Arun

I hope you are aware of the undersea cable cut near Egypt couple of days ago which knocked out internet services in India. I guess BSNL was most affected, along with VSNL and Reliance. Though my VSNL/TATA Indicom WiMAX connection in Bangalore did not have any problem. Even though it will take about 10 days for the damaged cable to be restored, ISPs are implementing alternate routes through the Pacific and Atlantic. For those who have been affected by this disruption, how is the connectivity now? Stable or still slow and which ISP are you using ?

Bharti makes hay while the sun shines ! Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel spar over link charges Economic Times - 6 Feb, 2008 The cut in undersea submarine cables near Egypt’s northern coast last week which had impacted internet services in India, has now led to a war of words between India’s largest private telcos — Reliance Communications (Rcom) and Bharti Airtel. The issue began with Rcom, whose undersea cables FLAG and FALCON were damaged, seeking additional capacity from Bharti on the latter’s i2i cable. Rcom has alleged that Bharti was severely overcharging — up to 12 times — for this additional capacity, which it required only for an ‘interim period of 15 days’, even as the FLAG and FALCON cables were being repaired. Bharti though has dismissed these allegations as totally baseless. When contacted, the Bharti spokesperson said: “We have not received any communication on this subject. In any case, as per policy, we do not comment on any agreement that are bilateral in nature.” Rcom has been the worst affected as both its cables — FLAG and FALCON — have been cut. The Se-Me-Me-4 cable, on which both Bharti and the Tatas-owned VSNL have capacity was also cut during the same accident, but both these companies were able to minimise the impact and re-route traffic within a few hours through their other cables — Bharti through i2i and VSNL through the Tata Indicom cable and Se-Me-We-3 cables. It is also learnt that Rcom has sought the intervention of both sector regulator Trai and even the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and requested that the government put in place a framework for industry co-operation and co-ordination which will mandate that undersea cable operators share bandwidth on a cost plus charges during such emergencies. DoT sources said they were looking into Rcom’s complaints. When contacted Rcom officials declined to comment on the issue. Meanwhile Trai sources said that representatives from both Bharti and Rcom had already met the regulator on the issue. “The regulator had facilitated talks between both companies and the issue has been solved. We intervene only when both companies do not arrive at a solution with regard to bandwidth costs, but in this case, the companies have solved it,” Trai sources added. However, industry sources maintain that the issue was far from solved. Adding further fuel to the fire, an industry source said that Rcom had been requesting Bharti for additional bandwidth on i2i since November 2007, but the latter had refused citing technical feasibility due to upgrade on its (i2i’s) Chennai-based landing station. This further complicated matters for RCOM especially after its another undersea cable - FALCON - too broke down near Dubai. and presented difficulties for the ADAG group promoted company to maintain its networks in India, the source said. “Generally the charge is Rs 12 lakh per stpm but Bharti had demanded nearly 10-12 times more charge for the use of its Chennai-based landing station,” the source added.

I'm on BSNL Home 500 plan as well now, and the speed looks OK for browsing. I haven't checked downloads, have qued them up for the night ! This is how the "alternate route" method worked out when the cable broke... Hydra-headed nature helps Net rebound after cable cut Times News Network February 04, 2008 It was just a blip on the monitoring screens of a fortified room in Chennai, but a full-blown crisis 5,500 kilometres away, off the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt. Last Wednesday, in the worldwide puppetry show called internet, a string had snapped. The Western world, with banks and factories and telephone networks to run, had just lost connection with its housekeeper and doorman, India. There was only one thing at stake: global business. The potential danger from the two breaks in undersea cables in the Mediterranean was immense. Western businesses and customers depend on global connectivity to outsourced service providers such as India to run their daily affairs. A disruption could have stranded them in a virtual no-man’s-land and India could have lost credibility as an always-on supplier of an ever-growing variety of services. Except that none of this happened. India and world can thank the design of the internet, Hydra-headed as it is, to this happy turn of events. Within a few milliseconds, life was back to normal, almost. It was not by coincidence that the breakdown in SEA-ME-WE (South East Asia, Middle East, Western Europe) and FLAG (Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) cables that carry the bulk of data and voice traffic from India to the West left only a limited impact for businesses. It was the combined effort of a dynamic disaster recovery technology and quick intervention by machine and humans that averted a catastrophe. “In a way, this cable break showed how robust internet is, because data traffic got rerouted dynamically and there was not more than a delay of 60 milliseconds,” says Sify technology vice-president PK Saji. “With such a cut in the traditional switched network, you would have got cut off totally.” Most of the connectivity among nations is through optic fibre cables laid under the sea. Satellites cannot match their capacity and land cables can only go so far. Undersea cables connect continents and some of them are nearly as long as the Earth’s circumference. For instance, SEA-ME-WE 3 is one-inch thick and 39,000 kilometres long. Ten such cables can stretch all the way to the Moon. Ten years ago, the whole of India had only 1 gigabits per second (gbps) of international connectivity through these cables. That was what 500 high-speed internet users in the United States enjoyed. This tenuous link was virtually meaningless to large companies trying to provide outsourcing services online to the rest of the world. Just one bottleneck would’ve cut off the country. So, those who could, bought their own connections and others waited on the fringes. As private players entered the internet service provider business and as the country entered the new millennium, capacity started growing rapidly. Today, India has 18 terabits (tbps), that is 18,000 times the bandwidth that it had a decade ago. In addition, there are a number of privately accessed cables that go out of the Indian coast. The major cables that knot India in the global web are SEA-ME-WE 3 and 4, FLAG, i2i (India to Island) and TIC (Tata Indicom Cable). Smaller, but important, systems are FALCON (FLAG Alcatel-Lucent Optical Network) to Saudi Arabia used by Reliance group and Bharat-Lanka Cable System to Colombo used by Bharat Sanchar Nigam. Hundreds of such cable systems criss-crossing the seabed form a mesh of bandwidth around the world. Internet data is split into small capsules called packets, each of which can travel separately but be regrouped with others at the endpoint. If there is a cut in one of these wires, data packets can bounce off those lines and travel through other lines. In switched networks like traditional long-distance telephony, this is not possible. “IP (Internet Protocol) networks are the new generation technology to route any traffic through any route, any time. But for this resilience, the system would have collapsed with such a cable problem,” says Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia. For high-value customers such as outsourcing companies, the rerouting gets done automatically by the systems at the ISP’s hub. For instance, at Sify’s control room in Chennai, the computers poll the global cable network, on land and under water, every 30 seconds. “It can be a powercut in Kashmir or a cable break in the Mediterranean. It takes a maximum of 30 seconds for the traffic to go on another line, say, through Singapore,” says Saji. The hero of the last week’s cable break incident, at least for India, was i2i, which links Mumbai with Singapore via Chennai. It has an operational capacity of about 160 gbps, but can light up to a whopping 8.5 tbps. It took a bulk of the rerouted load and essentially served as the alternative route to the US and Europe. The twin cable breaks in the Mediterranean robbed India of about 1.4 terabits of bandwidth. This was less than 10% of what India could tap from its existing connections. Compare this with a similar cable break in December 2006, when an earthquake in Taiwan region, cut of 20 tbps. That time, thankfully, it was on the eastern side and the India’s traffic towards the US and Europe was not affected. The real sufferers during cable breaks are the individual internet users. Their connectivity is low priority for many ISPs who derive much of their profits from companies. The benefits of dynamic rerouting don’t come free. Large users pay a premium fee to make sure cable cuts don’t stop their traffic. For the small guy, a cable break could lead to disconnection or sluggish download speeds. Despite ISP claims, the small guy took a big knock during last week’s problems. Internet industry experts say the incident has shown that it is far too risky for a company to have its own line under the sea or subscribe to just one connection. Contrary to the sophisticated image of global networks, the world communicates through a small number of bottlenecks and a snap could mean trillions of dollars in losses. “I expect this incident to teach a lesson to our ISPs. They will all now rush to book capacity on other lines such as i2i. This will spur demand for the Pacific side cables,” Chharia says. “At the end of it, it was a close shave for India. When the whole world is looking to India, we couldn’t have let this shake our reliability.”

well, those are for business plans

Probably since it is an adware which communicates with their server to get the advertisements. You can check the newer version here: http://dl.get.freesoft.ru/902126029/19557/setup.exe There are some Indian TV channels also like CNN-IBN, CNBCTV18, etc. with 2 minute delay. Check out Bombay Beats from 1.FM here: http://www.1.fm/Stations/BombayBeats/TuneIn.aspx

like a backup route... some traffic has been routed via SEA-ME-WE3 cable system, but much more of the traffic is routed the other way around the world, across the Pacific Ocean. There could be delay in milliseconds than the normal route.

Just got the information that you will get a dedicated/static IP if you opt for a postpaid connection. it must be for higher downloads.. heavy users and not for basic users... No, its the same connection. TATA Indicom wireline broadband postpaid also provides dedicated IP at no extra cost. I'm not sure how "higher downloads" and "dedicated IP" have a relation?

The Hindu Business Line Mumbai, Jan. 31, 2008 Reliance Communications has said that it will spend about $6 billion (Rs 24,000 crore) for the next fiscal ending March 2009 in strengthening its wireless network. The firm has also revised its capex for the current year ending March 2008 to $5.2 billion (Rs 21,000 crore) from $4.5 billion (Rs 18,000 crore) as planned initially. This is taking into account the Rs 1,651-crore licence fee that Reliance had paid to start pan-India GSM operations, the group Chairman, Mr Anil Ambani said in a conference call with analysts. “Of the total capex plan for the next fiscal, we project our investments in emerging fast growing areas like enterprises business, FLAG Telecom and others at $2.7 billion,” said Mr Ambani. The company will invest $2 billion in Reliance Infratel and spend another $1.3 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) for its nationwide GSM expansion programme. Reliance Tower Company will have 60,000 telecom towers by March 2009, from its present tower strength of around 25,000. Responding to a query on the expected launch of its nationwide GSM services, Mr. Ambani indicated the company is looking at an ‘end of fiscal 2008-09’ timeframe. Reliance Communications is expanding its GSM network to all 23 circles from the current 8 circles. end of financial year 2008 - 09 will be around March 31, 2009

VSNL to roll out (Fixed) WiMAX in 12 cities next year The Hindu Business Line Chennai, January 31, 2008 After the successful launch of its WiMAX services in Bangalore, VSNL intends to roll out the product in 11 more cities by March 2009. Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad will be the first three among them, Mr Srinivasa Addepalli, Senior Vice President-Corporate Strategy, said on Thursday. WiMAX, a wireless broadband technology, will bring internet to homes. With WiMAX, you get a little box fastened to your window (because the spectrum allocated is not enough for the box to be next to the computer). The box is connected to the PC either by wire or by Wi-Fi and you start browsing the Internet. VSNL promises speeds of 1 mbps, good enough to download pictures and video, but still not enough to watch a cricket match on the PC. Huge demand Speaking to journalists here, Mr Addepalli said that VSNL, which proposes to spend Rs 2,000 crore on WiMAX, sees a customer potential of close to 30 million for these services. In Bangalore, the company did not even have to market. It had a huge list of customers who had asked for broadband but had not got it — it was a simple task to sell WiMAX-based broadband to these customers. The offering is slightly more expensive, because, “wireless is more reliable”. But Mr Addepalli is not worried about competition because of the huge demand for broadband, which he feels the current broadband suppliers are not able to meet. He notes that there are 10 million people with personal computers, but only 3 million with broadband. “There is no reason to believe those with PCs do not want broadband,” Mr Addepalli said, adding that with devices such as smart phones coming in, demand for broadband would only go up.

It's great to share with you the 4th Anniversary of RIMweb.in ! The count down has begun and yet another year has passed now. It has always seemed possible and today we are here celebrating an occasion close to our hearts! With a robust online community of 19,000+ members and 92,000+ posts for an Indian Forum, speaks for itself! Keeping in sync with the latest happenings in the telecom & communications industry in India, RIMweb.in has always received commendable support from all you members! Not to forget, RIMweb.in is an unbiased independent public discussion forum for the Reliance Mobile subscribers community. Today we can proudly say that the discussion forum has managed to help and support fellow members for all their queries, grievances and become a platform for sharing experiences in an efficient and effective manner. It has been a long plausible journey has left its marks on the Internet and in the hearts of many, individually. On behalf of all the members & moderators at RIMweb.in, we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year too ! Congratulations once again to you, for the 4th Anniversary of the RIMweb Community!

Just got the information that you will get a dedicated/static IP if you opt for a postpaid connection.

Yes, you can post.

Yup, http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=75598

I travel in train from Trivandrum to Bangalore couple of times in a month and the connectivity is brilliant that I can stay connected to the internet on my laptop most of the time, especially throughout Kerala where I guess the second phase of network expansion is complete.

Rajeev, I have added LG RD 6600 to the list now, you can select it from "My Controls" > "Edit Profile Information" Thank you for the suggestion for choosing multiple handsets, I will have it added soon after checking.

Mobile games development company Jump Games, a subsidiary of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s Reliance Entertainment, has signed an exclusive three-year deal with Manchester United Football Club, one of the world’s richest soccer clubs. The $100 million deal, one of the largest in the mobile gaming space, will involve Jump Games designing, developing and distributing mobile games with Manchester United, which jointly tops the English Premier League tables with London rivals Arsenal. While Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment, refused to comment on the deal value, he said, “Jump Games’ tie-up with Manchester United brings us a step closer to our core focus on providing quality entertainment to audiences across the globe.” “With Manchester United on board, we can look forward to setting global standards in the mobile entertainment space,” he added. The first game, “Manchester United Word It!”, will be launched in March and the second game, based on soccer, is expected in April or May. After that, Jump Games will introduce a new game every two months. “We are committing to developing at least six games each year for Manchester United. We also plan to expand our portfolio, since this is a very catalogue-driven business,” said Salil Bhargava, CEO, Jump Games. The mobile games will be available globally and the price points will vary from market to market. For instance, in India Jump Games will operate in two models — pay-per-play and perpetual download. The first model will cost Rs 5 and the session will last for half an hour to an hour. The second will cost between Rs 50 and Rs 99. In Europe, the game could cost in the range of ¤3-5. Bhargava estimates that the tie-up will contribute 10 to 15 per cent of Jump Games’ revenues in three years. The game developed by Jump Games will be available globally through local network operators. To this end, Jump Games is said to be in talks with leading telecom service providers both in India and overseas. The revenue-sharing terms between Jump Games, Manchester United and telecom operators will vary from country to country. In India, the company’s share is expected to be 30 to 45 per cent, in Japan 90 per cent, in Europe 50 to 60 per cent and in other Asian countries 50 per cent. In India, Jump Games has two developing centres based in Mumbai and Pune, of which Pune is the larger unit with 100 game developers.

Press Trust of India January 24, 2008 18:11 IST Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today mandated all service providers to provide a hard copy of the bill free of cost to its post-paid subscribers. The order, effective from January 24, would be enforceable across all types of tariff plans of mobile--GSM and CDMA--and fixed line services, Trai announced in a statement today. Trai had proposed an amendment to Telecommunication Tariff Order early this month under which a hard copy or printed copy of the bill is required to be given free of cost to all postpaid customers of telecom access service. The provision of the hard copy of bills would enable customers to understand and satisfy themselves about the genuineness of the bill. They would be able to verify charges made in the bill and facilitate the making of payments, among other things. The regulator observed in its statement that the service providers in other sectors such as power, gas, water utility services did not charge for providing hard copies of bills. The hard copy of the bill would always be required, as not every telecom subscriber would have an access to the computer and internet to obtain their bill through e-mail, it said. The provision of itemised bill in respect of long-distance calls free of cost had already been mandated, it added.

Since there is no broadband connection available in your area, you can consider Reliance NetConnect. I guess you will require a download limit based plan instead of a time based plan which will prove costly especially since you do trading. You can opt for the Freedom plan at Rs.650 per month if you do not have much downloads, which comes with 1 GB data transfer. Huawei EC325 is good and costs around Rs.2850. Do not expect great speeds, but you should be able to achieve 75 - 100 kbps average if there are good signals in your area.

Are you referring to Wimax broadband or wireline broadband ?

Monday, January 21, 2008 The Hindu Chennai: Anil Ambani-piloted Reliance Communications (RCOM) has awarded Huawei, a leader in providing next generation telecommunications networks, a nation-wide GSM roll-out contract. The deal is estimated to be worth over Rs. 2,000 crores. The equipment contract to Huawei is the first nation-wide GSM roll-out contract for electronic equipment. Reliance Communications, sources said, would award more contracts in various other equipment categories over the next few weeks. Under its GSM roll-out plan, the Anil Ambani company is planning to invest in excess of Rs,6,000 crores in GSM electronics alone. The award of contract to Huawei comes in the wake of RCOM getting formal approval for additional radio waves, which will enable it to roll out pan-India mobile phones services using the GSM technology. RCOM, which has already a nation-wide presence in rival CDMA technology, has been offering GSM mobile phone services in eight circles - West Bengal, Kolkata, North-East, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. Recently, the company got start-up spectrum to launch nation-wide GSM services under its existing Unified Access Service Licence (UASL). "The grant of GSM spectrum to Reliance Communications in 14 circles reaffirms the company's stance on UASL being a technology neutral licence," sources said. The nation-wide roll-out of GSM technology, company sources said, would commence a few months hence. ``We will deploy next generation IP (Internet Protocol) enabled GSM network,'' a top company official said. The launch of GSM services, sources said, would enable the company harness substantial economies of scale of resources - the back-end network and front-end customer-interface infrastructure. Reliance Communication claims that it enjoys a market share of 60 per cent in the CDMA space. It claims to enjoy a market share of 30-35 per cent in circles where it currently offers both CDMA and GSM services.

Business Standard January 21, 2008 Reliance Communication will invest Rs 20,000 crore this year in an attempt to extend its urban and rural coverage to 98 per cent and 67 per cent respectively. Speaking at a press conference in Kolkata organised by TDSAT, N K Mangla, head of the regulatory department of Reliance Communication, said, “We plan to have a customer capacity of 8 million or 55 per cent of the population in 2008.” Reliance also plans to cover 95 per cent of highways, 93 per cent of railways, 6,000 towns and five lakh villages in 2008. Currently, the company has 22,000 towers. It is likely to spend around $2.5 billion on the electronics for GSM services, and build 43,000 new towers. Reliance officials also claim that they will have 40,000 towers up and running by the end of this fiscal. According to Mangla, there is need for more telecommunication service regulations in the face of competition. “Recently, due to over 60 per cent telecom sector growth, competition and disputes among telecom operators and related sectors have increased and therefore there is need for more regulations in the sector. New regulations should focus on smooth convergence of telecom and information technology services and a level playing-field for all operators,” Mangla said.

No, they offer a dynamic IP in the range: 59.164.100.x

Correction: SpeedTiger from ShareKhan was not working at that time actually. It is working fine when I checked today, so the port isn't blocked.

GSM firms ready to launch services with less spectrum Business Standard - Mumbai January 21, 2008 In a desperate attempt to grab spectrum and start operations in new circles ahead of rivals, leading GSM operators have informed the government that they are willing to start services with less than 4.4 MHz spectrum. Vodafone Essar has intimated its willingness to start operations in new circles where the availability of spectrum is less than 4.4 MHz. According to informed sources, other service providers like Bharti Airtel and Aircel Communications too have expressed their readiness to start operations with lesser spectrum. This is in variance with current norms, where operators need to have at least 4.4 MHz of spectrum to kick off their services. This, experts said, would also compromise the quality of their services. The initiative comes at a time when the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is looking at ways to improve the quality of mobile telephone services in the country. The current plans of the GSM operators will require special permission from the telecommunications ministry. “A lot of GSM operators have informed us that they were willing to commence operations where initial spectrum is less than 4.4 MHz. At present there are a lot of circles in the country where the availability of initial spectrum is much less than 4.4 MHz,” an officer in the Department of Telecommunications told Business Standard. He pointed out that these circles where the GSM operators want to start their services include certain metros where higher bands have been allocated, and border areas where spectrum of just around 3 MHz is available. When contacted, the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), the lobby group for GSM operators, confirmed the development. COAI Director General TV Ramachandran said: “Starting the services is our primary concern and we are ready to commence operations with lower frequencies in circles where higher frequencies are not available. We want the services to take off.”

I finally got the connection on Saturday ! The enthusiasm shown by the Sales person didn't prevail after he collected the CAF and cheque. He wasn't responsible at all and gave me contact numbers of other VSNL executives instead to check the status. I had to contact them many times to get them install the connection. I was able to get the contact number of their installation in-charge executive and after contacting him for a couple of days, he sent someone on Saturday after apologizing for the delay. The installation personnel was more knowledgable and effecient than the guys who came from Reliance. Most importantly for me, the base station of TATA was closer to the area where I live than Reliance's base station. Hence there wasn't any issue with the signal and took only a few minutes for them to position the antenna and the connection was activated within a few minutes. They use the same type of antenna (as Reliance) from Telsima and the PowerDsine 3001 Power over Ethernet (POE) device. Once good thing is that they withdraw the cheque only after the connection is active, unlike Reliance where you have to cancel the connection and wait for the refund if the connection is not feasible. Antenna I have been using the connection for the past 24 hours and there wasn't any disconnection until now. It uses a Web Dialer to login (probably because mine is prepaid), and I think it gets automatically logged out after 8 hours. The speed has been almost constant. I am on the 256 kbps unlimited plan and I do get above 250 kbps average speed most of the time. It is a 2:1 connection, so upload speed will be half. There doesn't seem to be any port blocking and most applications are working fine including uTorrent. Unfortunately for me, the SpeedTiger application from ShareKhan doesn't work as its port seems to be blocked. I will request Technical Support to unblock it, that will help me test their Customer Support, which is known to be "pathetic" (atleast for the wireline broadband service). Hope the connection will remain stable in the coming days as well !