If the Aditya Birla Group’s mobile telephony arm Idea Cellular is allowed to set up a payments bank, the entity would break even in seven years, the company has projected to the central bank.

Idea Cellular and its parent company, Aditya Birla Nuvo, on February 2 applied to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a payments bank licence. AB Nuvo will hold 51% in the proposed bank while Idea Cellular will hold the rest.

Beats estimates again; wireless Ebitda growth accelerates to 37% y-o-y: There was little not to like about Idea’s Q3 earnings report even as the bears are likely to focus excessively on the weak voice RPM (revenue per minute) trajectory. We stay positive even as performance in the near term will likely be driven by developments on the two key externalities – spectrum auctions and R-Jio news flow.

Customers of Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and BSNL in some circles have reported maximum discrepancies in their phone bills, according to a latest report by telecom regulator TRAI.

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) guideline, not more than 0.1 per cent of the total bills raised by a company in a service area should be disputed.

Idea Cellular Ltd posted a 64 percent rise in quarterly profit as it added more subscribers than rivals did, boosting data and talk time usage.

Idea Cellular, the first telecoms carrier to report results for the December quarter, said it earned 7.67 billion Indian rupees ($125.57 million) in its third quarter, compared with 4.7 billion rupees in the same quarter last year.

IIdea Cellular, the country’s third largest operator, on Monday reported a 69 per cent jump in consolidated net profit for the July-September quarter, beating estimates of analysts.

The growth was on the back of strong subscriber additions and surge in data usage. However, sequential growth remained mute during the seasonally weak quarter.

Shares of Idea Cellular were down over 3% at Rs 166 on talk that US-based private equity investor Providence Equity Partners plans to sell part of its stake in the mobile service provider at a discount to the current market price.

On Wednesday, the stock had closed at Rs 172.35 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Canadian handset maker BlackBerry today said it has partnered telecom services firm Idea Cellular to offer one GB data plan to its customers.

Idea Cellular postpaid services users with BlackBerry OS 7 devices would be able to avail BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) 1 GB 2G plan at Rs 83 per month with an annual rental plan of Rs 999 (taxes extra), BlackBerry said in a statement.

Telecom stocks – Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications (RCom) – are trading higher by as much as 3% on reports that mobile tariffs could rise between 8–9% going ahead.

In an interview with Economic Times, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman, Rahul Khullar has suggested that he sees mobile call rates rising by 8-9% over the year as phone companies weed out freebies.

Idea Cellular, India’s third largest telecom operator by subscriber base, has reported a 57 per cent jump in profit after tax at Rs 728 crore in the quarter ended June, beating analysts’ estimates. The company’s profit increased on the back of higher call rates and a 11.5 per cent growth in data usage.

In June 2013, Idea had reported profit after tax of Rs 462.7 crore.

Owing to the all-round rally after the election results, most stocks are trading at rich valuations. Surprisingly, however, some prominent stocks haven’t participated in this rally— between May 16 and June 25, ITC, United Breweries, Adani Enterprises, Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Idea Cellular (Idea) were the top losers among BSE 100 stocks. Three of these—ITC, BoB and Idea — are among the top picks of brokerages and, therefore, offer a buying opportunity.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.