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Bharti Airtel nears purchase of Qualcomm’s Indian Mobile License
The talks about Bharti buying Qualcomm’s mobile license have been going on for some time seem to be coming to close. Qualcomm has reportedly asked Bharti Airtel to pay Rs. 5000 crore for its Indian unit. The talks are expected to close in 2 weeks time. Qualcomm, had bought the frequency licenses in cities including New Delhi and Mumbai in June 2010 spectrum auction, paying Rs. 4900 crore for the spectrum. Interestingly, Bharti Airtel’s 2G licenses will expire in 2014 and the company may have to pay much more TRAI’s new guidelines on 2g spectrum are approved. [Source]
Timesdeal-PayTM mobile recharge deal partnership garners record 70k orders
Timesdeal.com in partnership with mobile recharge company PayTM had offered a deal which allowed users to pay just Rs 50 and get a mobile recharge voucher worth Rs 100 from PayTM. This deal was a hit with users and garnered a record 70k orders. Also, this deal was available only to new users, so PayTM essentially brought 70k news users under its fold in one single day. Timesdeal.com witnessed a huge traffic surge, with more than 3,00,000 unique visitors visiting the site on the deal day. [Source]
Finance Minister defends Retrospective tax of Rs. 20k crore Tax on Vodafone
Looks like Indian Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, is not going to budge on the subject of applying retrospective tax on telecom giant Vodafone. The amendment made sometime back, allows transactions involving Indian assets to be taxed in India even if deals are executed overseas. Pranab Da defended the decision in Rajya Sabha yesterday and clearly told that Vodafone will have to pay tax on its acquisition of Hutchison’s stake in the $11.2-billion Hutichison Essar deal executed in Cayman Islands. [Source]
