Vodafone India, India's second biggest telecom operator by subscriber, has challenged the department of telecommunications' (DoT's) decision of not extending its licences for Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata circles in the Delhi High court.

The telecommunications giant said in a statement that it would take all actions, including legal, required to ensure extension & continuity of its licences in the three circles.

The Delhi High Court on Friday has ordered the central government not to take any steps against the telecom service providers including Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

Leading telecom service provider, Vodafone India, which is a part of the British telecom giant, has announced the launch of new internet trail packs for its mobile subscribers in the Indian market in order to encourage usage of internet in the country.

The company has announced new trial packs for both its 2G and 3G subscribers in the Indian market.

Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, on Friday, were asked to immediately stop providing 3G services and pay a penalty of Rs 550 crore and Rs 300 crore, respectively, in circles where they do not have spectrum.

In March, the department of telecom (DoT) had issued a similar order to Bharti Airtel. The country's largest telecommunications firm had been asked to stop offering 3G services in circles where it didn't own spectrum, along with a penalty of Rs 350 crore.

Vodafone India has argued that the department of telecommunication's (DoT's) decision to reject its application seeking extension of licences in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles suffers fundamental flaws.

The UK-based telecom services provider had applied for the extension of its licences in the three circles beyond 2014, but the DoT last week rejected the application, saying the company would have to participate in the upcoming auctions to continue use the spectrum.

The Indian government has imposed an additional fee of $339 million or 18.42 billion rupees on the leading five telecom service providers in the country after it was found that the companies had underreported their revenues.

Telecom sector giant, Vodafone India has announced that it is planning to open 16 angel stores across the country solely for serving women to mark the International Women's Day.

The company said in an official statement in Mumbai that the first of its kind Vodafone Angel Store will be completely run and managed by women. These stores will be spread across 13 states and will be present in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Shillong, Bhubaneshwar, Jaipur, Agra, Mysore, Chennai, Lucknow, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

India's union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that the case involving tax dues of telecom giant, Vodafone and the country's tax authorities is likely to be resolved as the two sides continue to hold discussions on the matter.

Chidambaram said, "I'm sure some way will emerge out of these discussions. I will be very happy if we could find a resolution to the issue, put it behind us and move on. I think Vodafone is of the same view, so both government and Vodafone are keen to resolve the matter and I am confident we can resolve it."

With a recent router failure leading to an outage of service for Vodafone subscribers using Research In Motion (RIM)'s Blackberry handsets, data services remained inaccessible for BlackBerry users on Vodafone.

The glitch was largely confined to the BlackBerry users on the Vodafone network; with the affected users not being able to access email and instant messaging services. The Vodafone customers who were most hit by the outage included those who run their own BlackBerry Enterprise Server, as well as those who reliant on the RIM infrastructure.

Several telecom service providers in the country have agreed to start sharing real-time interception of BlackBerry calls and data services from their networks with the security agencies in the country.

The government had set a December 31 deadline for the telecom service providers to comply with the order. Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Tata Teleservices have confirmed that they are ready to start sharing the data with the security services in the country.

Vodafone India has criticized the government's decision to put all airwaves for auction that is currently being held by telecom operators, whose licences are expiring in 2014, saying the new spectrum auction norms are unfair, discriminatory and coercive in nature.

In a letter to telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar, Vodafone India argued that spectrum sold at such an auction would not reflect its true market value and therefore clearly not be in interests of public, industry as well as government.

Indian telecom service providers have asked the authorities in the country to consider allotting unused CDMA spectrum in the 800 megahertz (MHz) band for providing GSM services in the country.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, and Idea Cellular have asked the telecom authorities to consider allocating unused CDMA spectrum for GSM services. They have asked the Department of Telecommunications to consider altering 800MHz airwaves and making them compatible with the 900MHz band that is used for GSM services.

Aircel will pay Vodafone 5 paise per SMS as termination fee, while Vodafone will immediately restore its interconnection of SMSes generated on Aircel's network till the dispute is resolved, according to the telecom disputes tribunal's order.

Passing an interim order on Friday, the Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) said if two operators disconnect each other's SMS services then the consumers would suffer.

Several major telecom operators in India are looking to enhance revenues by slashing freebies and talk-time that come with discount vouchers, which are used by prepaid customers.

The telecom service providers are looking to improve sales and margins as they face stagnating earnings in the country. According to latest data, 96 percent of India's 906 million mobile connections are subscribed to prepaid plans.

The Indian arm of telecommunications giant Vodafone announced on Wednesday that its revenue grew more than 13 per cent year-on-year in the first six months of the current fiscal year, but the company is yet to report a profit.

Vodafone India said its revenue grew 13.3 per cent to Rs 17,580 crore in the six months ended September 30, as compared with Rs 15,510 crore in the corresponding period previous fiscal.

The much-awaited auction for 2G telecom spectrum has finally started and five operators, viz. Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Telenor are contending for Global System for Mobiles (GSM) airwaves. But no auction is currently taking place for Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) airwaves because no operator has bid for this sort of airwaves.

Cupertino, Calif.-based acclaimed tech giant Apple Inc's latest flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5, is finally available in India.

Apple launched the successor to the iPhone 4S on Friday, November 2, forty-two days after the device's launch in the United States.

The tech giant has teamed up with distribution companies Ingram Micro and Redington, which announced the launch date for the smartphone last week. Previously, the US firm preferred the telecom operator-led distribution, where operators like Airtel and Aircel sold the iPhones.

UK based global telecom giant, Vodafone is expected to cut hundreds of jobs in the month of November as it faces rising costs and declining revenues.

The company did not announce a fixed number of jobs that will be axed but only said that it is planning to reduce the number of job roles across Australia to have a leaner, more effective operating model for its operations. The company employs 5000 full-time and contract workers in Australia and it is believed that the company might cut about 500 jobs.

During the course of a Sunday interview with ABC TV, Vodafone’s Australia chief Bill Morrow acknowledged the fact that the carrier’s failure in keeping pace with the ever-increasing demand from smartphone users was the key reason behind the catastrophic crash of the network two years back.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is reportedly preparing to propose the finance ministry to exempt companies trapped in the retrospective tax net from paying interest and penalties on outstanding tax liabilities.

A senior I-T official revealed that the CBDT was mulling over a plan to issue a circular to waive off interest and penalty on the pending tax liabilities of such companies.

The official said, “A proposal to this effect is likely to be taken to the finance minister for final clearance.”