Hindi
Excel Home Videos wins 2 Fox Marketing Awards
MUMBAI: Home entertainment major Excel Home Videos earned two Awards for India at the Twentieth Century Fox Awards for Excellence in Home Entertainment.
This is the first time that an Indian company has received honours from Fox for the home entertainment segment. The company swept two of the four awards for India, including ‘Highest Growth’ and ‘Best Theatrical Synergy”.
The other two awards were won by Hong Kong. The award ceremony held at Bali, Indonesia witnessed nine countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, among others, competing for top honours.
The award for ‘highest growth’ was for the 67 per cent growth the company achieved in the last fiscal. Excel Home Videos, which owns the largest DVD catalogue in the country and enjoys a retail penetration of over 12,000 retail outlets, attributes the success to its product quality, technical brilliance and innovative marketing. Apart from Fox, Excel also represents other entertainment majors like Walt Disney, MGM, Merchant Ivory, HIT, Shringar, and EA amongst others in India.
The award of ‘Best Theatrical Synergy’ was conferred for the pioneering efforts of the company in successfully using theatrical synergy to promote Home Video Products. Says MN Kapasi, MD, Excel Home Videos, “Merely coinciding the release hasn’t achieved us the feat. The entire effort has been well coordinated with effective pricing, DVD visibility in stores, innovative advertising, among other aspects”. The experiment began with the DVD re-release of the Brad Pitt starrer ‘Fight Club‘ last February. The English DVD did roaring business with the pre-launch hype of the Sohail Khan starrer. The success was later duplicated with a string of Marvel titles including X – Men 1, X – Men 2, X – Men 3, Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, Elektra, and Daredevil, among others.”
The Awards, in its third year, were presented by Richard Crook, vice president, International Licensees, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
