'RCom stopped N-E services without informing customers'

The Consumers' Legal Protection Forum (CLPF) alleged that about 12 lakh prepaid and postpaid customers of RCom in the North East are affected since the company's service virtually collapsed since October 26.

"In its complaint letter to Manoj Sinha, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Ministry of Communications and RS Sharma, Chairman, TRAI, the forum stated that subscribers of RCom of Assam and other North Eastern states are having a harrowing time since the telecom company stopped its service without any notice," the CLPF which lodged the complaint on Monday said in a statement. PTI had sent an email on Monday to RCom spokesperson seeking the company's response to the allegations. The email was acknowledged, but no clarification came from the company's side even after 24 hours.

"RCom never informed (the subscribers) that it was going to close down its business. There was no text message nor any advertisement in newspapers," CLPF secretary Ajoy Hazarika said in the statement.

The telecom company has violated consumer norms by stopping their service without informing the customers, the consumer rights body claimed in its statement.

"There are no prepaid vouchers in the market....

Postpaid consumers are having a tough time to transfer their number to other service providers as they are insisting on clearing the bill first. But RCom has closed its bill payment counters already," the statement said.

TRAI on November 4 said that RCom has informed it that the company will shut down voice call service from December 1 and its customers can move to other networks by the end of the year. pti

Voda pre-tax profit plunges over 39% to `4,075 cr in H1

Mumbai: Following its peers, the second largest telco Vodafone India on Tuesday reported a steep 39.2 per cent plunge in pre-tax profit at Rs 4,075 crore for the six months to September as its revenue fell 15.8 per cent to Rs 19,002 crore due to the fierce completion since the entry of Reliance Jio.

The company, which is on course to merge with the third largest player Idea had Rs 22,579 crore in revenues, and an operational profit of Rs 6,704 crore a year ago, which is down 39.2 per cent.

Vodafone attributed the poor set of numbers to the continuing price competition from Jio and incumbents, seasonality and higher GST rate.

Service revenue fell 15.8 per cent to Rs 19,002 crore in H1 while Ebidta plunged 39.2 per cent to Rs 4,075 crore from Rs 6,704 crore, it said in a statement.

This is despite the fact that the company had strong performance on cost delivering an Ebitda margin of 21.4 per cent as "data usage quadrupled during the period" and had an operating free cash flow of Rs 1,543 crore.

The company also increased its revenue market share (RMS) by 60 bps to 23.1 per cent during the reporting period as its customer base rose 3.3 per cent to 207 million.