BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple is tying up with India's Bharti Airtel to offer the telecom firm's premium customers its music and video streaming services for free, giving the U.S. giant access to thousands of consumers in the world's most populous nation. With mostly English-language content, Apple TV+ is a small player in India's $28 billion media and entertainment market, where its rivals include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's JioCinema. The move comes as competition tightens in India and an $8.5-billion merger of the Indian media assets of Reliance and Walt Disney - which have a streaming service each - faces close scrutiny from antitrust regulators.
Nokia (NOK) completes its first 5G non-standalone (NSA) Cloud RAN trial in India.
India has offered telecom spectrum worth around 962.38 billion rupees ($11.53 billion) for auction on Tuesday, it said in a release, even as analysts expect lacklustre participation from players as they shore up their existing spectrum. The Indian government derives a big chunk of its revenue from spectrum auctions, which award telecom companies rights over airwaves for a particular period. During the previous auction in August 2022, telecom players Vodafone Idea (VI), Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries' Jio Infocomm together picked up 5G spectrum worth $19 billion to boost capacities in the world's second-largest smartphone market.