iWorld
Jio data offer unsustainable, acknowledges Airtel
MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile operator, has opined that the new tariff announced by Reliance Jio was very aggressive and unsustainable, and the industry would respond to it with additional data offerings and more competitive plans.
Yesterday Airtel anounced waiving of roaming charges to compete with free roaming and voice calls offered by Jio. The Mukesh Ambani-led Jio has not only promised to match the best mobile data usage plan in the market but add 20 per cent to it.
Tariffs that they (Jio) announced were still very aggressive, which meant they got to respond. They all got to do more packages… they had to throw in more data. All those things need to be done, PTI reported Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal telling the press.
Jio, which has invested USD 25 billion on its 4G wireless data network, will terminate free data plans from 1 April, but has offered consumers the option of signing up for a Jio Prime membership for Rs 99 to continue using unlimited services for a year by paying Rs 303 every month.
Acknowledging that Jio’s plan to start charging customers was “good news” for operators, he said it however, would not signal the end to tariff war. Good news was that eventually they announced that they would. But yes, it was the pricing which was unsustainable.
Mittal, who is also the chairman of global industry body GSMA, recommended consolidation for the Indian telecom industry to “get the economic case back”, pitched for affordability in spectrum pricing that has gone “out of control” in the last few years, and said the spectrum surplus industry would not need an airwave auction, at least in 2017-18.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
