Vodafone

Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea shares fell in morning trade Wednesday, a day after market leader Reliance Jio announced a push to capture a greater portion of the postpaid market through new plans.

Vodafone Idea was down 1.37% at late morning trade at Rs 6.48 while Airtel fell 1.85% to Rs 757.55. Sensex was up 0.43% during this time at Rs 58,150.98.

In a push to expand its postpaid base, Jio Tuesday announced two new individual and family postpaid plans starting at Rs 299 and Rs 399 respectively Tuesday evening. In a marked move to attract customers from Airtel and Vi, post-paid users porting out of other carriers do not need to pay any security deposit.

Additionally, all new postpaid users of Jio are offered a free one-month trial under the new plans.

Jio’s new family plans allow users to add up to three extra sim cards to the plan, each at a cost of Rs 99. So utilizing all three add-on sims, the cost of the base family plan adds up to Rs 696.

Vi’s basic plan (without premium entertainment benefits) costs Rs 699 for two connections while Airtel’s basic plan is priced at Rs 999 for 4 connections.

The new Jio plans also offer additional benefits like choice of number, in-flight connectivity on international flights, a common international roaming plan for 129 countries, voice over Wi-Fi calling to India from overseas at Rs 1 and priority call back service.

Jio’s premium family post-paid plan – priced at Rs 699 – also includes Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Including the additional sims, the plan would cost Rs 996.

Airtel offers comparable add-on sims (a total of four connections) and premium entertainment for Rs 1199 while Vi offers the same at Rs 999.

All Jio’s latest postpaid plans are eligible for a 5G upgrade through the Jio Welcome Offer , under which the telco offers 5G services to users who apply for them.

While Airtel started the rollout of its 5G services in tandem with Jio, Vodafone Idea is yet to announce the same, making its premium customers more vulnerable to poaching by Jio analysts said.

Vodafone Idea has rebutted rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel ’s suggestion that there should be a financial threshold for entities wanting to set up a cable landing station (CLS) in India, saying such a condition would restrict it to companies with deep pockets and may even lead to a monopoly.

The cash-strapped telco gave its counter comments for the consultation paper on Licensing Framework and Regulatory Mechanism for Submarine Cable Landing in India floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai ) late last year.

“In our view, such conditions will only favour ILDOs with big pockets as they would have financial backing to acquire stake and own subsea assets. It may lead to a monopoly in the ILDO-CLS segment,” Vi said.

It added that giving hold to deep pocketed players on cable landing stations and international capacities would lead to “vertical price squeeze as they may be able to influence pricing and availability of such capacities to other Indian operators”, which in turn could stifle the competition by pushing out relatively less financially strong ILDOs.

Both Jio and Airtel had suggested that there needs to be a criterion for allowing a licensed International Long-Distance Operator (ILDO)/Internet Service Provider (ISP) who wants to set up a CLS and terminate any submarine international cable in India over its CLS.

“The criteria should include minimum net worth and holding a minimum equity percentage (i.e. 10% stake or investment), either directly or indirectly in the proposed submarine cable/consortium,” Airtel said, adding that such a qualifying criteria should be applicable prospectively for future cables as the existing consortium agreements have long been closed.

While Jio had not asked for the applicant ILDO to have an investment in the submarine cable system, it did reiterate that the regulator should set some net worth and experience criteria for eligibility since the applicant would be responsible for establishment and maintenance of systems and cable within the territorial jurisdiction of India.

“It is also important to ensure that only serious ILDOs should apply for CLS and it will be appropriate to introduce additional requirements of net worth and experience in telecom operations for seeking CLS and related permissions,” Jio had said.

Vi, however, has argued that conditions of net worth and investment in the cable system will mean huge cost for the ILDOs and even some of the existing ILDOs having CLS would not be able to meet and eventually must shut down their CLS operations, effectively killing competition.

It also pointed out that these criteria will reduce choice for consortiums who are investing in laying of submarine cable systems.

“In our view, the market entry eligibility has to be kept flexible so that more and more operators can join and setup their CLS and provide capacity to various Access and ISP players,” adding that as long as the applicant ILDOs meet all the security-related technology requirements, the licensing, regulatory norms and permission process should be kept simple to encourage more participation and healthy competition.

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.

LONDON: Britain’s telecoms regulator needs more time to consider BT ‘s wholesale pricing, it said on Friday after concerns were raised over the company’s boss saying its network expansion will “end in tears” for some of its competitors.

BT wants to offer discounts to internet service providers such as Sky , Vodafone and TalkTalk in return for moving customers to the national fibre network it is building.

Rivals such as Virgin Media O2 and alternative fibre providers known as alt nets are investing billions of pounds to build competing networks.

However, Ofcom said on Friday that to provide certainty and stability it would not be appropriate for BT’s Openreach to launch its Equinox 2 pricing scheme, planned for April 1, until the regulator has given final approval.

Openreach said it was important that Ofcom had time to consider all feedback fully and fairly and, therefore, its discounted prices would not take effect on April 1.

It added that prices will be backdated if Ofcom approves the scheme in May.

“Our offer is a response to customers, who want lower prices and long-term certainty to help them switch to faster, more reliable broadband connections,” it said.

The regulator had said in February that it did not consider the offer from the former monopoly to be anti-competitive.

‘SIGNIFICANT CONCERN’

But comments made by BT Chief Executive Philip Jansen to the Financial Times – headlined “BT chief warns Openreach fibre push will ‘end in tears’ for rivals” – caused “significant concern”, Ofcom said.

Ofcom chief Melanie Dawes said in a letter to Jansen, published on Friday, that the regulator was committed to network competition.

“Were it to become apparent that BT is able nonetheless to distort competition in the market, we would not hesitate to take regulatory action to address this,” she said.

Jansen’s response, also published by Ofcom, said his comments had been taken out of context in the article and headline.

Ofcom said respondents to its consultation had referred to Jansen’s comments.

BT’s earlier wholesale pricing offer, Equinox, was challenged by alternative fibre network provider CityFibre, but Ofcom decided not to intervene.

Virgin Media O2, BT’s biggest network rival, has said Equinox 2 needed to be thoroughly scrutinised to ensure Openreach was not using its market power to stop providers switching to other networks.

BT shares fell 3.5%, the biggest faller in the FTSE 100 index, in early trading.