Dumped for being 'poor', Chinese man books movie theatre for $40,000

New Delhi, Jun 18: Vodafone Idea on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it has incurred Rs 1 lakh crore losses as it insisted it is not in a position to furnish bank guarantees.

A bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra, S. Abdul Nazeer, and M.R. Shah, taking up the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) matter through video conferencing, directed the telecom companies to submit their financial documents and books for the last 10 years.

Asking Vodafone if it was a foreign company, the bench said that how can the company say it would not furnish any bank guarantee.

"What if you fly away overnight in future without paying anything?" it asked.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing Vodafone Idea, denied his client is a completely foreign firm and cited before the bench its tie-ups and investments.

Vodafone owes over Rs 58,000 crore as AGR dues and so far, has paid close to Rs 7,000 crore.

Rohatgi contended before the court that the telecom company is in a tough situation, and cannot furnish any fresh bank guarantee, as profits have eluded the company in past many quarters. He submitted before the bench that Rs 15,000 crore bank guarantees are lying with the government, and his client's losses are over Rs 1 lakh crore.

"I cannot offer any more surety," he informed the bench.

Justice Mishra noted that this is public money and these dues should be recovered. "Do not tell us that you will pay if you were to make profits... the money must come," he noted.

Justice Shah observed that the telecom industry is the only industry which earned during the Covid-19 pandemic. "After all, this money will be used for public welfare", he said.

Rohatgi argued that his client would have to fold up if orders were issued to clear dues tomorrow. "11,000 employees will have to go without notice, as we cannot pay them," he added.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Bharti Airtel, contended before the court that out of Rs 21,000 crore AGR dues, the company has already deposited a sum of Rs 18,000 crore.

He argued that his client has given a bank guarantee, in excess of demand, to DoT, and supported the proposal for phased repayment of remaining AGR dues. He insisted that the company needs to sit down with the government and calculate the dues. Airtel owes Rs 25,976 crore after paying Rs 18,000 crore, as per the government.

Senior advocate Arvind Datar, representing Tata Telecom, informed the bench that his client has paid Rs 6,504 crore in AGR dues so far, and furnishing a bank guarantee may adversely impact investments in the sector.

The total AGR dues are close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

The top court will now take up the matter in the third week of July.

Google has indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups (including several porn-sharing groups) with a simple search.

According to a report in Motherboard, invitations to WhatsApp group chats were being indexed by Google.

The team found private groups using specific Google searches and even joined a group intended for NGOs accredited by the UN and had access to all the participants and their phone numbers.

Journalist Jordan Wildon said on Twitter that he discovered that WhatsApp's "Invite to Group Link" feature lets Google index groups, making them available across the internet since the links are being shared outside of WhatsApp's secure private messaging service.

"Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are," Wildon tweeted on Friday, adding that using particular Google searches, people can discover links to the chats.

According to app reverse-engineer Jane Wong, Google has around 470,000 results for a simple search of "chat.whatsapp.com", part of the URL that makes up invites to WhatsApp groups.

WhatsApp spokesperson Alison Bonny said: "Like all content that is shared in searchable public channels, invite links that are posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users."

"The links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website," Bonny told The Verge.

Danny Sullivan, Google's public search liaison, tweeted: "Search engines like Google & others list pages from the open web. That's what's happening here. It's no different than any case where a site allows URLs to be publicly listed. We do offer tools allowing sites to block content being listed in our results."

Google on Monday announced it is gradually winding down its free public Wi-Fi Station programme currently available at over 400 railway stations in India, and will work with the Indian Railways and Railtel Corporation to help them with existing sites so they can remain useful resources for people.

Google launched its Station initiative in India in 2015 to bring fast, free public Wi-Fi to over 400 of the busiest railway stations in the country by mid-2020.

"We crossed that number by June 2018 and implemented Station in thousands of other locations around the country in partnership with telecommunications companies, ISPs and local authorities," Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Payments and Next Billion Users, Google, said in a statement.

"Over time, partners in other countries asked for Station too and we responded accordingly. We're grateful for these partnerships, especially with the Indian Railways and the Government of India, that helped us serve millions of users over the last few years," he added.

According to Google, the decision to shut Station has been taken keeping the affordable mobile data plans and mobile connectivity in mind that is improving globally including in India.

"India, specifically now has among the cheapest mobile data per GB in the world, with mobile data prices having reduced by 95 per cent in the last 5 years, as per TRAI in 2019," said Sengupta.

The Indian users consume close to 10GB of data, each month, on average, according to reports.

"Our commitment to supporting the next billion users remains stronger than ever, from continuing our efforts to make the internet work for more people and building more relevant and helpful apps and services," Sengupta noted.

Global networking giant Cisco last year teamed up with Google to roll out free, high-speed public Wi-Fi access globally, starting with India.

The first pilot under the partnership was rolled out at 35 locations in Bengaluru.

Sengupta said that in addition to the changed context, the challenge of varying technical requirements and infrastructure among our partners across countries has also made it difficult for Station to scale and be sustainable, especially for our partners.

"And when we evaluate where we can truly make an impact in the future, we see greater need and bigger opportunities in building products and features tailored to work better for the next billion user markets," he said.