Airtel to Buy Videocon Telecom's Spectrum in 6 Circles

Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it will acquire Videocon Telecom's spectrum in six circles in the 1800MHz Band for a consideration of Rs. 4,428 crores.

"Bharti Airtel has entered into a definitive agreement with Videocon Telecom Ltd (VTL) to acquire, at an aggregate consideration of Rs. 4,428 crores, rights to use 2x5 MHz spectrum in 1800 MHz band for six circles," the company said in a BSE filing.

The six circles are Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, UP (East), UP (West) and Gujarat. The aforesaid spectrum is valid up to December 18, 2032. The closing of the transaction is subject to satisfaction of standard conditions.

Reacting to the news, Bharti Airtel's shares were trading 2.89 percent higher at Rs. 349.45 on BSE. On Wednesday, Idea Cellular and Videocon Telecommunications had mutually agreed to call off their Rs. 3,310-crore spectrum deal for two telecom circles.

Idea in November had announced to buy airwaves held by Videoconin these two circles for Rs. 3,310 crores, which was billed as the first spectrum trading deal of the country. Videocon had acquired spectrum in 1800 MHz band, known as 2G spectrum, in these two service areas for a total of Rs. 1,329 crores in November 2012 and made upfront payment of Rs. 438.57 crores to the government.

Meanwhile, Idea said it continues to aggressively launch its high speed mobile broadband 4G LTE services. The company on Thursday also launched its 4G LTE services in the 10th telecom service area of Maharashtra and Goa, from Nagpur city.

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

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