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Old telcos have sweetened their offerings considerably to take on the Reliance Jio challenge Reliance Jio   made a big announcement on Tuesday following which the road ahead doesn't look smooth for rivals Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, among others. Although the free services provided since its launch, including 1GB data at 4G speeds every day, unlimited voice calls and unlimited text messages will be over after 31 March, the operator has introduced a new plan called Jio Prime which will allow users to avail the facilities for another year at a nominal price. Here are the key points: Membership:   Jio Prime membership is limited to the 100 million existing Reliance Jio users as well as those who join the network before March 31, 2017. Cost:   All Jio members can enroll prime membership for a one time fee of Rs 99 (which is valid for one year). Additionally, to get the free mobile data and other benefits, users will need to pay another Rs. 303 per month for th...

Trai nod to Jio free offer till December 3 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Thursday said   Reliance Jio   can offer its free promotional offer till December 3, also clarifying that tariffs offered by the Mukesh Ambani-led firm were not predatory or discriminatory. This means new customers won’t be able to avail the offer after December 3 and Jio subscribers would have to pay as per the tariffs announced by the company. Customers who have subscribed before December 3 will enjoy benefits till December 31. In its quarterly results, Jio said it might extend the period of free services in case its subscribers were unable to get adequate experience of seamless connectivity across the network because of interconnection congestion and the quality of service parameters are not as per the benchmarks desired by the Jio management. Jio had launched the commercial services on September 5 and also announced it would provide all voice and data services free ti...

Infosys unveils modular e-commerce platform Software major   Infosys   Ltd on Wednesday unveiled a mobile first and modular platform to drive e-commerce programmes across retail channels. The platform has been developed by Skava, a Silicon Valley-based   e-commerce   start-up that the IT major acquired in June 2015 for $120 million, to enable businesses leverage cloud-based micro-services and white label applications to launch new offerings and improve conversion rates of digital channels. "The platform can integrate into present technologies, while providing a future-ready architecture for next-generation shopping experiences leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, natural language processing and virtual reality (VR)," the IT major said. The platform also has a mobile-first responsive web store and native mobile shopping applications that can be managed by non-technical business users through its studio, an intuitive web-based exper...

RJio is choking our networks: telcos The war that had so far been brewing silently between incumbent telecom operators and  Reliance Jio   has come out in the open. Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) fired a salvo at Jio on Monday by writing to Telecom Secretary J S Deepak alleging that Jio was masquerading full-blown services in the guise of a trial, which they said amounted to predatory pricing. The COAI's letter was a response to one sent by Jio to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) claiming that incumbents were not providing enough interconnect bandwidth. In response, the incumbents have alleged that the burgeoning voice traffic emanating from  RJio   is choking their networks, given that 1.5 million subscribers of Jio are calling people who are on the networks of other leading telcos. When a subscriber of one network makes a call to a subscriber of another network, the point at which the two networks connect are known ...

The next financial year will be a tightrope walk for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, with the mounted challenge of narrowing the fiscal deficit and enhancing tax revenue collections to compensate for higher salaries and pensions and capital spending. Besides raising tax revenue, Jaitley will have to deliver on the promise of a fair, transparent and non-adversarial tax regime in light of multinational companies such as Vodafone receiving fresh notices for payment of tax dues based on retrospective provisions. Though the government has been assuring investors that it will not invoke the retrospective tax clause, there has been no attempt to remove it from the statute. Read Full Article Over Here :  Business Standard News Read our full coverage on  Union Budget 2016