Sanjay Kapoor to Step Down As Bharti Airtel CEO

New Delhi: India's largest telecom service provider Bharti Airtel said its India and South Asia chief executive officer Sanjay Kapoor will step down from March 1.

Gopal Vittal, who rejoined Airtel in April 2012 as group director, special projects, will succeed Kapoor as head of of India operations, Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

Vittal had last year joined Bharti Group from Hindustan Unilever.

Bharti Airtel did not give any reason for the change in the top management but said Kapoor has "decided to pursue his future aspirations outside of Bharti".

Kapoor joined Bharti Cellular Ltd as its chief operating officer in 1998 and soon took over as its CEO to develop Delhi Circle as the foundation stone of Airtel's growth.

As CEO for India and South Asia, Kapoor led key transformations, including the launch of Airtel's new global identity - giving it a fresh, youthful and vibrant face, realigning of the organisation from technology-facing to a customer-facing one for enhanced synergies, agility and customer elasticity, a company statement said.

Kapoor will continue his association with the Bharti Group and be on the board of Indus Towers Ltd and Bharti Global Ltd.

"Sanjay Kapoor will continue in his current role until Feb 28, 2013, and will be available to assist on key matters until March 31, 2013 ensuring a smooth transition process," the statement said.

South Asia operations of Bharti Airtel - Bangladesh and Sri Lanka -- would report to the CEO (International) of the group effective March 1, 2013. "However, various business leaders and functions from Airtel India would continue to support South Asia operations in this revised arrangement," the company said.

Share price of Bharti Airtel surged more than five percent after the change in top management was announced. The scrip closed 4.81 percent higher at 345.25 after touching 349.95 at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Read More

Telecom Operators Get SC Reprieve Till Feb 4

New Delhi: The Supreme Court allowed telecom operators whose licences were cancelled by its Feb 2, 2012 order to continue their services till Feb 4.

A bench of Justice G.S Singhvi and Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan passed the order on a Department of Telecommunications (DoT) application seeking that the existing licence holders be allowed to continue operations till the auction scheduled for March 11, 2013 was completed.

However, the court only extended the time till Feb 4, the next date of the hearing.

The court, while adjourning the hearing till Feb 4, asked the DoT to give the names of the successful bidders in the auction held on Nov 12 and 14, 2012.

it also asked the DoT to indicate the reserve price that it would fix for the auction scheduled to be held in March.

However, the apex court, in the course of hearing, made it clear that all those telecom service providers who had not participated in the auction of the cancelled licences would not be allowed to continue and take advantage of the situation.

"There is no reason that they (telecom operators) should continue in the circles where they did not participate in the bidding process," the court said.

As court said this, senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for one of the service providers, told that court that telecom operators did not participate in the auction held in November last year because of high reserve price as it did not make any economic sense.

He told the court that they were keen to continue but not with the existing price and want to know what was the revised price.

The DoT in its affidavit told the apex court that it has decided to hold another round of auction in four service areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Karnataka and Rajasthan in 1800 MHz band and in all 21 service areas in 800 MHz band where no bids were received.

The court was told that the government had already fixed a lower reserve price for 1800 MHz in the four circles Delhi, Mumbai, Karnataka and Rajasthan and revised reserve price for 800 MHz band was under consideration.

The affidavit said that government has decided to conduct an auction for 900 MHz in three metro service areas where the licences are due for renewal in November 2014. This, the affidavit said was in accordance with the recommendations of TRAI that mandates to conduct such auctions at least 18 months prior to due date of renewal.

Summiting that its efforts were aimed at an optimal realisation of revenue by the utilisation of spectrum for which no bids were received, the DoT said, "it would be in public interest to utilise a scarce resource with effective participation and proper discovery of market price rather than allowing it to remain unutilised due to non participation."

The DoT urged the court that in case it did not favour extending the period of operation by the service providers whose licences have been cancelled by it, then Telecom Department may be permitted to issue them temporary licences with revised terms and conditions including higher price till March 11, 2013, auction was completed.

The price that the telecom companies would be paying in case they opt for temporary licences would be either the reserve price or the auction price whichever is higher. This enhanced price would be effective from Dec 19, 2012.

It said that it would provide subscribers an uninterrupted services.

Read More

Say No to Extra Charges by your Phone Operator

How awful it will be when you try to make a call and instead of getting connected to the other end, you get a message from the mobile company telling that you don’t have a sufficient amount of balance in your account to complete the call?

Mostly with mobile phone users, such scenarios are pretty common. At times, the users have to pay for some of the services which they are not even aware of but is actually exists in their phone or even after they deactivate those services, mobile operator keeps charging.

Now you can say a strict “NO NO” to these situations as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed all the operators to cease any kind of chargeable services without the serious concern of the customers and also the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal has given strict orders to the telecom operators to comply with these instructions by 2 February, reports Sindhu Bhattacharya from Firstpost.

Some of the instructions given by TRAI are:

1) In the first place, the operator must seek the permission from the customer for any service other than voice calls through SMS, e-mail, or in other writing within 24 hours of the activation of any VAS. With the existing customers, companies have to take their permission in case they are increasing the charges of the subscribed services.

2) Every telecom operator must have a toll-free number where the customers can register their complaints to get rid of the unwanted VAS services. If any of such services are deactivated within 24 hours of activation, the customer should not be charged in any ways.

3) To avoid the promotional messages, TRAI has restricted the number of SMSes to 100/day. If this limit is breached, the mobile operator will charge 50p/SMS.

Read More