard. At a time when the government is thinking of disinvestment in the BSNL such an objection would eventuality help only its corporate rivals, opined an official. A note given by DoT Joint Secretary JS Deepak has raised questions on the process followed by BSNL in evaluating the tender and is against the CVC guidelines. “It was a single bid throughout the country... and BSNL has not done a comparative analysis on the basis of total cost to the company,” the note by Deepak said. A similar note of dissent has also been apparently given by the other government nominee PK Mittal. Reports said that Ericsson, which was the lowest bidder for the Northern and Eastern region, had further lowered the price to a level seen in the last tender. BSNL has been losing the market share to the private sector due to its inability in timely adding the capacity and executing projects in view of government hurdles. Once being the largest telecom operator in the country, BSNL has been forced to give way to Bharti Airtel at the top as a result of lack of addition in the capacity. |
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Clouds over 3G auction success
New Delhi, December 25 With the government now deciding to allocate spectrum for 3G mobile services by August next year only, the delay of over two years in the initiation of the process has had some of the telecom operators looking for a better option. Reports suggest that some of the private telecom operators are reviewing their strategy and looking at overlooking the 3G. This could actually put a spanner in the government’s plans to garner about Rs 30,000 crore from the auction. With the operators looking to stay away from the auction, waiting for better technology, there may be a situation similar to late last year when some of the foreign operators, looking to gain a foothold in the country through the auction of the 3G airwaves, decided to stay away from the pre-auction conference in the wake of lack of clarity. Reports said some of the private telecom operators were looking at the possibility of leapfrogging straight to the fourth-generation (4G) technology, which would also be ready for use by the time they actually start rolling out 3G services following allocation in August. There is a feeling that even if the government allocates 3G spectrum by August 2010, the earliest the services could be launched would be early 2011. By that time 4G technologies such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) would also be commercially available for operators to deploy. With all the operators set to eventually move to LTE, some of them feel picking up 3G airwaves would be of no use. LTE allows more data to be transferred over the same bandwidth used by 3G technology and at higher speeds. Compared with the 3 Mbps speed offered by third-generation services, LTE could offer speeds of up to 10 Mbps. As a result, service providers should be able to get more data transfer out of their network and possibly lower the cost to run their networks. Incidentally, even some of the vendors are betting heavily on 4G technologies as they see a huge potential in India. Globally, LTE is under development with a number of international players, including KDDI in Japan and Verizon in the US, announcing trials on their network, which would be ready for deployment by 2011. Besides, what is also forcing some of the operators to directly move to 4G is the availability of the airwaves. With only four slots for 3G spectrum available for 12 operators, the option for 4G seems to be a better one for some of them. Earlier, the empowered Group of Ministers decided that auctions for third-generation mobile spectrum would take place in January, as scheduled, but this has been postponed. The spectrum would be given to four successful bidders, excluding BSNL and MTNL.
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GST rollout date likely on Jan 8
Kolkata, December 25 “There will be a joint statement after a meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on January 8 on GST rollout,” Dasgupta told reporters on the sidelines of the 23rd Industrial Trade Fair organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry here. “We (state finance ministers) have a two-day meeting from January 7. We will meet Pranab Mukherjee before giving a statement on this,” he said. Dasgupta’s statement came just a day after the Union Finance Minister said the scheduled April 1 date to introduce the new tax regime may be missed due to a lack of consensus among all the 28 states. However, Dasgupta did not make any comments on the fact whether a consensus with all the states had been arrived at. He said the Centre was working and contributing, and an advance had been made that would make it possible to introduce the GST at the appropriate time. The goods and services tax would do away with most indirect tax levies like excise and service tax at the Central level, and Octroi and VAT at the state-level. The Committee would meet Mukherjee on January 7 to sort out the Constitutional and administrative issues related to the introduction of GST. — PTI |
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Telecom Sector
New Delhi, December 25 According to sector regulator TRAI, the number of telephone subscribers touched 543.20 million at the end of November, taking the overall teledensity to 46.32. The telephone subscribers’ base rose from 525.65 million in October, registering a growth rate of 3.34 per cent, to 543.20 million in November. The wireless subscriber base rose from 488.40 million in October to touch 506.04 million in November, which was a growth of 3.61 per cent over the last month’s additions. Wireless teledensity is at 43.15 per cent now. Maintaining its downward spiral, the wireline subscriber base declined from 37.25 million in October to 37.16 million at the end of November. The state-run BSNL and MTNL hold 85.35 per cent of the wireline market. However, they lost 0.13 million subscribers in November, bringing down the overall wireline teledensity to 3.17 per cent. The total broadband subscriber base has increased from 7.40 million in October to 7.57 million in November, showing a growth of 2.26 per cent. Among the private telecom operators Tata Teleservices added 3.3 million subscribers, which is the highest for the fourth time running all service providers, including GSM operators. “Tata Teleservices has added 3,329,215 subscribers in November 2009 from its CDMA (Tata Indicom) and GSM operations (Tata Docomo) put together,” said the company officials.
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Assocham wants core industry status for aviation sector
New Delhi, December 25 The chamber also sought ‘declared goods’ status to aviation turbine fuel (ATF) by lowering sales tax and revising its taxation structure. “It is revealed that ATF prices for 11 international airports as on July, 2009, ranged between Rs 23,000 and Rs 26,000 per kilo litre. While Kuala Lumpur has the lowest price of Rs 22,800 per kilo litre, India’s airports, the into-plane ATF prices ranged between Rs 34,000 and Rs 47,000 per kilo litre,” Assocham President Swati Piramal said. Assocham pointed out that the lowest price of ATF among Indian airports is at Hyderabad, which is 46 per cent higher than the price at Kuala Lumpur, while the highest price is at Kolkata with almost double than that of at Kuala Lumpur. “While state taxes contribute significantly to the high into-wing ATF prices in India, it is a fact that if state taxes were fully eliminated, Indian ATF prices would still be significantly higher than those outside India,” it said. Besides, Assocham advocated re-instatement of exemption from withholding tax on aircraft lease rental payments and issuing of show cause-cum-demand notices on some airlines for alleged violations of service tax rules under various taxable services. It also suggested lower service taxes. — PTI
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NSE not ready to extend trading hrs
New Delhi, December 25 “There is unanimity in the market that we ought not extend trading beyond 3:30 pm,” NSE managing director Ravi Narain told reporters on the sidelines of a function held here recently. Within a day of announcing advancement of opening to 0900 hours from December 18, NSE along with India’s oldest stock exchange BSE deferred implementation of the proposal to January 4 to give more time to the brokerages to align their operations. Talking about the problems on extending trading hours beyond 1530 hours, Narain said, “The challenges in extending beyond 1530 hours are more significant compared to challenges in opening earlier...RTGS, bank office operations of brokerage will get stretched.” — PTI |
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