Thursday, October 31, 2019

Jio in letter war with COAI over telecom stress

Reliance Jio slammed its peers, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, and questioned the telecom sector stress in a strongly worded letter to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

This started on October 24, when the Supreme court dismissed a plea moved by the telecom operators, challenging the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR).

The verdict allows the government to recover Rs 92,000 crore of AGR from the already financially stressed telecom industry that includes many operators who’ve already gone out of business or are under insolvency proceedings.

However, the incumbent telcos Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea reacted strongly to the judgment. While Bharti believes it would weaken the viability of the telecom sector, Vodafone has said it may consider filing a review application.

Shares of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea reflected the verdict’s adverse impact on the telcos during that day, but recovered later.

In view of this, the COAI had written to Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Tuesday, October 29, 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.

But Jio has a different point of view! To know more listen to this podcast...

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