Arun

More than the distance, you have to consider blockages in between like buildings, etc. The BSNL guys will check for the signal strength at your place and they will suggest what type of connection to take. Things won't be rosy all the time with BSNL WiMAX as I have seen the download and upload speed to vary a lot often. Sometimes I get only 1 mbps download speed while at other times I get up to 2 mbps. For upload speed as well I see 256 kbps at certain times while up to 2 mpbs at other times. BSNL WiMAX is my 3rd backup connection, so I don't use it all the time. I will check what speed I am getting tonight and update this post. kbps = kilobits per second mpbs = megabits per second The indoor and outdoor unit connects to PC using LAN port.

I got the CallerID pop up yesterday (i.e. after 15 days) and I selected "No" and it doesn't show the weird locations now. Yes, the service is running in the background though.

IP.Board forum software upgraded to version 3.1.2 - Please do not forget to do a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) of your browser to remove any cache from the older version. What's new? Other than the dozens of bugs fixed, one new feature is Archive Conversation. Now that these conversations are much like personal topics (threaded view) that can have many replies from many different participants the old system of simply allowing a downloadable text file isn't an option since introduction of IP.Board 3.x. In 3.1.2 you'll be able to email yourself a copy of the conversation. This will be sent as a HTML file attached to the email which you can download and store on your computer. When you're viewing a personal conversation, you'll see a new box on the left side: "Archive Conversation". Clicking this will send the email via 'ajax' meaning the screen doesn't refresh and you don't lose your place on the page. You will receive the full conversation as a HTML attachment file after which you can delete the conversations to save space.

hmmmm I thought it would get deactivated after 15 days

See: http://www.rimweb.in/forums/index.php?showtopic=26167

wow, great!

Just got a new Vodafone prepaid connection, got activated immediately with Rs.24 recharge and then topped up for Rs.444 (full talk time) for activating BIS 399 plan which was also instantly activated!

The application is already available for iPhone (see: ). The Android application is next and is under development.

Ok, I'm off to the Vodafone store now!

wow, so just Rs 399 per month for full BIS on Vodafone now?

ugh! well you cannot simply use it like that, needs to be programmed... and it can't be discussed in the public forum as it is illegal.

Upload Reliance .prl file using QPST

New "Handset Suggestions" forum added so that topics with requests for handset suggestions can be posted here. It will also help new members to go through the suggestion topics for reference and avoid creating a new similar request topic. Previous suggestion request topics from "Other Handsets" forum has been moved to the "Handset Suggestions" forum. Topics older than 2008 are left to be moved, if you come across a newer topic that needs to be moved to "Handset Suggestions" forum then please use the "Report" button.

You may be able to get it in that price range. Check the offers here: http://www.rimweb.in/forums/forum/50-buy-sell-bazaar/

Bharti AirTel loses top tech honcho to Reliance Communications Siliconindia Friday, 16 July 2010, 13:01 IST Kolkata: In a major executive movement, Bharti Airtel lost its CTO Jagbir Singh who moved in as the president of Technology and Networks at Reliance Communications (RCom). This is a crucial change in the run-up to the start of 3G networks in India. Singh held his post at Bharti since November 2001. He led the complete mobility network team, 3G strategy and planning team and Wimax deployment team at Bharti and was responsible for strategic planning of mobile network, providing strategic direction, deciding the network architecture and network vision. He was also responsible for Bharti's international ventures of 2G and 3G networks in Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Channel Islands in the UK. With over 20 years in the Telecom field, Singh has had working experiences with Nortel (in Asia-Pacific role), Lucent Technologies and Defense Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), Government of India.

Those who have a GSM handset, do you see Reliance GSM network in network settings when you do a manual search?

3) It uses threaded SMS, so sent SMS shows in the SMS thread. I guess there are 3rd party applications that can have separate holders though.

Reliance’s move for Digicable must be a first step Informa Telecoms & Media July 14, 2010 Reliance Communications’ purchase of a majority stake in leading cable operator Digicable has again proved that the Anil Ambani led company is capable of pulling a headline-grabbing deal out of the bag, but what does the acquisition really mean for the company’s ambitions in the Indian broadband market? After seeing the much-anticipated Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) auctions dominated by Infotel Broadband Services – backed by Reliance Industries (RIL), the company owned by his brother and business rival Mukesh Ambani – Anil Ambani must have realized that the broadband ambitions of Reliance Communications (RCOM) had taken a hit. Although RCOM had performed well in the country’s 3G auctions, winning spectrum in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the firm is expected to use the 3G spectrum mainly for voice rather than broadband services because of the shortage of capacity for voice services. Infotel Broadband Services landed nationwide spectrum at the BWA auction – from which RCOM withdrew once the bidding got far hotter than it had originally expected – and it looked like the elder of brothers has positioned his firm better in the broadband marketplace. However, the deal for Digicable – theoretically at least – swings the broadband pendulum back towards RCOM because it potentially gives the operator access to a genuine mass market of fixed-line broadband subscribers at whom it can target triple-play or even quad-play services. In addition, although RIL’s swoop for Infotel has given it 20MHz of 2.3GHz spectrum in all of the country’s telecom operating circles, the firm’s preference to use TD-LTE rather than WiMAX for its network rollout means that it will not be able to deploy commercial broadband services for around two years. The deal Once the deal for Digicable, which has around 8.5 million cable TV subs across India, has been completed, the cable operator will be merged into a new firm, Reliance DigiCom, which will also house RCOM’s BigTV DTH services as well as its nascent IPTV offerings. RCOM has yet to publicly confirm the details for the Digicable deal but local reports say that the all-stock deal will leave RCOM with a 60% stake in Reliance DigiCom with the remainder of the new firm owned by current Digicable shareholders, including the firm’s founder JS Kohli and UK private equity firm Ashmore. However, although the deal unquestionably strengthens RCOM’s presence in the pay TV market by combining Digicable’s huge cable subs base with the BigTV DTH platform, the value of the deal in helping RCOM significantly improve its position in the broadband market is harder to ascertain. Although Digicable’s headline numbers of fast-approaching 9 million cable TV subscribers are impressive at face value, it is the quality of those subscribers and the networks on which they offer services which is of paramount importance to RCOM’s broadband ambitions. The masterful leadership of JS Kohli has helped Digicable become the largest MSO (multiple system operator) in the Indian market within by October 2009 – little more than two years after it launched services in June 2007 – with the rapid ascent being fuelled by a combination of acquisition deals – the firm had already bought around 70 independent MSOs or local cable operators (LCOs) by the end of 2009 – and franchise agreements LCOs. However, as with all of the country’s MSOs, the vast majority of Digicable’s subscribers are not owned directly by the firm but are instead controlled via franchise deals with LCOs. This type of deal has been one of the traditional barriers to the growth of cable modem services in India. Although the MSOs are happy to find the capital to fund their own network upgrades in order to offer cable modem services, they are very nervous about funding network upgrades for LCOs that might easily switch their allegiance to another MSO once their current franchise agreement expires. The execution RCOM has traditionally been hamstrung in India’s fixed-line broadband market by a lack of last-mile connectivity – principally because of the Department of Telecommunications’ continuing refusal to unbundle the last-mile networks of state-owned BSNL and MTNL – forcing RCOM and other private players to deploy their own last-mile copper networks. RCOM has already rolled out an Ethernet-based network, which it has connected to around 1 million buildings in 44 cities and which it hopes to extend to 1.5 million buildings by the end of 2010 – although this network is targeted at the corporate rather than the residential market. As a result, RCOM is faced with two choices if it wants to have significant presence in India’s residential fixed-line broadband market – either roll out very expensive FTTH/HFC/DSL networks or buy operators that already own network infrastructure. This is where the Digicable deal really comes into play because it potentially gives RCOM a fixed-line connection to a huge residential subscriber base – although RCOM will now have to invest a great deal more capital to bring this link to full fruition. At present, Digicable’s cable modem business is run through its sister company Broadband Pacenet which has rolled out cable modem services to corporate and residential subscribers in several cities including Mumbai – and the firm does hold a nationwide ISP license. The task now for RCOM will be two-fold. The first will be to invest in upgrading the last-mile networks of the LCOs which are directly owned by the new Reliance DigiCom in order to allow them to offer cable modem services, which will allow RCOM to seriously attack the fixed-line residential broadband market. The second will be to work through the huge list of LCO franchisees and figure out which of these has real value in potentially offering cable modem services and then try and strike acquisition deals with those operators with a view to then upgrading networks to offer cable modem services. The deal to buy Digicable is potentially a game-changing move by RCOM in India’s broadband market but the devil will really be in the detail of the execution as the firm tries to transition Digicable from a plain old MSO to a next-generation triple-play operator.

That was suggested earlier, but not possible to implement in the current login system, maybe possible in future releases.

New sub-forum "Completed Trades" have been added under Buy-Sell forum and moved all closed buy/sell topics to it.

As mentioned in his post, you can PM him with the details requested

Back to data Business Standard - Surajeet Das Gupta / New Delhi July 12, 2010, 0:43 IST Mukesh Ambani is re-entering the telecom business and is betting big on wireless broadband. Can he put India on the world data map? Mukesh AmbaniIn 2002, when Mukesh Ambani had launched his mobile and fixed-line telecom services on the CDMA platform, he was determined to rewrite the rules of the game. Unlike his rivals who were out to chase revenue from voice calls, his strategy was to go for the data traffic. He decided to offer consumers high-speed internet access at home as well as on the move, which could be used for high-quality video or music downloads, but at a bargain price of around Rs 500 a month. His targets were ambitious: At least 40 per cent of the total revenue (mobile and broadband) and at least 25 per cent of the mobile revenue of Reliance Infocomm should come from data within five years. “We are gung ho about data. We expect this market to boom if we offer customers at home and office applications at affordable rates,” he had said in an interview to Business Standard. But his dream of putting India on the world data map came a cropper. The Ambani brothers split in 2005, and Mukesh Ambani had to turn Reliance Infocomm over to his younger brother, Anil Ambani. (It is now called Reliance Communications.) He also promised never to enter telecom again. Meanwhile, large telecom service operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Tata Teleservices continued to concentrate on voice calls. Tariffs consequently dropped to amongst the lowest in the world. And data took the back seat. There are over 600 million users of mobile telephony in the country, but only 10 per cent of the industry’s revenue comes from non-data streams, that too largely SMSs. The inability of state-owned MTNL (in Mumbai and Delhi) and BSNL (in the rest of the country) to offer last-mile connectivity has led to broadband penetration of less than 1 per cent with only 9 million subscribers. The market for data remains hugely under-serviced. In the last few weeks, the wheel has turned a full circle. The Ambanis have smoked the peace pipe and Mukesh Ambani is free to pursue his data-driven telecom dream one more time. No sooner had the ink on the Ambani agreement dried that he picked up 95 per cent in Mahendra Nahata-promoted Infotel Broadband Services, the only company which has broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum — a technology which offers high speed wireless broadband to consumers — across all the 22 telecom circles in the country. It had paid Rs 12,847 crore for this spectrum in an auction. Mukesh Ambani will pay Rs 4,800 crore to subscribe to fresh equity in the company. So what will be his second-innings strategy? Mukesh Ambani and his team are not talking officially yet, but internal presentations, discussions with analysts and vendors who have had detailed meetings with his A team as well as key executives clearly give some idea of the method in the madness. To be sure, a lot has changed in the last five years. With over nine operators in each circle (compared to four or five in 2006), voice tariffs have dropped to their lowest and the service has become a commodity. This has depressed the profit margins of the service operators. The realisation has sunk in that data alone can help them out of the logjam. This explains why there was such a scramble for 3G spectrum in the recent auction. Also, mobile penetration in metros has hit 100 per cent; data thus becomes crucial for service operators to drive up revenue. New devices like the Apple iPad will fuel growth in the market. Data over voice It is clear that wireless broadband is the way ahead. And that is what Mukesh Ambani is banking on. In a presentation to analysts, his people have said that China has over 130 million broadband customers, India can reach that number in the next three to four year, and they want leadership position in that market. They could get subscribers by offering unmatched data speeds. This shouldn’t be a tall order because only 5 per cent mobile subscribers use broadband wireless at the moment. Their claims are backed of course by unmatched spectrum assets — 20 MHz in BWA compared to 5 MHz in 3G. It means Infotel can offer high-speed applications to more subscribers than its 3G counterparts. To the consumer, it means he can get data speeds which are five to seven times faster than 3G. Says a senior executive of a leading mobile service operator which has successfully bid for 3G spectrum: “If you are looking at data, BWA is far superior. But its potential to offer voice is still not tested. And India has a large voice market.” Analysts and experts say that Mukesh Ambani has got the timing right. Karvy Stock Broking Analyst Harit Shah says: “As of now, the data market is in its formative stage. Voice is still the major revenue generator but there is potential demand for data, and tapping that demand effectively will define success.” Shah expects Mukesh Ambani will not go for the retail market initially; he will start with the enterprise market. On its part, Infotel has clearly identified the market: Small businesses which are looking to connect their employees, the retail market which entails connecting millions of homes as well as offering mobile solutions, and the vast rural markets which cannot be connected by expensive copper for broadband. “The strategy, considering the licence cost, would be to build a model which will be able to attract a large volume of customers,” says Protiviti Consulting Country Head Mrityunjay Kapoor. Most experts say that Mukesh Ambani will choose the long-term evolution (LTE) technology route instead of WiMax (an alternate technology which he might use for the intermediate period). Compare the speeds: At present, companies like Tata Teleservices offer dongles which transfer data at 3 megabyte per second; 3G services will give speeds of 14 to 20 megabyte per second; and LTE, which is a fourth-generation or 4G technology, provides speeds of 80 to 100 megabyte per second. The technology is of course new. Its commercial deployment was done recently by Telia Sonera in Spain, that too in a few cities. But the good news is that over 22 LTE networks will be up and running by the end of this year, and 110 networks in 48 countries are backing this technology. This means there will be enough equipment available for Mukesh Ambani at reasonable prices. Vendors say that initially high-speed access on LTE will be available only through dongles (like Tata Photon), which means you can be mobile with a laptop or take a fixed wireless connection at home. But mobile devices are expected to hit the market by next year which would be compatible with 2G, 3G as well LTE networks. It may take these handsets up to two years to gain scale and become affordable. (The entry-level prices are expected to be $200 to $300.) These phones will ensure seamless transfer from one network to another. Thus you could be on 3G network in Delhi but in congested areas like Connaught Place the phone will switch to an LTE network on its own. What about voice? But won’t Mukesh Ambani ever offer voice connectivity? Yes, he has said he will offer voice over internet protocol or net telephony, but this service under the current regulatory framework will be limited to consumers within his broadband wireless network. That is because net telephony is limited between personal computers; you cannot call a phone outside your network or a fixed line. But, as analysts say, the rules could always change. Technology experts say that LTE networks are not geared for voice telephony, as this can lead to a fall in the utilisation of the spectrum. Though Mukesh Ambani has said that he will not look for a 2G or a 3G network, most competitors say he has no alternative if he wants to become a big player. Says the CEO of a CDMA mobile company: “I don’t see any business case based on just data in India. He has to buy a 2G or 3G company and offer BWA over it. Otherwise, he will remain a small player.” But there are alternatives. One, Mukesh Ambani could initially bundle free net telephony minutes with data services to create traction amongst consumers, especially in the small-scale sector. Two, he could go for a virtual network by buying capacity in bulk from incumbents and sell it under its own brand. The policy for this is expected to be cleared soon by the government. Three, he could sign a roaming agreement with a 3G operator to offer LTE as well as 3G services. Mukesh Ambani will look at low-cost deployment of network. Since Infotel is the only pan-India BWA operator, the vendors and technology it selects will virtually determine who controls the Indian market. Says telecom analyst Mahesh Uppal: “Mukesh Ambani choosing LTE will determine the way technology will evolve in India. The fact is that he has bought a good asset; whether he has paid too much, only time will tell.” Mukesh Ambani doesn’t have to start from scratch because infrastructure can now be shared. “Part of the strategy is to be asset light; so Infotel will outsource about 15,000 towers and the fibre optic network, which it requires for a pan-India launch. This will reduce costs substantially,” says a source close to the deal. Mukesh Ambani is aware of the challenges such a strategy could face. One is to build applications which will make high-speed broadband worthwhile to subscribe. It has to go beyond just surfing the net. His team in its internal presentations has argued that personal computers and broadband internet are perceived to be business applications. This perception needs to be changed which requires bringing in entertainment-based broadband applications. Two, the 3G networks are unlikely to let him walk away with the market without a fight. Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices might not have BWA spectrum but are depending on 3G for their data services, which gives adequate speeds for the mass market. The battle for the data market could see a bloodbath like in the voice market.

MTNL will be ready for MNP in a month: CMD CIOL - Wednesday, July 07, 2010 Amidst the uncertainty over the implementation of the Mobile Number Portability, which has been delayed further, as the telecom players are not yet ready with the MNP gateways, state-run telecom operator Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL) said that it has ordered for the MNP gateways and the infrastructure would be ready in one month's time. “We have ordered for the gateway and we are waiting for the software to come. We would meet the new deadline of October 31, to implement the service,” MTNL chairman and managing director Kuldip Singh told CIOL on the sidelines of an event here today, where Novatium Solutions launched MTNL Nova Navigator Service for MTNL broadband subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai. Singh said that MTNL will use its own server for making gateway and will deploy MNP software on those servers.

Isn't Reliance EVDO or MTS MBlaze or TATA Photon+ coverage available in your area?

See: