Mumbai civic body cuts OFC laying access charges to Rs 1,000 per km

 The industry will keep pushing for its other demand of lowering the charges to zero, COAI’s director general SP Kochhar said

The city civic body has massively cut the access charges for optical fibre cable laying to Rs 1,000 per km from the earlier Rs 1 lakh per km in a move intended to benefit telecom companies. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner IS Chahal, who is also the administrator of the civic body as the term of elected members ended in March, confirmed the same to PTI.

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) welcomed the move saying it will benefit the industry. COAI said BMC was levying Rs 1 lakh per km for trenching activity as per rules framed in 2015, but added that as per directions issued by the Department of Telecom in 2016, the amount of administrative charges for laying of optical fibre is Rs 1,000 per km of fibre and no other tax, fee, cess, or surcharge shall be levied by local authorities…Read More

Reliance Jio's 2G-free India drive likely to hit Vodafone Idea hard

About 60% of Vodafone Idea's customer base is in the 2G space

Mukesh Ambani’s plan to make India ‘2G-mukt’ will hit the incumbent operators hard, especially Vodafone Idea given its large base of 2G subscribers. After racking up 100 million users for its 4G-enabled feature phones (JioPhone), Reliance Jio in partnership with Google is eyeing the entry-level smartphone segment. Jio is planning to win over 350 million 2G feature phone users by launching a smartphone ‘at a fraction of the current cost’.

Experts believe that Jio, which dominates the mobile broadband space (4G) with 58 per cent market share, could capture the incumbents’ market share in the feature phone segment with its new offering. While Bharti Airtel has 135 million 2G users, 47 per cent of its total subscriber base of 283 million, Vodafone Idea has 174 million 2G users, about 60 per cent of its total subscriber base of 291 million at the end of the March quarter.

Mayuresh Joshi, head of equity research at William O’Neil India, says: “Vodafone Idea has the highest 2G subscriber base among the top three operators. This coupled with a weak financial situation and inability to commit large capex investment will make it the most susceptible to subscriber loss. The ongoing churn for Vodafone could accelerate if Jio is able to launch a smartphone at a substantially lower cost in partnership with Google.”