Indian Telecom Folder

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svinayak
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by svinayak »

Reliance to Spend $5 Billion on Wireless Internet, Analysts Say
BusinessWeek - ‎1 hour ago‎
By Rakteem Katakey June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Reliance Industries Ltd., India's biggest company by market value, may spend about $5 billion on a wireless Internet venture as Chairman Mukesh Ambani reenters an industry he left to his brother in 2005
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Post by Vipul »

RIL has confirmed that it will not target the high-end niche and target the comon user.Its projecting the broadband user base in India to jump from less then a million now to 140 Million in the next 3-4 years.It plans to go the WIMAX route for now and change over to LTE as and when its commercially/technically feasible.
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Post by manish »

A bit of a setback for Ericsson in India. Would do nothing to soothe the pain on the handsets front where S-E is bleeding profusely.
Huawei races ahead of Ericsson
The rapid rise of Huawei Technologies continued in the fiscal 2009-10 as well. This statistic and findings has been provided by Voice&Data.

As per the reports of Voice&Data the revenues of Huawei Technologies during this period have increased to Rs. 11, 000 crore as compared to Rs. 6, 240 crore in the preceding year.
On the other hand, the Finnish company, Nokia is at the top of the list. It has a revenue report of Rs. 14, 100 crore in this fiscal. But the handset major has a decline of 14.9 % in its revenues.
Of course, with GoI getting tougher on Chicom gear, further growth may be a bit constrained for Huawei and ZTE. But if these guys manage to get clearances, the 3G and Broadband rollouts are going to get their cash registers ringing.

Huawei and ZTE are already #1 and #2 in worldwide BB revenues. Meanwhile we continue to sleep and still do not have a viable domestic option for telecom gear.
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Post by Prem »

http://www.pcworld.com/article/199762/i ... anies.html
A telecommunications service provider controlled by the Indian government, has excluded Chinese vendors from a tender for supply and installation of mobile telephony equipment, reflecting India's continuing concern about procuring equipment from Chinese companies.The notice from Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) inviting tenders for the roll out of 5.5 million [m] lines of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) has specifically invited the Indian operations of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens Networks to bid in the tender.The last date for receipt of bids is July 22. Huawei Technologies would have participated in the tender if it was allowed to do so, a spokesman for the company said on Thursday.Chinese telecommunications equipment vendors like Huawei and ZTE say Indian service providers have been blocked from buying their equipment by the Indian government which is citing security reasons. Representatives from both companies met Indian government officials last month to convince them that buying from their companies is not a security risk, but the BSNL tender this week suggests that the security concerns about Chinese suppliers are still unresolved.
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Post by Vipul »

Why we must give Trai's broadband plan a hand.

Screams of pain normally accompany the release of a Consultative Paper by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, but the one on Broadband released last week has been met with a deafening silence. This worries all of us in the Internet industry.

Is the silence symptomatic of Indian telecom players' and policy maker's long standing disinterest in broadband?

Trai's thought on how to make broadband more affordable and better quality mark a revolutionary departure from India's normal laissez faire telecom policy stance. It actually proposes a Rs 32,000 crore (Rs 320 billion) government initiative to build India's Information Super Highway.

This, when done, will impact our economy more, much more, than even the Golden Quadrangle, that network of highways that is being built to connect our great cities.

This initiative does not come a moment too soon. For a country that has taken bold new initiatives in expanding education and healthcare and all aspects of our national infrastructure, we have treated the most important infrastructure of the modern knowledge economy, a broadband infrastructure, with benign neglect.

As a result, India's broadband record is dismal. Broadband prices in India are the highest in the world (with the exception of Myanmar). India's broadband connections are a mere 9 million.

Part of the reason for such benign neglect is an under-appreciation by our policy makers and public about the role of broadband in a modern economy. Talk of building better physical roads or bridges and we can easily imagine what this entails and what benefits that brings. Talk of broadband and many go, 'Oh, that's what my teenage son uses to download mp3 music!'

Broadband is that but it is also much more. Broadband is what will drive electronic commerce which in turn will make our big business more efficient, and allow our small businesses to reach out to world export markets.

It is also what future-oriented companies like Aravind Eye Hospital use to deliver low-cost, high-quality medical services. It is the backbone on which high-quality school and college education can be delivered cost-effectively to our vast population.

And it is the base on which eGovernance initiatives rest.

There is also an ideological misunderstanding behind this benign neglect: many policy makers and the Indian elite may be read the wrong lessons into India's massive private-sector lead mobile phone expansion. Why not leave broadband expansion to the private sector and they will do what they did for mobile phones: raise international capital, compete with each other, bring down prices and expand the industry.

But this, as I said, is a misunderstanding. Broadband infrastructure is like a bridge or an intercity highway: costly to build and on which the financial returns may come only in 15 to 20 years.

The mobile-voice businesses get to profitability much sooner and this make private equity capital much more available for mobile voice services and very difficult for broadband data services. If the State does not build it, no one else will.

How, you may ask, have the United States and Europe done it? The answer to this is that by the time Internet came around in the mid 1990s, the high-quality copper or fibre infrastructure was already built out. All they needed to do in those countries was to build Internet services over the same infrastructure.

In India, there is next to no such infrastructure even today. Somebody has to build it.

In spite of that head start, many advanced economies are doing even more: the United States federal government has already put out $110 billion in 2004 and $350 billion in 2005 and continue to spend at similar level to bring broadband to America's rural areas.

The national governments of Britain, Australia [ Images ] and Japan [ Images ] have done or are in the middle of similar levels of spending.

Why not leave it to the mobile phone companies to offer broadband services through wireless, you may ask. After all, haven't they bid gigantic amounts for broadband wireless spectrum for this very purpose?

The answer to this is that no doubt they will, but because of the very nature of wireless broadband technology, such services will cost Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 a month -- excellent for the laptop toting executive but too expensive for middle class India.

For broadband to get to the 100 million households who make up 40 per cent of all households in India, we need a service which is priced no more than Rs 200 per month, not Rs 2,000 per month.

And we need this service with no ifs and no buts: no conditions that limit the amount of data you can download and no conditions on the time of day when you can use it.

Trai proposes to get there by 2014, that is, in four years from now.

Trai's grand vision is to take broadband fibre right up to 374,000 villages at a cost of Rs 32,000 crore. Trai estimates that Rs 18,000 crore (Rs 180 billion) of this is to be spent on the manual labour of digging trenches and laying the cable and the balance Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) is the cost of fibre optic cable and telecom equipment.

They suggest that the manual labour component be done through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The equipment cost of Rs 13,000 crore, they suggest, be met from the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

They also propose that a National Fibre Agency be created to execute this massive project. Once this core network is built, private sector companies like cable operators, cyber cafes and Internet service providers can tap into this and create a vibrant reseller market taking the service to consumer homes, schools and offices.

Rarely, has a government policy-making group set out such a carefully thought-out and visionary plan.

Let's give Trai a hand.
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Post by Prem »

http://www.cio.com/article/598363/India ... lity_Again
IDG News Service — India has postponed for the third time the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP), thus delaying for users the opportunity to retain their mobile numbers when changing operators.MNP will now be introduced in India by Oct. 31, the country's Department of Telecommunications said on Wednesday.The change is expected to increase competition, and help new mobile operators who are rolling out their services, as users will find it easier to move from one operator to another. However after an initial churn, there will not be significant shifts by subscribers from one operator to another, analysts said.
Under guidelines proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), mobile users will be allowed to use the same mobile number even if providers use different mobile technologies like CDMA (code division multiple access) or GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). GSM is currently the dominant technology used by providers in India.
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Post by Prem »

India gets tough with Blackberry, Skype: report
NEW DELHI (AFP) – India has given Internet telephony pioneer Skype and the makers of BlackBerry handsets a deadline to fall into line with strict security-monitoring regulations or be blocked, a report said Thursday.India's intelligence officials have long complained that they are unable to decipher encrypted data sent on Blackberry handsets, made by Canadian firm Research In Motion, or intercept calls on Skype.The government has threatened to ban or block BlackBerry and Skype services if the companies fail to adhere to a 15-day deadline to make data available in formats that can be monitored, The Economic Times newspaper said.Google has been asked to ensure emails on its Gmail service can be deciphered, though no deadline has been issued, the paper said."The latest development indicates that security agencies are again finding it difficult to intercept or decipher messages sent through BlackBerry phones," the paper said.The Indian telecommunications ministry was unable to comment when contacted by AFP.India, which faces a strengthening home-grown Maoist insurgency and constant threats from Islamist groups, is highly sensitive about the potential risks of technology.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100701/tc ... blackberry
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Post by sum »

How many times do we get tough with Blackberry?

Hadn't GoI supposedly cracked the blackberry encryption ( with some external help, as per "Shadow factory" book) ??
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Post by Singha »

No that wont be needed. if they want to sell here, they need to provide their own decoding tools and backdoors to the law enforcement here.

google on CALEA. network eqpt vendors who sell in US have to provide backdoors to GOTUS and they do.

with 16 mil new subs / month and replacement phones always migrating up the price point, we are in a position to crack the whip on these errants.

they cant send a guy in a flashy suit and claim its all tfta and not for sdre's understanding . GOI usually has iit/iisc professors on such panels and flashy suit product mgr will get his head handed back to him. the panelists sure get lots of practise ripping apart students, thesis and awarding D's back on campus 8)
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Post by Prem »

Secureworks "World Cup of cyber security" finds India the safest nation
http://www.techdigest.tv/2010/07/secureworks_wor.html
SecureWorks, the information security service provider, have revealed their findings for what they have dubbed the "World Cup" of cyber security. Mining information on their 2,800 clients, they've compiled a list of which countries are most vulnerable to online attacks.Users in the USA were found to be most at risk; of 265,700,000 active PCs there were 441,003,516 attempted cyber attacks, or 1,660 attacks per 1,000 computers. India fared best however; with 48,100,000 active PCs, they only experienced 2,516,341 attempted cyber attacks, or a mere 52 per 1,000 PCs."The statistics show that a substantial number of vulnerable computers in countries worldwide have been compromised and are being used as bots to launch cyber attacks." said Jon Ramsey, CTO for SecureWorks. "Overall, the study shows that not only are organisations and individuals putting themselves at risk by not securing them, but they are actually providing cyber criminals with a platform to compromise other computers."
The full chart of findings can be viewed below.
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Post by satyam »

^^^

Who will cyber attack on India apart from Pakiz or chinese?
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Post by svinayak »

Prem wrote:Secureworks "World Cup of cyber security" finds India the safest nation
http://www.techdigest.tv/2010/07/secureworks_wor.html
SecureWorks, the information security service provider, have revealed their findings for what they have dubbed the "World Cup" of cyber security. Mining information on their 2,800 clients, they've compiled a list of which countries are most vulnerable to online attacks.Users in the USA were found to be most at risk; of 265,700,000 active PCs there were 441,003,516 attempted cyber attacks, or 1,660 attacks per 1,000 computers. India fared best however; with 48,100,000 active PCs, they only experienced 2,516,341 attempted cyber attacks, or a mere 52 per 1,000 PCs."The statistics show that a substantial number of vulnerable computers in countries worldwide have been compromised and are being used as bots to launch cyber attacks." said Jon Ramsey, CTO for SecureWorks. "Overall, the study shows that not only are organisations and individuals putting themselves at risk by not securing them, but they are actually providing cyber criminals with a platform to compromise other computers."
The full chart of findings can be viewed below.
My friend went to a security forum in which ex police, ex FBI were giving a lecture. The main speaker said the main threat to corporate is from vendors and offshore work. He started with Indian companies and how they add to the security threat. This went on for most of the talk and not much info about PRC.
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Post by Prem »

http://www.pcworld.com/article/200688/h ... ccess.html
Rather than requiring the user to navigate the Web in a number of steps to achieve a task, the series of steps required to complete the task are encapsulated in a cloud application that HP calls TaskLet, Sudhir Dixit, the director of the lab told reporters on Thursday.Mobile phones users can access specific information on the Web or complete a transaction online by sending an SMS (short message service) or calling up a number that invokes the relevant TaskLet on the cloud, said Geetha MHP Labs India has developed a cloud-based technology, called SiteonMobile, that simplifies accessing content and doing transactions on the Web. anjunath, senior research scientist at the lab. PC users can run a TaskLet by clicking on the corresponding icon on their computer screens, she added. In India, where there are over 600 million mobile connections in the country, most people are likely to access the Web through mobile phones, Dixit said.HP Labs India first disclosed it was working on the technology in 2008, as a way to make the Web accessible on mobile phones to the masses in emerging markets.The challenge in emerging markets is that, because of the high cost of mobile bandwidth and relatively low tech literacy, a lot of users want intuitive and quick access to the information they need, rather than having to negotiate the Web for it, Dixit said.
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Post by Prem »

India Plans to Introduce IPv6 by 2012
http://www.pcworld.com/article/201573/i ... _2012.html
India will start using IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) from March 2012, according to a new roadmap released by the Indian government.All telecom and ISPs will have to be IPv6-compliant by the end of next year and offer IPv6 services thereafter, the government said in a statement issued on Wednesday by the country's Press Information Bureau. Federal and state government ministries and departments and public sector companies will switch over to IPv6 services by March 2012, the government said.IPv6 is an Internet protocol version that offers a larger address space than the current IPv4. This is because it uses a 128-bit address as compared to 32 bits in IPv4.India is running out of IP addresses on IPv4, a problem that is likely to get more acute with the upcoming rollout in the country of 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) services, said Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India. Mobile phones that support data, for example, will each require an IP address, he added.
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Post by Vipul »

naren
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Post by naren »

Replying to this post in "nation on the march" thread.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 93#p910993
apoorv wrote:My take on the $35 laptop. I am copying this from my blog.

Convincing a company to invest in mass production will require a lot more than only price and features of the product. There are many challenges:

1) How to convince the mass population to buy a Rs. 1500 gadget when they will ask that our children can study the same concepts using Rs. 10 notebook and government subsidized textbooks. Will they buy the idea that their children need the knowledge of high technology in order to have a bright future? Does the government have any workable plans where reputed teachers can take classes from metros like Mumbai and Delhi which are transmitted to rural India’s schools and the students can download the material in real time on their $35 laptop? In short, is the $35 laptop adding any value to their lives? Does this guarantees better future to the target market?
IMO, there will be initial takers - those who can afford Rs. 1500 but not the money to buy a desktop. Most people are aware that a computer education will ensure very bright future for their kids. Its not just about "replacing" the traditional notebook. Its about exposing the child to the wonders of internet. Once this demographic popularizes it, the very low income demographic will adopt it. May be even the many charity organizations can help. Who knows, the state govts might eventually give it away to kids for free. In TN, people get free TV ! This is definitely cheaper than TV.
2) Can the government ensure good wi-fi and broadband internet connectivity in far corners of India in the near future? A $10-$35 gadget can make profit for a company only if volumes are there. Volumes will be there if the reach is there and to ensure the reach we need data networks which reach all the isolated corners of India including the north east and the naxal affected tribal areas.
3G will hit the markets soon. Eventually they will reach all the far corners.
3) The device will be a one time investment for the poor. Is the device build quality good enough to have a life of at least 10 years? Also, maintenance cost has to be very low. Can the company provide maintenance centers where people can come with their problems and get them solved at very low price, ALL OVER INDIA?
Thats a good question. One solution is shipping it through postal system.
4) We need to develop an ecosystem for the device which consists of developers who make new applications and provide regular updates for the device so that it remains relevant in contemporary technological cycle.
No big deal. We have abundant IT talent.
5) Finally, the software have to be in Indian languages. Who will take the development cost for these software.
Its a question of language packs. Open source will be a good idea. I envision that there will be common software, with plugabble language packs. The central and state govts must coordinate.
One way to make this device profitable can be to make new software which cater to farmers and fishermen as well. We can then sell the same device to these people and they can get real time weather updates and advices. Advices for farmers can be related to good agriculture practices, possible rainfall, better quality seeds, right time to use pesticides etc. For the fishermen it can be the information about place where they can find more fishes, information about typhoons etc. In this way we can increase the volume as well and may be some companies will get interested in the mass production.
Great idea. We need startups who can take this up.
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Post by ramana »

Also its an Indian idea and will find Indian buyers. BTW, Sam Pitroda and K Sibal are adamant to have one computer per child and this is one way of achieving it. It will have access to world wide apps.
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Post by Suppiah »

http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/01/stories ... 201700.htm

When the loot and dole dries up, the real picture emerges...thank god the telecom industry is too big to reverse course now, or else the looting parasites in collaboration with Beijing puppet Stalinists will demand that we go back to the days monopoly and waiting lists again...
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Post by Raghavendra »

Suppiah wrote:http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/01/stories ... 201700.htm

When the loot and dole dries up, the real picture emerges...thank god the telecom industry is too big to reverse course now, or else the looting parasites in collaboration with Beijing puppet Stalinists will demand that we go back to the days monopoly and waiting lists again...
Mr. Goyal pointed out that the wage revision had alone caused an additional expenditure of Rs.2,900 crore over the previous year on account of payment of arrears for the period from January, 2007 to March, 2010. “Had the wage revision expenditure not been there, the company would have recorded a profit before tax to the tune of Rs.703 crore,” he added.
Is there a provision to rollback this wage hike which is making BSNL another sick PSU?
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Post by vina »

Suppiah wrote:http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/01/stories ... 201700.htm

When the loot and dole dries up, the real picture emerges...thank god the telecom industry is too big to reverse course now, or else the looting parasites in collaboration with Beijing puppet Stalinists will demand that we go back to the days monopoly and waiting lists again...
AoA! . BSNL will soon joined the esteemed ranks of Air India/Indian Airlines for the honor of "most distinguished service" to the nation . It actually boggles anyone imagination how any telecom player (which has natural entry barriers) and decades of monopoly been reduced to a 19% overall market share and that too with all the loot, plunder, wealth transfer from competitors and rigged competitive table in your favor.

The sooner we put this BSNL thing in the dustbin of history the better for everyone concerned.
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Post by Suppiah »

With broadband on mobile thru 3G coming heavy whatever little landline revenue these parasites get from ex-monopoly copper cables will also be dead. Who will pay Rs1000+ for pathetic 512k when 3G can offer 1MB or more for less, that too anywhere? In other countries, mobile broadband will not replace land-line broadband because landlines are even faster - anywhere from 5-100Mb, not the pathetic speeds and even more crazy download limits these dinosaur parasites offer...

Then these parasitic plunderers and their sponsors in Alimuddin street can cut up these cables and use them to hang themselves. For having sat on them all these years and wasted their potential and the country's too in the bargain...
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Post by Rishirishi »

Vipul wrote:Why we must give Trai's broadband plan a hand.

Screams of pain normally accompany the release of a Consultative Paper by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, but the one on Broadband released last week has been met with a deafening silence. This worries all of us in the Internet industry.

Is the silence symptomatic of Indian telecom players' and policy maker's long standing disinterest in broadband?

Trai's thought on how to make broadband more affordable and better quality mark a revolutionary departure from India's normal laissez faire telecom policy stance. It actually proposes a Rs 32,000 crore (Rs 320 billion) government initiative to build India's Information Super Highway.

This, when done, will impact our economy more, much more, than even the Golden Quadrangle, that network of highways that is being built to connect our great cities.

This initiative does not come a moment too soon. For a country that has taken bold new initiatives in expanding education and healthcare and all aspects of our national infrastructure, we have treated the most important infrastructure of the modern knowledge economy, a broadband infrastructure, with benign neglect.

As a result, India's broadband record is dismal. Broadband prices in India are the highest in the world (with the exception of Myanmar). India's broadband connections are a mere 9 million.

Part of the reason for such benign neglect is an under-appreciation by our policy makers and public about the role of broadband in a modern economy. Talk of building better physical roads or bridges and we can easily imagine what this entails and what benefits that brings. Talk of broadband and many go, 'Oh, that's what my teenage son uses to download mp3 music!'

Broadband is that but it is also much more. Broadband is what will drive electronic commerce which in turn will make our big business more efficient, and allow our small businesses to reach out to world export markets.

It is also what future-oriented companies like Aravind Eye Hospital use to deliver low-cost, high-quality medical services. It is the backbone on which high-quality school and college education can be delivered cost-effectively to our vast population.

And it is the base on which eGovernance initiatives rest.

There is also an ideological misunderstanding behind this benign neglect: many policy makers and the Indian elite may be read the wrong lessons into India's massive private-sector lead mobile phone expansion. Why not leave broadband expansion to the private sector and they will do what they did for mobile phones: raise international capital, compete with each other, bring down prices and expand the industry.

But this, as I said, is a misunderstanding. Broadband infrastructure is like a bridge or an intercity highway: costly to build and on which the financial returns may come only in 15 to 20 years.

The mobile-voice businesses get to profitability much sooner and this make private equity capital much more available for mobile voice services and very difficult for broadband data services. If the State does not build it, no one else will.

How, you may ask, have the United States and Europe done it? The answer to this is that by the time Internet came around in the mid 1990s, the high-quality copper or fibre infrastructure was already built out. All they needed to do in those countries was to build Internet services over the same infrastructure.

In India, there is next to no such infrastructure even today. Somebody has to build it.

In spite of that head start, many advanced economies are doing even more: the United States federal government has already put out $110 billion in 2004 and $350 billion in 2005 and continue to spend at similar level to bring broadband to America's rural areas.

The national governments of Britain, Australia [ Images ] and Japan [ Images ] have done or are in the middle of similar levels of spending.

Why not leave it to the mobile phone companies to offer broadband services through wireless, you may ask. After all, haven't they bid gigantic amounts for broadband wireless spectrum for this very purpose?

The answer to this is that no doubt they will, but because of the very nature of wireless broadband technology, such services will cost Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 a month -- excellent for the laptop toting executive but too expensive for middle class India.

For broadband to get to the 100 million households who make up 40 per cent of all households in India, we need a service which is priced no more than Rs 200 per month, not Rs 2,000 per month.

And we need this service with no ifs and no buts: no conditions that limit the amount of data you can download and no conditions on the time of day when you can use it.

Trai proposes to get there by 2014, that is, in four years from now.

Trai's grand vision is to take broadband fibre right up to 374,000 villages at a cost of Rs 32,000 crore. Trai estimates that Rs 18,000 crore (Rs 180 billion) of this is to be spent on the manual labour of digging trenches and laying the cable and the balance Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) is the cost of fibre optic cable and telecom equipment.

They suggest that the manual labour component be done through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The equipment cost of Rs 13,000 crore, they suggest, be met from the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

They also propose that a National Fibre Agency be created to execute this massive project. Once this core network is built, private sector companies like cable operators, cyber cafes and Internet service providers can tap into this and create a vibrant reseller market taking the service to consumer homes, schools and offices.

Rarely, has a government policy-making group set out such a carefully thought-out and visionary plan.

Let's give Trai a hand.

Haleluja
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Post by Suraj »

Mobile phone companies push for indigenisation
Mobile phone companies are pushing through a big indigenisation effort by bringing global component vendors to set shop in the country. The move is part of a strategy to make India a global manufacturing hub for mobile phones, rather than just undertake their assembly.

Samsung, for instance, has put up an ambitious plan to indigenise its mobile phones from about 10-12 per cent currently to 40 per cent in two years. “Today, we have a capacity to make 8-10 million phones a year,” said M C Mittal, vice-president, manufacturing, Samsung India. “We are planning to increase it by 50-60 per cent. We are looking at indigenising components like batteries, chargers and folders, among others and have looked at some Taiwanese and Chinese suppliers. At least three to four have been identified.”

The country’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia, has brought in five of its leading vendors (Salcomp, for instance, is a market leader in phone chargers) who exclusively manufacture a range of components for the company such as back covers, chargers and key mats. Says D Shivakumar, vice-president and managing director, Nokia India: “We have invested $280 million (Rs 1,300 crore) and our vendors have put in a similar amount of money in our facility near Chennai...We have generated about 25,000 jobs. India has a large domestic base and we can use this scale to go for exports.”

The plant has manufactured over 350 million phones since its inception in 2006. Industry experts say Nokia has reached indigenisation levels of 25-30 per cent in India, though the company declined to comment.

LG India, a late starter in the mobile space, is also catching up, though cautious on their indigenisation aim. “We do have some vendors already producing some parts for us in India and plan to add more in the coming months,” said Moon B Shin, managing director of LG Electronics India. Shin said they are at 10 per cent indigenisation, having done so for printed circuit board assembly. Their next target is to go up to 15 per cent.

It is not only individual companies pushing to bring in more investments through vendors. The Indian Cellular Association (ICA), apex body of mobile phone manufacturers, has asked KPMG for a report on how to make India a mobile phone manufacturing hub of the world. The industry, said Pankaj Mohindroo, president of ICA, has endorsed a plan to increase production of mobile phones in India from the current 130 million to 250 million yearly by 2012. Of this, at least 100 million will be for the export market. “The whole effort is to indigenise, so that mobile phone manufacturing becomes a Rs 50,000-crore industry by 2012,” says Mohindroo.

Companies say indigenisation, apart from saving costs, also ensures flexibility in responding to the changing market. “Currently, we keep inventory of two months. This will go down to one week if we indigenise. That means a saving in cost of 5-10 per cent, pretty large in this business,” said Mittal.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Suraj »

RIM relents, to open access to BlackBerry communication to Indian authorities
Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) has for the first time agreed to allow Indian security agencies to monitor its BlackBerry services, in an attempt to avert an outright government ban.

The company has offered to share with security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in 6 to 8 months to allow monitoring of chats, telecom department documents (dated August 2) available with ET show.

In an internal note, the telecom department said RIM had agreed to come around, following serious pressure from the Indian government. RIM will provide further details on its proposals to the telecom ministry on Tuesday, following which the communications ministry will ask the home ministry and Intelligence Bureau to take a call on whether these solutions adequately address their concerns, documents available with ET add.
This is a good step on RIM's part. Losing the India market as punitive retaliation by GoI would have been a major blow to them.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Sachin »

The RIM folks seems to be dilly-dallying. I just saw a report on the local daily that now RIM says it cannot compromise on the security. It also says that the security mechanism is in such a way that even RIM themselves would not be able to crack it.
Check up Mathrubhumi:English.

Heard that two 'Gelf' countries are also now planning to drum out RIM and Blackberry because of security concerns (mainly in the messaging area).
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

Sachin wrote:The RIM folks seems to be dilly-dallying. I just saw a report on the local daily that now RIM says it cannot compromise on the security. It also says that the security mechanism is in such a way that even RIM themselves would not be able to crack it.
Check up Mathrubhumi:English.

Heard that two 'Gelf' countries are also now planning to drum out RIM and Blackberry because of security concerns (mainly in the messaging area).
RIM has also refused to compromise in India.
Be interesting to see how the GOI reacts.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/busi ... 255487.cms


Saudi Arabia to stop BlackBerry services from Friday
AFP, Aug 4, 2010, 11.25am IST
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's telecommunication regulator said on Tuesday that it has ordered a suspension of BlackBerry services starting on Friday as the manufacturer of the devices has failed to meet its demands.

The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) said that "the way BlackBerry services are provided currently does not meet the regulatory criteria of the commission and the licencing conditions," in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by manish »

RIM seems to be fast sliding into a crisis situation. Their bread n butter smartphone market is under heavy attack from all sides - high end/low end/mid range - you name it, there is a competitor gaining share there. The latest 9800 Torch with BB OS 6 has elicited a collective 'meh' from most quarters.

They seem to be really worried about their one-trick-pony status in the market and trying hard to correct it by increasing focus on consumer market in addition to their core biz user market but so far they haven't been able to do much. Now the news of the second biggest mobile market in the world considering an outright ban surely won't be good news for RIM execs. (It is undeniable that we will be a very large market for smartphones too going forward despite the numbers being pretty small currently)

RIM has traditionally made (and still makes) some pretty good phones, but the market trends and the future potential look increasingly less rosy for them.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Raghavendra »

Unsolicited call to Pranab gets Raja cracking on tele-marketers http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article553639.ece

Spam SMS needs to be checked too, example of what i receive almost daily.

Congratulation ! Your mobile number has won you 1,000,000.00 Pounds at the on going 2010 award. For claim contact Dr.Fuller via Email:msndeptss96@hotmail.com

Why wont these kind people propose to mail money directly to home, i would gladly accept their offer. :mrgreen:
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Sachin »

Raghavendra wrote:Spam SMS needs to be checked too, example of what i receive almost daily.
I do get some irritating SMS about Airtel Radio (now what the heck is that??). But calling up Airtel customer care and pleading them to stop sending these SMS is a night mare. So just ignored it. It is these private telephone providers who made me realise that too much privatisation is also actually dangerous.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Raghavendra »

^ register here by entering you mob no http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/ai ... +registry/
within 45 days they will stop.
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

manish wrote:RIM seems to be fast sliding into a crisis situation. Their bread n butter smartphone market is under heavy attack from all sides - high end/low end/mid range - you name it, there is a competitor gaining share there. The latest 9800 Torch with BB OS 6 has elicited a collective 'meh' from most quarters.

They seem to be really worried about their one-trick-pony status in the market and trying hard to correct it by increasing focus on consumer market in addition to their core biz user market but so far they haven't been able to do much. Now the news of the second biggest mobile market in the world considering an outright ban surely won't be good news for RIM execs. (It is undeniable that we will be a very large market for smartphones too going forward despite the numbers being pretty small currently)

RIM has traditionally made (and still makes) some pretty good phones, but the market trends and the future potential look increasingly less rosy for them.
Why is the US poking it's nose in this case??

RIM is a canadian company and the canadian government is very silent on the issue.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 259633.cms

US in contact with India, UAE, Saudi Arabia over BlackBerry security issue
Aug 5, 2010, 10.14am IST

WASHINGTON: US has said it is in touch with countries like India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia over their concerns with regard to the security features of BlackBerry.

"There are issues attached to freedom of information, the flow of information, the use of technology. We are in touch with these governments," State Department spokesman P J Crowley told reporters at his daily news briefing.

"We're going to try to understand what their concerns are, the nature of the ongoing negotiations that they have with this particular company.

"And then you've touched on that there are number of countries that are in the midst of these negotiations and we'll see what the implications are," Crowley said in response to a question.

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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chackojoseph »

I tried to get some opinion. here is the various POV's

BlackBerry Vs India : Opinions decrypted
Abhijeet
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Abhijeet »

Security agencies in India are now demanding that BSNL stop providing 3G services, and that no new 3G services be started, till they can snoop on all traffic over those networks.

Do they get their idea of security threats to the country by watching TV channels? What were they doing all this time?
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by svinayak »

chetak wrote:
Why is the US poking it's nose in this case??

RIM is a canadian company and the canadian government is very silent on the issue.


US in contact with India, UAE, Saudi Arabia over BlackBerry security issue
Aug 5, 2010, 10.14am IST
Beacuse they spy using the same network. Duh...
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

From rediff.com ( could also go into IT folder)

Indian firm makes 1st cellphone virus scan

August 12, 2010 18:30 IST


"Quick Heal, Indias leading anti-virus solution providers, on Thursday launched PC2Mobile Scan -the world's first mobile phone virus scan in Kerala [ Images ].

Addressing newsmen here, Quick Heals Director and Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Katkar, said, "Today lots of mobile phones are left unprotected because of lack of awareness and unavailability of appropriate security product. One can find few anti-virus products from multinational companies that are available for certain mobile phone models mostly higher end mobile phones and PDAs. There are lots of mobile phone models for which there is no anti-virus protection available. Using the PC2Moblie Scan Technology one can easily find out if the mobile phone had any virus infection."
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by Tanaji »

Not sure I understand the above? Both Norton and McAfee offer scanners already

http://androidcommunity.com/tag/virus-scanner/

I believe there were scanners for Symbian S60 as well
amdavadi
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by amdavadi »

uncle is tapping into BB's network since 2001.They dont want GOI doing the same in India.
chetak
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

Abhijeet wrote:Security agencies in India are now demanding that BSNL stop providing 3G services, and that no new 3G services be started, till they can snoop on all traffic over those networks.

Do they get their idea of security threats to the country by watching TV channels? What were they doing all this time?
When these idiots have not provided proper services in the metros or even the rest of India, why are they trying to set up services in kashmir? What is the tearing hurry??

If the intelligence guys haven't got their act together so far then we probably need some guys with more intelligence.
chetak
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Re: Indian Telecom Folder

Post by chetak »

If germany is also considering a ban, there must be substance in this.

Still no answer as to why the americans are poking their nose into all this by supporting RIM under the guise of "free speech and international commerce"

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/Bla ... 85828.aspx

BlackBerry stock bounces as Germany mulls ban
Indo-Asian News Service
Toronto, August 12, 2010

After sinking by more than eight per cent last week over Saudi Arabia's ban threat, shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) rebounded heavily Monday even as Germany is reportedly mulling a ban on the smart phone over a "dramatic close at $56.80 amid news of a reported deal between RIM and Saudi Arabia on security issues related to BlackBerry Messenger.


Though RIM, which is headquartered at Waterloo near Toronto, has not said anything on the Saudi deal, it has been reported that the Canadian company will now allow the Saudi regulatory authorities access to BlackBerry users' encrypted data.

The US State Department, which promised last week to take up the ban issue with Saudi and UAE governments, said Monday: "There are reports of an agreement between RIM and Saudi Arabia."

US State Department officials reportedly met with RIM officials Monday to discuss the deal with the Saudi authorities.

Even as RIM officials heaved a sigh of relief after the Saudi deal, Germany also raised concerns over the smart phone.

According to reports, the German interior ministry has asked government departments to avoid using BlackBerry because of a "dramatic increase in cyber attacks", and instead opt for Simko devices offered by Deutsche Telekom.

Reports have quoted German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere as saying that "a rise in attacks against our networks and in particular against government networks" has led officials to reconsider whether the smart phones' security was aligned with Germany's own cyber security.

"BlackBerry's infrastructure is a company-owned closed system. But the access standard must be capable of being set by the government and not by a private company," the minister has been quoted as saying.

Amid this turmoil, RIM managed to unveil Monday its new BlackBerry Curve 3G to expand its globally popular Curve series of smart phones.

"The majority of people in the worldwide mobile phone market have yet to buy their first smartphone and the BlackBerry Curve 3G is designed to provide an extremely attractive and accessible choice that will help convince many of them to make the leap," said RIM president and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis at the launch.

"The new BlackBerry Curve 3G is a perfect choice for happily busy people who are looking for a user-friendly 3G smartphone to help them make the most of their day and to stay connected with their friends, family and co-workers," he said.

"The BlackBerry Curve 3G comes with BlackBerry 5 and is BlackBerry 6 ready," RIM said in a statement. BlackBerry 6 is the new operating system unveiled by the company last week.
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