AGR payments: Reliance Jio slams peers, questions telecom sector stress

Says incumbents have enough resources, monetisation opportunities pay up

Reliance Jio on Wednesday attacked incumbent operators, saying it disagreed with “the threatening and blackmailing tone” of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) letter. In a letter on Tuesday night, the COAI had written to Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, claiming that the Supreme Court (SC) judgment on the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) will lead to a monopoly in the sector and the government’s digitisation programme will suffer.

The Supreme Court (SC) had on October 24 agreed with the Department of Telecom’s (DoT’s) definition of the AGR, asking the telcos to pay dues and interest amounting to Rs 1.33 trillion within three months.

In its letter of protest addressed to COAI Secretary General Rajan Matthew, Reliance Jio said it had taken “strong umbrage at the COAI exploiting the legitimate payout obligations to create alarmist propaganda”. It also alleged “it appears that this sum was used for expanding some other business as per their (incumbents’) commercial decisions”.

A top executive of Jio said: “We do not agree to the contention of the incumbents that they are not in a financial position to pay their legitimate dues.” In its letter, Jio said, “operators have capacity and enough monetisation possibilities to comfortably pay government dues”…

China ‘hacked’ Indian, other Asian telcos, to spy on Uighur travellers

Beijing views Uighur community as security threat, but has repeatedly denied involvement in cyber attacks.

Hackers working for the Chinese government have broken into telecoms networks to track Uighur travellers in Central and Southeast Asia, two intelligence officials and two security consultants who investigated the attacks told Reuters.

The hacks are part of a wider cyber-espionage campaign targeting “high-value individuals” such as diplomats and foreign military personnel, the sources said. But China has also prioritised tracking the movements of ethnic Uighurs, a minority mostly Muslim group considered a security threat by Beijing.

China is facing growing international criticism over its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Members of the group have been subject to mass detentions in what China calls “vocational training” centres and widespread state surveillance. Beijing’s alleged cyberspace attacks against Uighurs show how it is able to pursue those policies beyond its physical borders.

As part of the campaign, different groups of Chinese hackers have compromised telecoms operators in countries including India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Malaysia, the four sources said…