AGR dues paid by telcos to reflect in FY20 revenue receipts: Report

Officials said the amount was not much to have any bearing on the fiscal position.

Government will account the paid AGR revenues, which is so far Rs 25,896 crore, as revenue receipts in the current fiscal that will help the Finance Ministry tide over the tax revenue shortfall expected in FY20 to some extent, sources said.

The AGR amount may also go up till the end of this fiscal (March 31, 2020).

Though officials said the amount was not much to have any bearing on the fiscal position.

Government had not accounted for this figure in the 2020-21 Budget as it was in dispute but since this part amount has been received in the current fiscal, it will be on a revenue receipt as these are actual receipts, and any futuristic projections from sub judice cases cannot be done.

Then there is the Rs 6,095 crore spectrum auction dues from past auctions paid by the telcos on Tuesday that is already accounted for as the non-tax revenue, so it will not have any bearing on the fiscal positions, said sources.

For FY20, the fiscal deficit is already pegged higher at 3.8 per cent. The non tax revenue stands at Rs 2,52,083 crore in the April-Jan period. Fiscal deficit has touched 128.5 per cent of budget estimate by January-end.

Revenue receipts during April-January were at Rs 12.5 trillion or 67.6 per cent of the Revised Estimate (RE) for 2019-20. The government data said that total expenditure at January-end was Rs 22.68 trillion or 84.1 per cent of RE, higher than 81.5 per cent in the corresponding period of the last fiscal.

The RE has pegged the target for collection of direct taxes for the current fiscal, which ends on March 31, at Rs 11.70 trillion.

On Tuesday MoS Anurag Thakur told Rajya Sabha that the government has collected Rs 7.52 trillion direct tax from April 2019 to January 2020. On Tuesday the three telecom operators -- Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea paid Rs 6,095 crore in total from past spectrum auction dues.

Separately Tata Teleservices paid Rs 2,000 crore as reconciliation amount towards AGR which took the total AGR dues so far paid by the telcos to Rs 25,896 crore.

Last month Economic Affairs Secretary Atanu Chakraborty had said that the government has not included AGR dues payment in the Budget 2020-21. "AGR dues payment has not been taken into account in the Budget," Chakraborty said at a post Budget event in FICCI

India will become premier digital society: Mukesh Ambani at CEO Summit

He said the big change driving this transformation is the deepening of mobile networks which are working at a much faster pace than before.

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Monday said India is at the cusp of becoming a premier digital society, and will be among the top three economies of the world.

In conversation Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella at the Future Decoded CEO Summit here, he said the big change driving this transformation is the deepening of mobile networks which are working at a much faster pace than before.

"It all kickstarted in 2014 when PM gave us the vision of Digital India... 380 million people have migrated to Jio's 4g technology," he said.

Pre-Jio, the data speed was 256 kbps; and post-Jio, it is 21 mbps, he pointed out.

Referring to US President Donald Trump's visit to the country, Ambani said India is much different than what it was during the visits of his predecessors Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, and pointed out that mobile connectivity was a key change.

I have no doubt in my mind that we will be among the top three economies in the world, Ambani said, adding that the only debate which can exist is whether it happens in five or in ten years.

We in India have the opportunity to become the premier digital society, he stated.

"The next generation will see a very different India than what you (Nadella) and I have grown up in," he said.

Why Mukesh Ambani's 'cautious actions' could be a bad sign for the economy

Why is Ambani hitting the brakes on a seven-year, $100 billion investment spree across refining, petrochemicals, telecom and retail?

Does Mukesh Ambani see dark clouds gathering on the horizon? From his message to shareholders, it doesn't look like India's richest tycoon is worried. But his actions may reveal more than his words.

At Monday's annual general meeting, the chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd was brimming with optimism. Not only did he endorse Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of bumping up annual GDP by 80% in five years to $5 trillion, he even forecast a $10 trillion Indian economy by 2030. It's not only possible but "inevitable," he said.

Something doesn't add up. If the outlook is so rosy, why is Ambani hitting the brakes on a seven-year, $100 billion investment spree across refining, petrochemicals, telecom and retail? While a breather after such frenzied activity may be understandable, why does he want Reliance to be a zero-net-debt company in 18 months? What will it mean for the more than 100 banks and financial institutions around the world that provide India's largest company and its subsidiaries with billions of dollars – and yen, and rupees – in financing and refinancing? Above all, what will Reliance's deleveraging mean for India?

In retrospect, I tackled the last question prematurely in October 2016 when Reliance was shouldering 13% to 14% of the entire investment by India's top 1,250 listed companies as well as Indian Railways and state-owned electricity boards. My conclusion then was that if Ambani took a yearlong vacation, India’s growth outlook could dim. What I didn't anticipate was that starting a 4G mobile network with lifetime free voice calls and dirt-cheap data was just the beginning rather than the end of Ambani's telecom ambitions. The goal of Reliance Jio was to acquire at least half of India's 1 billion-plus mobile customers, and that required continued spending.

Now that he's reached 340 million subscribers, though, the endgame is probably not more than a few quarters away. And that’s problematic for the economy. The rest of India Inc. is paralyzed by debt and self-doubt; consumers are overstretched; and so is the government. A holiday for Reliance would remove from play the only domestic balance sheet with unspent firepower.

Business Standard

Despite big 5G plans, debt-laden Airtel wobbling in war with Ambani's Jio

Airtel added 53,500 subscribers, Jio 17 million in first two months of 2019.

Business Standard : In a war for the control of India’s billion-plus mobile-services market, tycoon Sunil Mittal seems to be floundering in the face of a juggernaut unleashed by Mukesh Ambani.

For at least a fourth quarter in a row, Mittal’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. shored up its profits with one-time gains, masking headwinds posed by upstart Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. Jio’s roll-out, after its 2016 debut, has knocked Airtel from its perch in a consolidation that shrank the industry to three players from about a dozen four years ago.

Airtel is struggling to add subscribers in a saturated market after Jio managed to lure more than 300 million users over the past three years -- a quarter of the world’s second-largest market. The aggressive expansion of Jio with free calls and cheaper data, backed by the deep pockets of Asia’s richest man, was bad news for highly indebted incumbents engaged in a tariff war that had pushed call rates to less than a cent.

Shriveling earnings portend further trouble for Airtel. Already saddled with more than $17 billion of debt -- the highest among Asian peers -- it is also preparing to spend billions more on 5G airwaves at a government auction in coming months. Adding to its woes, Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating to junk earlier this year.

The New Delhi-based company is counting on some asset sales, a rights issue and an initial public offering in London of its Africa unit to bolster its finances.

Airtel said in an exchange filing Monday that a one-time net gain of Rs 20.2 billion ($291 million) on account of a credit related to “re-assessment of levies” boosted its net income to Rs 1.1 billion for the quarter through March. Analysts had predicted a loss of Rs 9.66 billion.

Although revenue rose 6 per cent to Rs 206 billion in the period, data provided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India show Airtel added a net 53,493 subscribers in the first two months of the year, compared with Jio’s 17.1 million. While Airtel didn’t provide user addition data for the quarter, Jio reported an increase of 26.6 million.

Shares of Airtel have advanced 17 per cent this year, compared with a 7.6 percent gain in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index.

Xiaomi leads India smartphone market, OnePlus tops premium segment in 2018

Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Realme and OPPO emerged as the top five smartphone vendors in terms of market share in Q4 2018 in India.

Chinese brand Xiaomi with 28.9 per cent market share led the Indian smartphone market in 2018, followed by South Korean brand Samsung at 22.4 per cent and Vivo at 10 per cent, an International Data Corporation (IDC) report said on Tuesday.

"The premium end of the market outgrew all other price segments in 2018 with 43.9 per cent Year-on-Year (YoY) growth -- OnePlus emerged as the leader in the price segment range $500-$700 and in the super premium segment and Samsung surpassed Apple for the top position with its Galaxy S9 series," said Upasana Joshi, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India.

According to the report, the online-focused brands drove the online channel share to an all-time high of 38.4 per cent in 2018 and a whopping 42.2 per cent in 2018 Q4 whereas offline channels had a rather muted year with a modest 6.7 per cent annual growth and a 5 per cent sequential growth in Q4.

"Shipments form Xiaomi, Asus, OnePlus and more grew online channels resulted by 47.3 per cent YoY in Q4, but the offline channel was unable to keep pace with the deep discounts and go-to-market initiatives from the e-tailers almost throughout the year," Joshi added.

The overall smartphone average selling price remained flat in 2018 at $158, with high shipments in the mass segment of $100-$200 -- which accounted for more than half of the smartphone market in India.

Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Realme and OPPO emerged as the top five smartphone vendors in terms of market share in Q4 2018 in India.

On the other hand, the feature phone market, primarily driven by Jio Phones -- which makes up 56 per cent of the total mobile phone market clocked 181.3 million-unit shipments in 2018, with 10.6 per cent YoY growth, the report said.

Article Source BS

Ambani vs Bezos vs Murdoch: Sacred games play out in India's content arena

Indians are watching digital video content for an average of 8 hours and 28 minutes each week, which is more than for TV.

Meghal Karekar is hooked on watching smartphone videos, an addiction shared with 200 million fellow Indians that has the world’s streaming giants beating a path to his door.

“Everywhere I go during my work day - the security guards at client offices, the receptionists, people lining up for the elevator - are on heads-down, earphones-on mode,” said Karekar, a 56-year-old architect from Bangalore. “India has always been movie-mad but the mobile phone is taking the screen mania to another level.”

As smartphone adoption surges, along with the networks capable of transmitting high-quality videos, the nascent Indian market is seeing explosive growth that is attracting everyone from Netflix Inc. to Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch. They are creating original programming, developing native language content and fine-tuning their pricing strategies in the country of 1.3 billion people to get consumers to pay.

While the Indian market for over-the-top video services was worth just Rs 21.5 billion ($296 million) in the year ended March, it’s expected to grow 45 per cent annually through 2023, according to KPMG. By comparison, Netflix’s streaming business is expected to generate $7.6 billion of sales this year.

Right now it’s Hotstar, part of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc., that has the lead, helped by the rights to key cricket broadcasts. But Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video and Netflix are investing to win over users.

“Prime Video is to India what same-day or next day shipping is to the U.S.,” Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s India chief, said in an interview. “It’s a unique market with 700 million phone users.”

Bezos’s e-commerce giant has 30 original shows in different stages of production and many will be released next year. “Our production pipeline is bigger than anyone else,” Agarwal said.

It’s not just the sheer number of people that is appealing to streaming companies, it’s their engagement with their phones. Indians are watching digital video content for an average 8 hours and 28 minutes each week, which is more than for TV, with that number jumping 58 percent from 2016, says a study by delivery platform, Limelight Networks.

As the global giants duke it out in India, another potential entrant looms large in the form of Asia’s richest man. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, with almost 240 million wireless phone users as of August, is acquiring rights to everything from soap operas and Bollywood films to the Winter Olympics for subscribers to its mobile phone network, on its way to becoming India’s largest.

For Netflix, which is in nearly half of all American households, India could hold the key to international expansion through the next 100 million new subscribers. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings acknowledges that India is a tough market and those new users won’t come easy... Read More

Business Standard

Reliance AGM 2018: No tariff cuts as Jio shifts focus to broadband services

Analysts are not surprised at the target given the potential and Reliance Jio's fibre presence.

Reliance AGM 2018 : Reliance Industries’ (RIL) 41st annual general meeting saw the entire conversation centred around the disruption Jio was going to cause this time around. While telecom players heaved a sigh of relief as there were no further tariff cuts, the action shifted to the fixed line broadband services. RIL’s chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of Jio’s fibre to home or fixed line broadband services called Jio GigaFiber as well as new offers for the JioPhone customers. Following feedback to the initial registration, the company, which will launch the service (Jio GigaFiber) from August 15, will take a call on where the services will start rolling out first.

“Your company has already invested over Rs 2,500 billion for creating state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to provide mobile and broadband connectivity across the country, with the largest fibre footprint. We will now extend this fibre connectivity to homes, merchants, small and medium enterprises and large enterprises simultaneously across 1,100 cities to offer the most advanced fibre-based broadband connectivity solutions,” said Ambani.

The wired broadband arm, has already started offering what they claim to be ‘ultra-high-speed’ fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connections with 1.1 terabytes (TB) of free data at a speed of 100 megabits per second (mbps) in select markets in the country. The company says it has rolled out 300,000 kilometres of optical fibre network in India and has a target of crossing 50 million households.

Analysts are not surprised at the target given the potential and Reliance Jio’s fibre presence. The number of wireline broadband subscribers is pegged at just 18 million in a total of 420 million broadband subscribers, a penetration of less than 10 per cent of the households in the country. Similarly, there are 68 million DTH subscribers, indicating a household penetration of less than 30 per cent. “The small base, along with rapidly increasing content, and improving bandwidth, translate into good growth potential for these services, especially fixedline broadband, says Harsh Jagnani, sector head & vice-president – Corporate Ratings, ICRA.

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Apple Watch 3 LTE goes on sale: Airtel offer, Jio's new service and more

Apple Watch 3 LTE goes on sale in India from today and is available on both online and offline platforms

The much-awaited Apple Watch Series 3 Cellular edition is now available in India through Reliance Jio and Airtel owned platforms.

The watch, which comes in several variants, can now be purchased from Jio stores and Reliance Digital outlets.  Airtel users can order the watch through the telecom's online store.

The 38 mm variant of the watch is available for Rs 39,080, while the 42 mm model is being sold at Rs 41,120.

On the hardware front, the GPS only model of the watch comes with 8GB internal memory, while the GPS+Cellular model comes with 16 GB internal memory.

Watch Series 3 comes with a dual-core S3 processor and a W2 wireless chip.

Airtel is giving a cashback of Rs 5,000 to its customers who buy the watch through ICICI Credit EMI transactions from May 11 to June 10. The cashback will be credited within 90 days of the transaction.

Jio  has launched a new service called JioEverywhereConnect, especially for the watch. The service will allow users to use the same Jio number on both their iPhone and Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular).

The latest variants of the Apple Watch Series 3 comes with built-in cellular features. "Whether users are out for a run, at the pool or just trying to be more active throughout their day, Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular allows them to stay connected, make calls, receive texts and much more, even without iPhone nearby. The third-generation Apple Watch is an amazing health and fitness companion with intelligent coaching features, water resistance 50 meters and a barometric altimeter that measures relative elevation, " Jio said in a statement.

Pre-booking for the watches had begun on May 4 on all platforms for Airtel and Reliance Jio.