Three telecom companies lost a combined R4,288 crore in market capitalisation on Thursday after Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) would extend its free offers till March 31, 2017.

Shares of telecom majors such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications fell between 1.7% and 5.9%.

Idea Cellular was up 5% to Rs 79.70 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in intra-day trade on reports that the Aditya Birla Group's telecom major has put on block 100% stake in its tower arm.

The Exchange has sought clarification from Idea Cellular with respect to news article appearing on Moneycontrol.com on November 29, 2016 titled "Idea Cellular plans to sell 100% in tower arm for $1 billion,” the NSE said in a statement.

New Delhi: Even after nearly two months of free services, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd has not been able to impact the net subscriber additions for incumbent telecom operators.

In fact, the net additions in October for Bharti Airtel Ltd, Idea Cellular Ltd and Vodafone India have been higher than their last six-month average, according to a report by Citi Research.

KOLKATA: The Big 3 of Indian telecom - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are slated to collectively see a 40-to-50% growth in mobile wallet transactions following the Modi government's decision to ban high-denomination currency notes, analysts and industry experts said.

The withdrawal of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes announced on Tuesday, they said, is unlikely to immediately translate into a sizeable jump in revenue from wallet services, although it is expected to help retain customers.

Idea Cellular Ltd, India’s third largest telco, on Tuesday said it had not violated any norms in issuing points of interconnection (PoIs) to rival Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd for which the telecom regulator has proposed a penalty of Rs950 crore.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday recommended penal action against the country’s top three telcos, to the extent of Rs50 crore per circle, for deliberately blocking calls made from Jio’s network.

Idea Cellular shares slipped as much as 3.83 per cent in morning trade on Tuesday after the company reported 88 per cent fall in its consolidated net profit after tax of Rs 91.46 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 as compared to Rs 762.28 crore for the same quarter in the previous year. However, total income of the company increased by 8.13 per cent at Rs 9,429.30 crore for quarter under review as compared to Rs 8,720.45 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2015.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday recommended a fine of R50 crore per circle against the top three incumbent operators — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular — for denying sufficient points of interconnect to Reliance Jio Infocomm resulting in inconvenience to RJio’s consumers as a large number of call attempts resulted in failure.

While a fine of R50 crore each for 21 circles has been recommended for Bharti and Vodafone, for Idea the same is for 19 circles.

Mumbai: After acquiring fresh spectrum, Idea Cellular Ltd’s market share in telecom airwaves is higher than its revenue market share, said a top executive.

The firm is also comfortable with its high leverage ratio and has taken steps to monetize its tower business in case of any short-term funding disruptions, he added.

MUMBAI: Idea Cellular’s acquisition of airwaves in this year’s auction will result in a Rs 1,000 crore increase in planned capital expenditure for the year, managing director Himanshu Kapania said.

The company expects it will need to make an upfront payment of about Rs 6,000 crore for the spectrum purchased in the auction. Idea was looking to get a slot of 5 MHz in the 1800 MHz band in Mumbai but settled for one in the 2100 MHz band, which it can still use to launch 4G services, Kapania said. “We didn’t get it (1800 MHz) in the price that made sense so we switched to 2100 MHz,” he said.

The war of words over point of interconnects (PoIs) between Reliance Jio and incumbent operators continued on Friday with the Mukesh Ambani firm saying 40 million calls were failing everyday between it and Idea, while Jio claimed that the proposed augmentation by Idea was inadequate.

Idea said it would further enhance capacity for Jio in both access and long-distance interconnection by 230 per cent. Idea said it has now provisioned 1,865 ports for access, from 565 earlier — a 230 per cent increase in capacity — and simultaneously the long-distance capacity was also being expanded by 50 per cent.

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