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SpaceX, Netflix, Boeing to join “biggest-ever” US business mission to Vietnam, Telecom News.


By Francesco Guarascio

HANOI: SpaceX, Netflix and Boeing are among the companies joining the “biggest-ever” U.S. business mission to Vietnam next week to discuss investment and sales opportunities in the booming Southeast Asian nation, the organiser said.

More than 50 companies, including defence, pharmaceutical and tech firms, will participate in the mission organised by the US-ASEAN Business Council, an industry body, according to a list seen by Reuters.

The delegation is a sign of rising interest in the global manufacturing hub, which is benefiting from a shift away from China amid Sino-U.S. trade friction.

Vietnam, with a population of 100 million people, also has a rapidly-growing consumer market as its middle class expands.

“This is the biggest-ever mission in Vietnam,” said Vu Tu Thanh, the US-ASEAN Business Council’s representative in the country, noting that the body had been organising these events for three decades.

Streaming giant Netflix, which Reuters last month reported was planning to open an office in Vietnam, is among the companies joining the trip. Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

Aerospace manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Bell will hold meetings with state-owned Vietnamese defence procurement companies, Thanh told Reuters, adding that it was the first time in about a decade that security firms had decided to join the annual mission to Vietnam.

In December, the same companies held talks with Vietnamese government officials about the possible sale of helicopters and drones, as the country seeks new suppliers and the Ukraine conflict strains the capabilities of Russia, for decades Vietnam’s main military partner.

“Helicopters is one of the things the companies hope to sell to the Vietnamese,” Thanh said, although he cautioned that defence deals took time to be completed and no immediate breakthrough was expected.

Boeing said in a statement that its discussions with officials would focus on its growing partnership with Vietnam and ways to strengthen the country’s aviation and defence capabilities.

Lockheed Martin and Bell did not respond to requests for comment.

The majority of the companies joining the business mission already have a business or manufacturing presence in Vietnam, including Apple, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Thanh said, with some planning to expand it.

Some companies are also coming to get a better sense of the political situation after recent turmoil in the Communist-Party led country, including the resignation of the president in January, Thanh added.

Participants will have meetings with Vietnam’s top political and regulatory leadership, including with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Thanh said some companies were interested in Vietnam as a manufacturing hub and in providing services to increasingly wealthy consumers at a time when economic growth reached more than 8% last year.

Among them is SpaceX, which is looking to sell its satellite internet services to Vietnam and other countries in the region, Thanh said. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

The mission will also include semiconductors companies, pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, medical device maker Abbott, financial firms Visa and Citibank, internet and cloud companies Meta and Amazon Web Services, the list showed.



Android

Boat elevates Vivek Gambhir as Chairman; co-founder Sameer Mehta named as CEO, Telecom News.


Earwear brand Boat on Thursday said it has elevated CEO Vivek Gambhir to Chairman of the company. Boat co-founder Sameer Mehta will take on the role of CEO and Managing Director.

Gambhir, in his new role as Chairman, will continue to guide the leadership team on matters of strategy, organisational development and culture and future growth roadmap.

“We are now the number two company globally in the wearables (earwear and smartwatches) space in addition to being a leading brand in multiple categories in India. It is a matter of great pride that a brand born in India is now among the top brands in the world. And I am excited about the next phase of boAt, under the co-founders’ visionary leadership,” Gambhir said.

Mehta joined Boat in February 2021 as CEO from Godrej Consumers Products, where he served as Managing Director and CEO of the company.

“In early 2021, we approached Vivek to join and guide us in our scaling-up journey and prepare us to think and act like a bigger company rather than as a start-up. The past several years have been a period of significant learning and growth with Aman and I working closely with Vivek to run the company,” Mehta said.



Android

Apple to open flagship India store in Mumbai in April; second store to come up in Delhi, Telecom News.


Apple will finally open its flagship India retail store in Mumbai next month, after several delays, soon to be followed by the second company-owned store in New Delhi, two industry executives aware of its plans said.

The Mumbai store – coming up over 22,000 square feet in Reliance Industries‘ premium Jio World Drive mall – will be a retail landmark, similar to Apple’s outlets in Los Angeles, New York, Beijing, Milan and Singapore, the executives said.

The Delhi store in Select Citywalk mall in Saket will be spread over 10,000 sq ft and that is also lined up for launch in April-June, possibly just a few days after the Mumbai opening, one of them said.

“Fitouts are completed for both the stores,” the person said. “In fact, the fitout was completed for the Delhi store ahead of the Mumbai one.”

“But since Mumbai will be the flagship Apple Store in India, it will open first next month. The Delhi one will open soon after,” said the industry executive.

The iPhone maker will fix the opening date of the flagship store based on the availability of global executives. Apple senior vice-president of retail and people Deirdre O’Brien is likely to come for the launch. However, there is no confirmation yet whether chief executive Tim Cook will also be there, the executives said.

The company is currently undertaking a trial run of operations in the stores, they said.

An email sent to Apple to confirm the development remained unanswered as of press time Thursday.

India has consistently been one of the best-performing markets for Apple for more than six years now. In the quarter ended December, the company achieved record overall sales in the country.

Cook last month told analysts that India is a “hugely exciting market” and a “major focus,” adding, “We brought the online store there in 2020. We will soon bring Apple retail there.”



Android

Vodafone Idea’s promoters may infuse Rs 2,000 crore in company, Telecom News.


NEW DELHI: Vodafone Idea’s promoters are likely to invest around Rs 2,000 crore into the company, sources said. The decision comes within weeks of the government emerging as the largest shareholder of the telecom company after agreeing to convert outstanding interest on pending statutory payments into equity.

The investment may be followed by another promoter funding round, apart from a much larger debt-raise, sources added. It is likely to be used for purchase of 5G telecom gear as Voda Idea has not yet proceeded with deployment of the high-speed network even as Reliance Jio and Airtel have started offering consumer services.

“We have been informed that the promoters plan to infuse Rs 2,000 crore into Vodafone Idea, and this will primarily be used for kick-starting 5G plans. We are hoping that this decision will build up confidence of the broader investment community in the company so that it is able to garner more funds, including through debt,” one of the sources told TOI. Vodafone Idea did not answer a questionnaire on the issue.

The promoters of the company — Aditya Birla group and UK’s Vodafone Plc — had previously invested Rs 5,000 crore in Vodafone Idea.

The government had on February 3 given a big relief to Vodafone Idea after it agreed to pick up around 33% stake in the company in lieu of the interest payout amounting to Rs 16,133 crore for delayed statutory payments.

The source said the promoters had assured the government that they will make fresh investments into the company to build up investor confidence and show commitment towards working out a credible turnaround plan. Vodafone Idea, however, is yet to show any credible turnaround in operations. Its loss widened in October-December to Rs 7,990 crore against Rs 7,595 crore in preceding quarter.

It said ATC “considered these recent developments and the uncertainty with respect to amounts owed under its tenant leases when conducting annual impairment assessments for long-lived assets and goodwill in India, and as a result, impaired the tenant-related intangible assets for Vi, which resulted in an impairment of $411.6 million”.

ARPU (average revenue per user), a key metric to measure health of telecom companies, stood at Rs 135 against Rs 131 in the second quarter. However, it was way below ARPU of rivals, such as, Airtel (Rs 193) in Q3 and Jio’s Rs 178.The gross debt (excluding lease liabilities and including interest accrued but not due) as of December 31, 2022 stood at Rs 2.2 lakh crore, comprising deferred spectrum payment obligations of Rs 1.4 lakh crore, AGR liability of Rs 69,900 crore that are due to the government, and debt from banks and financial institutions of Rs 13,190 crore.



Android

UN, Telecom News.


FILE – People walk past a solar tree that generates energy using panels, in front of the landmark Kotoubia mosque in Marrakech, Morocco, Nov. 12, 2022. The majority of developing nations are set to miss out on the economic benefits of booming green technologies, a United Nations report warned Thursday, March 16, 2023. The U.N.’s agency for trade and development, or UNCTAD, said that unless the international community and national governments actively tend to green tech industries in developing countries, the benefits associated with lower-emission technologies will be near inaccessible for many poorer nations, including many in Africa. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy, File)

Geneva: The green technology industry could be worth several trillion dollars by 2030 but developing countries will miss out on the boom unless they jump in now, the UN said Thursday.

From a roughly equal position three years ago, green technology exports from the most advanced countries are already racing ahead of developing nations, warned the United Nations‘ trade and development agency, UNCTAD.

And without intervention to close the gap, early adopters will build in lasting advantages, making it even harder for developing countries to catch up, UNCTAD said.

“We are at the beginning of a technological revolution based on green technologies,” said the agency’s chief Rebeca Grynspan.

“Missing this technological wave… would have long-lasting negative implications.”

UNCTAD estimated that 17 key frontier technologies, which are at the leading edge of green innovation, could create a market worth more than $9.5 trillion by 2030 — up from $1.5 trillion in 2020.

The technologies include artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, green hydrogen, biofuels, nanotechnology, 5G, gene editing, robotics, 3D printing, wind energy and blockchain.

They can be used to produce goods and services in a way that leaves a smaller carbon footprint.

The United States and China currently dominate these fields, with a combined 70 percent of patents.

Richest gaining ground

As for readiness to adopt and exploit such technologies, UNCTAD’s ranking chart is dominated by high-income countries, led by the United States, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Of the BRICS nations, Russia is ranked 31st, China 35th, Brazil 40th, India 46th and South Africa 56th — the highest on the African continent.

China’s lower-than-expected position is due to patchy rural internet coverage and slow broadband speed.

However, several Asian countries are over-performing, with India 67 places higher than its GDP per capita ranking, the Philippines 54 spots higher and Vietnam 44 places higher, leaving them well-placed to seize the initiative.

Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are at highest risk of missing current windows of opportunity.

Despite a level start, a gap is already opening up in green tech exports, with developed countries pulling away from the rest with exponential growth.

Total green tech exports from developed countries jumped from around $60 billion in 2018 to more than $156 billion in 2021, while over the same period, exports from developing nations — China included — rose from $57 billion to around $75 billion.

In those three years, developing countries’ share of global exports fell from over 48 percent to below 33 percent.

Trade, climate, IP rules tangled

UNCTAD noted that smaller developing countries, which have done little to cause climate change, were often set to feel the brunt — yet were left struggling to access the technology that could help them mitigate against it.

The agency’s deputy leader Pedro Manuel Moreno said they were caught between promoting economic growth and protecting the environment.

“They need more investment, more tech transfer and more international coherence between global climate and trade agreements,” Moreno told reporters.

He said trade rules should be changed to help developing countries protect nascent green industries through tariffs, subsidies and public procurement.

The trading system has to be streamlined with the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, he said, so that green tech can be transferred effectively to developing nations.

Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s technology and logistics director, said a “less stringent intellectual property regime at the global level is needed urgently” to help such countries benefit.

She called for a patents waiver to promote the transfer of climate change-related technology.



Android

Airtel launches multimedia promotion campaign for 5G Plus services, Telecom News.


Mumbai: Bharti Airtel has launched a multi-media campaign to promote Airtel 5G Plus, the banner under which it provides 5G services. Led by digital, television, and out-of-home, the campaign highlights the attributes of Airtel’s next generation telecom service.

This is the first major marketing exercise undertaken by a telco around 5G services since Airtel and Reliance Jio began rollout in October 2022. The campaign has been created by DDB Mudra and will be released in 12 languages.

“We wanted the campaign to bring forth the features of Airtel 5G Plus – the speed, the compatibility across handsets, and its impact on the environment in the film,” Sashwat Sharma, chief marketing officer, Bharti Airtel said.

The campaign centres around a young woman who experiences the benefits of Airtel’s 5G services. A red wave (symbolising airwaves) sweeps her off her feet as soon as she accesses the service on her phone and carries her around to explore the features of Airtel 5G Plus.

While the protagonist is a female youth, the brand has not brought back the ‘4G girl’ Sasha Chhetri who was the face of its 4G campaign.

Sharma explained that they went with a new face since they wanted the protagonist to represent the target consumer of the campaign, which in this case he described as the aspirational youth of the country.

Brand expert Harish Bijoor had earlier told ET that bringing back previous brand mascots or endorsers, however popular and recognisable, will defeat the proposition of newness that 5G offers, and hence brands would refrain from doing so.

The brand is using multiple marketing touchpoints led by TV and out-of-home for reach, digital for engagement and its stores for experiential outreach. As part of its plan to garner reach through television, the brand will make use of the Indian Premier League as a marketing platform, though Sharma did not reveal details on how.

Media planners have estimated marketing spending in the range of Rs 240-280 crore by telcos this IPL across TV and digital led by 5G marketing push.

On digital, Airtel will also create engagement touchpoints for the customer’s purchase journey while at its stores it will host demo centres around 5G for the next year. Airtel has around 1200 stores in the country as of now.

Apart from target audience representation, the campaign also uses the brand visual cues like the colour red, and the ‘Airtel Wave’.

Jio’s new plan, which is at a discount of around 30% to other competitors, comes at a time when investors were hoping for tariff hikes in the stressed telecom sector.

As part of an ongoing brand refresh, Airtel has replaced its previous visual cue which has the word Airtel in red with a red swirl that Sharma described as ‘the Airtel Wave’.

“It’s a statement of a little bit of a self-confident move forward in terms of our brand journey,” he said.

Elaborating further, he said that as the company diversified its services from just being a telecom connectivity provider, it felt the need to use a visual cue that resonates with consumers rather than having long names for a business unit. So, under the new brand, just the unit’s name is spelt out, and the umbrella brand Airtel is represented by the red wave.

The exercise started with the introduction of the visual mnemonic on the Airtel Thanks App and has been spread across various consumer touchpoints over time.



Android

London court, Telecom News.


FILE PHOTO: An employee gestures next to a Lenovo logo at Lenovo Tech World in Beijing, China November 15, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

LONDON: China’s Lenovo Group Ltd must pay U.S. technology firm InterDigital Inc $138.7 million for a licence for its portfolio of telecommunications patents, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday in the latest round of a long-running dispute.

InterDigital brought the lawsuit against Lenovo in 2019 over the terms on which Lenovo should take a licence of its patents which are essential to 3G, 4G and 5G standards.

The litigation, which has so far featured five separate trials, centres on the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms of a licence for InterDigital’s patents.

Judge James Mellor said in a written ruling on Thursday that previous offers made by both Lenovo and InterDigital – which had offered $337 million for a six-year licence – were not made on FRAND terms.

He said Lenovo should pay a $138.7 million “lump sum” to cover past and future sales of mobile devices from 2007 until the end of 2023.

Lenovo described the ruling as “a major win for the technology industry and the customers we serve”.

John Mulgrew, Lenovo’s chief intellectual property officer, said in a statement the decision “reinforces FRAND’s critical role in facilitating transparent and equitable licensing practices for standardized technologies”.

InterDigital’s Chief Legal Officer Josh Schmidt welcomed what he said was the ruling’s recognition that “a licensee should pay in full for the past infringement of standard essential patents”.

However, he said in a statement: “We plan to appeal, as we believe that certain aspects of the decision do not accurately reflect our licensing program.”

London-based patent lawyer Mark Marfe, who was not involved in the case, said the decision reinforced the High Court’s willingness to grant a global FRAND licence.

China is the only other jurisdiction where courts have set global FRAND rates for so-called standard essential patents.

Marfe added that “all eyes will be on the Unified Patent Court”, a common patent court for European Union member states which opens in June, to see whether it takes a similar approach.



Android

MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Telecom News.


Indian startups had deposits worth $1 billion in the beleaguered California-based Silicon Valley Bank, MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar informed while addressing a Twitter Spaces session, on Thursday.

“I had empirically and anecdotally calculated that there was more than a billion dollars of startup capital as deposits – according to some this is a conservative estimate – in Silicon Valley Bank, attributable to Indian startups,” he said. He added that the Prime Minister’s Office, the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India were monitoring the situation as soon as the crisis began to unravel last week.

Chandrasekhar held a consultation with more than 450 representatives of the startup and investor ecosystem on Tuesday to assess the impact of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Following this consultation, he wrote a letter to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman with a set of suggestions to help startups wade through the crisis.

“There is a case to be made – and I have made this case to the finance minister yesterday when I sent her a summary of the consultations – that the Indian banking system can be a lot more startup friendly by servicing and supporting startups with the same alacrity and quality that they provide to multibillion dollar companies,” Chandrasekhar said. “There is a need for the Indian banking system to consider Indian startups as an important client base and a target segment”.

On a question about what specific recommendations have been sent to the finance ministry, he said that the government also needs to create more awareness within the startup community about Indian banks, and about the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gujarat’s GIFT City.

Banks in GIFT City allow customers to open foreign currency accounts for international transactions. RBL Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and HSBC are working with startups to open accounts in GIFT City.

Chandrasekhar also said that by some estimates, almost $200 million has been moved by startups from Silicon Valley Bank to GIFT City

“The fact that we have branches in the US of State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and many other public sector banks who do corporate banking but do very little corporate banking with startups. That for me makes little sense because if startups are banking and have deposits worth in excess of a billion dollars in Silicon Valley Bank, it could certainly be SBI New York, or Bank of Baroda New York,” the minister said. “We also have to create more awareness within the startup community about Indian banks. We have to create more awareness about the IFSC Gift City banks”.

The minister added that he expects a significant portion of the crisis to be over by the end of this week, but added that the government was now working to make these Indian startups transition to the Indian banking system.

Silicon Valley Bank in all had $209 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits, as of December 2022.

Chandrasekhar, on Monday, had tweeted in support of the US government’s intervention in the Silicon Valley Bank crisis to protect the interests of the depositors and the startup community.



Android

Airtel extends base prepaid rate hike to all 22 circles for ARPU boost, Telecom News.


Kolkata: Bharti Airtel has extended the 57% increase in base prepaid rates nationally across all 22 circles in a clear bid to boost its average revenue per user (ARPU) beyond the Rs 200 level, top company sources said.

Last November, it had initially implemented the tariff hike in Odisha and Haryana, and subsequently extended it to 19 markets. Kolkata, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were the only circles where it was yet to roll out the higher base prepaid rates, but that exercise has now been concluded.

“As per our checks, Bharti Airtel has now further rolled out this plan across the three remaining circles, Gujarat, Kolkata and Madhya Pradesh (total of 22 circles)… it has the first-mover in taking entry-level tariffs higher as competition has still not reacted,” Morgan Stanley said.

The global brokerage expects Bharti’s move to be 1.3-1.5%- accretive to the revenues of the telco’s India mobile business.

Airtel’s minimum monthly recharge plan in all 22 circles for prepaid users now starts at Rs 155, but comes with unlimited voice calling, 1GB data and 300 text messages. Earlier, the telco had a minimum plan with a talk time value of Rs 99 and only 200MB of mobile data with 28-day validity in these states, which now stands withdrawn nationally.

Airtel had reported an ARPU of Rs 193 in the December quarter, FY23. The ARPU is a key performance metric for telcos. Last week, brokerage CLSA had said Airtel’s move to extend the hike to 19 markets would boost its ARPU by 3% immediately to Rs 199.

Airtel shares were trading 0.8% higher at Rs 771.85 on BSE Tuesday.

Brokerage Jefferies expects Airtel’s ARPU to rise by 4-5% annually due to the improvement in subscriber mix, especially as the telco has another 107 million voice subscribers on its network who are yet to upgrade to data.

Airtel’s tariffs across plans are already 25-57% higher than Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio’s, and Chairman Sunil Mittal had recently signalled further hikes this year as market response to the last round of hikes had been encouraging, reflected in low subscriber churn.



Android

CEO, Telecom News.


New Delhi: India Post to use RoPax Ferry Services on Gogha- Hazira route for speedy postal services between Saurashtra and South Gujarat & Mumbai. (PTI Photo) (

New Delhi: India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) wants to convert itself to a universal bank as the vast network of post office branches would help in achieving financial inclusion, its MD and CEO J Venkatramu said on Tuesday. He said when the IPPB started operations in 2018, 80 per cent of the transactions would happen in cash. However, with technology adoption, presently only 20 per cent of the transaction happens in cash and 80 per cent digitally.

“Given the network of post offices, probably we fit the bill in terms of being the institution which can reach every nook and corner. If we get a full fledged banking licence, especially for financial inclusion, that will help us serve larger goals,” Venkatramu said at a CII event here.

He was replying to a question on the bank approaching the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for universal bank licence.

He said credit is an important facet of financial inclusion as well as social upliftment, the vast network of post offices could help in financial inclusion and extending credit.

As a payment bank under the RBI, IPPB can extend services of deposits, remittances, internet banking and other specified services, but they cannot give loans or issue credit cards.

IPPB was incorporated on August 17, 2016 under Companies Act, 2013 as a public limited company with 100 per cent government of India equity under the Department of Posts.

Speaking at the event, Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Anurag Jain emphasised on the importance of a “very” properly designed ecosystem for redressal of customer grievances.

“There could be a problem say 0.1 per cent of the transactions or 0.01 per cent but that will also add to huge number of transactions and the person who has lost the money… For you (payment banks) it may be a statistics… but the person who has lost the money, for him it is a problem,” Jain said.



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