Telecom stocks bounce back, gain up to 3%

New Delhi: Telecom stocks bounced back during the fag-end of trade Friday, rising by up to 3 percent, on emergence of buying at lower levels after witnessing sharp losses amid the announcement of launch of much-talked about Jio 4G service.

Shares of Bharti Airtel, which fell by 1.35 percent to Rs 306.50 in intra-day, later made a comeback and settled 2.66 percent higher at Rs 318.95 on BSE.

Idea Cellular also pared its intra-day loss of 3.64 percent to close at Rs 84.05, up 0.42 percent.

Same was the case with Reliance Communications that ended with a mild gain of 0.10 percent at Rs 49.20 after earlier falling 3.45 percent to Rs 47.45 in intra-day.

All these stocks had fallen sharply by up to 11 percent in intra-day trade yesterday, wiping out Rs 16,997 crore from their market valuation.

Reliance Industries however, could not recover from yesterday's losses as the stock fell by 1.58 percent to end at Rs 1,012.85.

Storming his way into telecom sector, Mukesh Ambani yesterday announced the launch of much-talked about Jio 4G service, offering free voice calls and national roaming along with what he touted as the world's lowest data tariff.

Targeting 100 million customers in the shortest span of time, he told Reliance Industries' annual general meeting that its wireless phone unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd will offer data for Rs 50 per GB and monthly plan for as low as Rs 149.

Voice calling for Jio users will be free for life, so will be national roaming.

In the stock market, the benchmark Sensex ended higher by 108.63 points at 28,532.11.