The Hindu Business Line: Bharti Airtel has said that companies that hold 2G spectrum should have the first right of refusal on spectrum, before it is put up for auction. More here Frankly, that seems fair, given the investment in building networks based on the spectrum that they had. Mint: A department of telecom panel is going to fine Idea Cellular Rs 600 crore for its merger with Spice. Both had spectrum in six of the circles, and the DoT panel has said that M&A guidelines were violated. More here. Frankly, for a business of the scale of telecom, a Rs 600 crore penalty for violating government policy seems inordinately low. To give you some context, Idea made Rs 1743.8 crore cash profit last quarter. Why would government policy be taken seriously from here on? Business Standard: MTNL will invest Rs 400 cr to increase 3G speed 6-fold, moving from HSPA to HSPA+. More here. Wish they'd do something about their wireline Internet too: I get speeds of 80-100 kbps on a 2mbps connection. The Hindu Businessline: Some telecom products have been ear-marked as being sensitive in terms of security and Department of Telecom has proposed excluding these products from India's go-local policy. Under this policy, companies, government institutions and telecom players were mandated to purchase 30% of its hardware and electronic requirements from companies which have local manufacturing facilities. More here. Tata DOCOMO InstaSoft: Tata DOCOMO has launched a Software as a Service (SaaS) based solution called InstaSoft, which will provide an…
