Hindi
Viacom18 partners with FHF in its film restoration and archiving for third year
MUMBAI: Viacom18 announced its support to the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) for the annual Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India being held from 7 to 14 October 2017 in Chennai.
The partnership was flagged off for the third consecutive year at an event held today in the city and was attended by Viacom 18 group CEO Sudhanshu Vats, legendary actor and producer Kamal Haasan, renowned film-maker Mani Ratnam and celebrated film-maker, archivist and founder director of Film Heritage Foundation Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
The Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India 2017 aims to train an indigenous pool of film archivists and restorers as well as to create awareness about the urgent need to save India’s cinematic heritage. With previous editions being held in Mumbai and Pune, this year the workshop hopes to not create awareness among the South Indian film industry to this urgent issue but to build on the movement that has been created all over India as well as in neighboring countries.
“At the heart of it, civilization is a chronicle of stories across generations. As India’s foremost storytellers we connect deeply with this ethos and our support to Film Heritage Foundation is a confluence of this shared belief. India’s culture and heritage is captured creatively and reflected through our films and therefore, these become historical artefacts representative of the times they were created in. It is pertinent that this content is preserved for reference as well as archived for perusal by future generations”, Vats said.
Dungarpur added, “Film Heritage Foundation is committed to preserve the film heritage of India across various genres and languages. Bringing the workshop to Chennai this year, our aim is to create awareness about the urgent need to preserve India’s film heritage including the rich regional film heritage of the South Indian film industry. The programme this year is further strengthened with support of Viacom18 and enriched by partnering with the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, L’Immagine Ritrovata, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Prasad Corp., La Cinémathèque Française, Imperial War Museums, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, the Finnish Film Archive and the Czech National Film Archive and Criterion Collection.”
Open to applicants from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshop India 2017 will extensively focus on repairing damaged and decayed celluloid film, restore and preserve film posters, lobby cards, song booklets and photographs, techniques of digital preservation and restoration etc.
There are several scholarships available for deserving candidates along with job opportunities at FHF on successful completion of the course.
Speaking about the workshop, Haasan said, “I am very happy and proud to know that the Film Heritage Foundation has decided to come to Chennai to run a workshop on film archiving. I have seen them do it once in Pune. There were about 50 students and I was really moved. The film industry should come forward to conserve, save and keep our film heritage intact. And this very important workshop is going to teach future archivists how to go about preserving film.It is a very important workshop for those interested in cinema itself, cinema not only of today but of yesterday.”
Eminent experts from across the globe such as FIAF’s Head of Training and Outreach David Walsh, Camille Blot-Wellens from FIAF, Tina Kelly from Imperial War Museum, Dawn Jaros from the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts & Sciences, Emilie Cauquy from La Cinémathèque française, and Marianna De Sanctis from L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, amongst others will comprise the faculty of the workshop.
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.
