"Tariffs that they (Jio) have announced are still very aggressive. You have to throw in more data. All those things need to be done," Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal told re porters here.
Bharti Airtel on Monday announced changes in its domestic and international roaming plans after Reliance Jio offered free voice calls on its domestic network with no local or roaming charges.
The company, which has inked a definitive agreement to acquire Telenor India, earlier said it will waive off roaming charges on all domestic incoming calls from April 1.
"At Airtel, we are changing the international roaming paradigm, which will allow our customers to take their number to every corner of the world," Mittal said in a statement.
"As an industry, operators across the world must collaborate to remove the cost barrier to roaming and offer customers the convenience of staying connected without the fear of exorbitant bill charges," Mittal added.
The telecom major said it had already launched innovative and affordable international roaming packs for all major countries, which come with convenient validity options of one day, 10 days and 30 days.
"Starting April 1, even customers on international roaming without a pack will be fully protected from bill shocks through an automatic adjustment that is equal to the daily pack for that particular country."
According to the telecom major, it has entered into a definitive agreement with Telenor South Asia Investments to acquire Telenor (India) Communications Private Limited. The acquisition is subject to requisite regulatory approvals.
However, the company did not divulge the cost of the acquisition.
The agreement entails that Airtel will acquire Telenor India's running operations in seven circles of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Assam, Bharti Airtel added.
"The proposed acquisition will include tra nsfer of all of Telenor India's assets and customers, further augmenting Airtel's overall customer base and network," the telecom giant said in a statement.
Airtel said that it will ensure quality services to Telenor India's customers, while offering them the added benefits of its innovative product portfolio, access to superior voice and data services, mobile banking, VAS (value added services) and domestic/international roaming facilities.
Telenor India's operations and services would continue as normal until the completion of the transaction.
Earlier, while delivering a keynote address at the Mobile World Congress here, Mittal said: "Governments have got it wrong for too long. Regulators have always felt giving out new licences means more money for the government and more competition for the customers. It's quite the contrary."
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international
Netflix CEO: co-workers were affected by Trump travel ban
Barce lona, Feb 28 (AP) Netflix employees were personally affected by US President Donald Trump's attempt to ban people entering from seven Muslim countries, its CEO said today.
Reed Hastings has been an outspoken critic of the temporary travel ban, which Trump hopes to revive in a revised form this week, and told The Associated Press today that some of his co-workers had gotten caught up in it.
"We had Iranian and Iraqi employees who were unable to come to work," he said on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's biggest annual gathering held in Barcelona, Spain.
Netflix was among dozens of tech companies that publicly opposed the travel ban out of fear that it would stifle innovation.
US politics has become as gripping as a TV drama but Hastings says that Netflix, the original distributor of the show House of Cards, is not planning a show based on Trump. "Maybe someday, but it's better to make a show about things in the past so you can have some perspective," he said.
"We let the news channels do the things that are current, while hoping to provide a relief from politics to people on both sides."
One of Netflix's biggest hits has been House of Cards, a fictional show about the ruthlessness of politics in Washington that it first distributed in 2013, well before Trump's rise to power.
Hastings aims to make Netflix even more global, including by creating more original content in foreign languages. "We are focused on international expansion, mainly in Europe and Asia," Hastings said.
"It's just the beginning of the Internet. We are producing all over the globe with great success, now also in Spain, France, Germany, the UK, Turkey, India, and even Japan, with anime shows."
Netflix, which has some 93 million subscribers across 190 countries, is riding the success of some of its own productions, having won its first ever Oscar this week for the documentary White Helmets, about Syria's humanitarian aid force.
Hastings expects the market competition to toughen, however, with traditional broadcasters increasingly moving online especially with the gradual improvement of handset screens and connections.
"I think broadcast television is really going to move to the Internet, so that current TV networks will offer their videos online, just the same as Netflix and YouTube."
The improvements in wireless 4G and 5G technology is likely to encourage the trend of people watching movies on mobile screens. People can break up their viewing during commutes or lunch hours, personalizing the time in which they consumer entertainment.
"We would like to continue to improve the mobile plans in order for everybody to enjoy unlimited video viewing," said Hastings. "I think it's possible because we are getting more efficient at video data, so that the networks are not congested. That would be a big breakthrough."
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