No roaming charges from next year: Kapil Sibal

September 24, 2012

Sibal_No_Roaming_charges_CD

 

New Delhi, September 24: Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said that mobile phone subscribers will not have to pay roaming charges from next year.

 

“From next year… Our secretary has told you that it will be free from next year,” Mr. Sibal said here in response to a query on the timing of removing roaming charges as proposed in the National Telecom Policy 2012.

 

The Minister was speaking to the media on the sidelines of the curtain raiser event of India Internet Governance Conference.

 

NTP 2012, approved in May, aims to abolish roaming charges and allow mobile phone subscribers to use same number across country without having to pay extra charges for services once they are outside their telecom circle.

 

Meanwhile, Telecom Secretary R. Chandrashekhar said the Department of Telecom (DoT) is working on Notice Inviting Applications for spectrum auction after which it will work on unified licence (UL) guidelines — also a part of the NTP 2012.

 

“We are first going to attend to all issues linked to auction. The moment NIA is issued this week, we will focus on UL. After details of full UL is worked out, the modalities for free roaming will follow,” he said.

 

As per the schedule, NIA will be issued on September 28.

 

GSM industry body COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said he appreciated the concept of free roaming, but added that industry will have to work on details of implementation of ‘One Nation — Free Roaming.’

 

When asked about the impact on mobile phone call rates, Mathews said, “That is matter which we will have to work with TRAI (telecom regulator). TRAI is ultimately responsible for setting the tariffs...We hope that TRAI will follow due process of consultation paper.”

 

He added that in a consultation paper, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will define what they expect and models they will use for determining tariff for nation wide free roaming.

 

 


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News Network
June 10,2020

Chennai, Jun 10: DMK MLA J Anbazhagan who had tested positive for coronavirus and was on ventilator support from June 3 passed away at a hospital in Chennai on Wednesday.

Coincidently, today is the 62nd birthday of the MLA.

"Anbazhagan J, who has been fighting for his life with severe COVID 19 pneumonia rapidly deteriorated early this morning. In spite of full medical support including mechanical ventilation at our COVID facility, he succumbed to his illness. He was declared dead at 08:05 hours on the 10th of June 2020," the hospital said in a statement.

In 2001, Anbazhagan was elected from T Nagar Assembly constituency. He served for five years.

Later in 2011, he was elected to Tamil Nadu Assembly from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni seat. The DMK leader was re-elected from the same constituency in 2016.

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Agencies
February 11,2020

New Delhi, Feb 11: Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Tuesday said the party will review why it failed to meet its own expectations in the Assembly polls and saw a moral victory in the fact that the party's vote share has increased since 2015.

"Delhi must have given mandate after careful thinking. Our vote percentage has increased from 32 per cent to around 38 per cent. Delhi did not reject us and the increase (in vote share) is a good sign for us," he told reporters.

He said the BJP hopes that there would be less blame game and more work in the national capital and congratulated Arvind Kejriwal on his party's victory in the polls.

After winning the Patparganj seat, AAP senior leader Manish Sisodia accused the BJP of indulging in the politics of hate.

"We indulge in politics of development not politics of hate. We're against the roadblock in Shaheen Bagh as we were earlier," he said.

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News Network
January 22,2020

Jan 22: Microsoft Corp’s chief executive officer said he worries that mistrust between the US and China will increase technology costs and hurt economic growth at a critical time.

Using the $470 billion semiconductor industry as an example of a sector that is already globally interconnected, Satya Nadella said the two countries will have to find ways to work together, rather than creating different supply chains for each country.

“All you are doing is increasing transaction costs for everybody if you completely separate,” Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead conference in Davos. That’s a concern as the executive said the world is on the cusp of a revolution around technology and artificial intelligence.

“If we take steps back in trust or increase transaction costs around technology, all we are doing is sacrificing global economic growth,” he said.

The agreement signed last week between the US and China was “not sufficient,” said Nadella, but represented “progress” on the issue of intellectual property protections for US technology companies working with China.

Nadella said he worries about the development of two separate internets, noting that to some degree they already exist “and they will get amplified in the future” with massive technology companies already in place in China.

The viewpoint clashes with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has been sceptical about the idea that ongoing US-China trade tensions could ever lead to a bifurcated system of two internets.

China and the US are the two leading AI superpowers, however the cooling political relations between them have slowed the international collaboration.

Nadella also warned that countries that fail to attract immigrants will lose out as the global tech industry continues to grow. The CEO has previously voiced concern about India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, calling it “sad.”

“However, Nadella said he remained hopeful.

“The fact that there is a 70-year history of nation-building, I think it’s a very strong foundation. I grew up in that country. I’m proud of that heritage. I’m influenced by that experience.”

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