TelecomLive April 2024

[ News Bytes ] www.telecomlive.com 57 TelecomLIVE April 2024 consul t ant s and wi l l streamline processes. The company said it's in nego- tiations with unions over the cuts, which represent about 8.6 pc of the Swed- ish headcount at the end of 2023. Abou t a y e a r ago , Ericsson announced that it would cut 8,500 staff, or about 8 pc of its total workforce. Google Play billing system comes under RBI scanner The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has launched an investigation into Google Play's billing system over alleged viola- tions of the Payments and Settlements Systems Act. The probe follows a com- plaint lodged by Kolkata- based Hoichoi Technolo- gies. The complaint per- tains to the operation of s e v e r a l o f Go o g l e ' s aggregator platforms in India, which are regis- tered in foreign countries, including Singapore and theUS. 5G subscribers con- suming 3.6-times more data than 4G users: Nokia Nokia said that India has now over 131 mn 5G users, and that they were consuming nearly 3.6- times more data than the 4Gusers. Nokia, in its annual India Mobile Broadband Index report, has said that at the end of 2023, India had 131 mn 5G users. The figure is set to rise to 575 mn in 2026, or half of all subscribers in India, it added. The 5G services were launched inOctober 2022 by Bharti Airtel and Reli- had weakened, "I would not put China in that category." On January 2, 2019, Apple unexpectedly cut its quarterly revenue forecast by up to $9 bn, blaming US-China trade tensions. Its shares fell 10 pc the next day, wiping out about $74 bn of mar- ket value. ATC opts to convert Rs 1,440 cr Vi debt bonds into equity Vodafone Idea (Vi) will issue equity shares worth Rs 1 , 440 c r t o ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt Ltd (ATC TIPL), the Indian arm of American Tower Corporation, Vi said. On March 18, ATC T I PL r e qu e s t e d t h e 14,400OCDs held by it be converted into 1,440 mn shares at a face value of Rs 10 each. The move will marginally reduce Vi's debt burden. In February last year, loss-making Vi had allot- ted OCDs worth Rs 1,600 cr to ATC TIPL against the dues to the latter. The proceeds were being used by Vi to clear its dues to the US tower company, estimated at more than Rs 2,000 cr. The combined entity is expected to have over 253,000 towers, trump- ing the current market leader Indus Towers and its 204,000 tower sites. Ericsson to slash 1,200 Swedish jobs Ericsson AB said it will cut 1,200 jobs in Sweden, reducing costs as it faces lower sales from mobile providers. The company also plans to cut costs separately by eliminating facilities and the use of ance Jio. The report said that on an average, users consumed 17.4 exabytes (EB) of data per month in 2023, with a CAGR of 26 pc over the past five years. The average monthly data traffic per user also surged by 24 pc yoy in 2023, reaching 24.1 GB per user per month. Overall, 5G made up 15 pc of all data traffic across telecom circles as of December, 2023. The report pointed out the gap between users and available number of devices is also bridging fast with the country having 134mn 5G capable devices in 2023, or 17 pc of all available devices. US weighs sanctioning Huawei's secretive Chinese chip network The Biden administration is considering blacklist- ing a number of Chinese semiconductor firms linked to Huawei Technologies Co. Most of the Chinese entities that could be affected were previously identified as chipmaking facilities acquired or being built by Huawei in a presentation by the Washington-based trade group Semiconductor IndustryAssociation. The companies that could be blacklisted include chipmakers Qingdao Si'En, SwaySure, and Shenzhen Pensun Technology Co., or PST. Biden officials are also weighing sanctions on China's leading memory