New Delhi: As the government is planning to hold spectrum auction in the second half of 2020 fiscal, telecom regulator Trai believes the reserve price of Rs 492 crore per Mhz of 5G radiowave is competitive enough.

“We are hopeful that auction will take place on 5G front, there is no reason for us to think it will not happen with respect to people saying that the auction prices are higher.

The Patiala Court on Monday will hear an important case pertaining to the charge sheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate against former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family, who are accused in the IRCTC Scam case.

The ED has said that it has enough evidence to charge Lalu, his wife, Rabri, and Tejashwi Yadav, along with former minister Premchandra Gupta and his wife Sarla, as well as former IRCTC Managing Director BK Agarwal.

New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has decided to reduce the scope of consultation for the proposed regulatory framework for over-the-top (OTT) communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Skype.

Telecom operators, who once cried foul over the regulatory imbalance, are now seeing rising data consumption on their networks because of such apps, according to the regulator.

Regulator TRAI has imposed penalties on major telecom operators, including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular (now merged), for slipping on various service quality benchmarks for the March quarter, according to multiple sources.

The fines cover various parameters and service areas, and all the operators are in the process of making the payment, sources told.

The Telecom Commission (TC) on Friday accepted the recommendations of the Trai on network testing before commercial launch by operators, but capped the testing period outside the company to 180 days.

“Although Trai left extensions beyond 90 days to the DoT, the TC felt there should be an absolute finality to it, so it should be capped only to 180 days.

Unfazed by industry's criticism of some past decisions, Trai chairman R S Sharma has asserted that the regulator is not into a PR role, but is, rather, doing its job transparently with wide stakeholder consultation in the interest of consumers and the sector.

In his first interview after winning a second term at the helm of Trai, Sharma said legal options are available for anyone not happy with a particular regulation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

Reliance Jio has emerged as the country’s biggest telecom service provider on the basis of adjusted gross revenue (AGR), pipping Bharti Airtel, during the April-June quarter, according to data sourced from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

However, this is on the basis of only the access service licences. When the national long-distance (NLD) revenue is added, Bharti Airtel continues to be the largest telco.

Telecom companies added around 1.55 crore wireless subscribers in the country in June, data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) showed on Monday. Accordingly, the total wireless subscription base in the country rose to around 114.65 crore from 113.10 crore in May.

The Telecom Commission, apex decision making body at the telecom department, is likely to meet on August 31 to discuss Trai's recommendation on spectrum allocation, according to official sources.

"The next Telecom Commission meeting is proposed for August 31," an official source said without disclosing agenda of the meeting.

In India, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market, Apple Inc’s normally deft management of government relations is being put to a fresh high-stakes test. For almost two years, Apple has battled India’s telecom regulator over a demand that it allow the use of the government’s anti-spam app. Non-compliance, the watchdog threatened last month, could result in phones being “derecognised” from the country’s networks, meaning they would no longer function.

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