iWorld
Govt withdraws plan for social media hub
MUMBAI: The government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it was withdrawing its notification proposing to create a social media hub. Some had alleged that this could become a tool to monitor the online activities of the citizens.
A bench, comprising justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud and headed by chief justice of India Dipak Misra, considered the submission of attorney general KK Venugopal that the notification was being withdrawn, and disposed off petitions challenging it.
Venugopal told the bench, that the social media policy would be reviewed completely by the government. The Bench was hearing a petition filed by Trinamool Congress MLA Mahua Moitra, who alleged that the government’s social media hub policy was to be used as a tool to monitor social media activities of citizens and sought the quashing of the same.
The apex court, which agreed to hear the plea, asked the government whether its move to create such a hub was to tap people’s WhatsApp messages, and observed that it would be like creating a ‘surveillance state’.
iWorld
Airtel crosses 650 million customers to cement its place as world’s second largest telco
The Indian telecoms giant, now spanning 15 countries, is chasing the top spot with satellites, smartphones and mobile money
NEW DELHI: Numbers like these do not come around often. Bharti Airtel has crossed 650 million customers, making it the world’s second largest telecom operator by mobile customer base, according to GSMA Intelligence. Only one rival sits ahead of it. The gap, Airtel intends to close.
Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, was characteristically measured. “Achieving the milestone of 650 million customers to be the second largest operator globally is a great responsibility for us to serve our customers better every day,” he said. “Every customer interaction is an opportunity to earn trust and deliver value.”
The scale of the operation is striking. In India, Airtel serves over 368 million mobile customers and was the first operator to launch 5G Plus services. It now reaches over 13 million homes with high-speed internet and a further 15 million households through its Digital TV offering. Its enterprise arm, Airtel Business, runs mission-critical infrastructure across cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and SD-WAN, underpinned by over 400,000 route kilometres of subsea fibre and a string of green data centres. The company has also announced a push into non-banking financial services, using its data insights to offer personalised credit products through the Airtel app.
Africa tells an equally ambitious story. Airtel Africa serves over 179 million customers across 14 countries, with Airtel Money, its mobile financial platform, counting over 52 million users. In a continent where traditional banking remains out of reach for millions, Airtel Money is not a product. It is infrastructure.
Beyond terrestrial networks, Airtel is reaching upward. Partnerships with Eutelsat OneWeb and SpaceX give it access to a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, pushing high-speed, low-latency broadband to remote maritime, aviation and rural areas that cables will never reach.
Airtel’s networks now cover over two billion people across 15 countries. The company that began as an Indian mobile operator has become something rather larger. At 650 million customers and climbing, it is not finished yet.
