Karthik R

KOLKATA/DELHI: The telecom department has just told the home ministry that Aditya Birla Group-promoted Idea Cellular’s monitoring solutions for the super-secure BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) do not make the cut. Idea Cellular, incidentally, is the only mobile phone company to have demonstrated interception solutions for BIS. In an internal communique to the home ministry, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said that Idea’s encryption solution is ‘user-unfriendly’ as it fails to open any emails with .jpg attachments, coupled with the fact that all intercepted content is loaded with junk data. “The email and web browsing interception mechanism demonstrated by Idea Cellular is not user-friendly as the intercepted content is embedded in undesirable junk data, making it difficult to locate the actual useful content in the intercepted email. The system also could not open any emails with .jpg attachments. The company should be asked to provide the tools to open all email attachments, including those in .jpg formats,” notes a telecom department communique to the home ministry, which was reviewed by ET. The telecom department also wants the home ministry to give companies like Nokia and Cisco the same treatment as BlackBerry by nudging them to demonstrate encryption solutions for their range of enterprise services offered in India. “The home ministry should assess Nokia and Cisco’s compliance levels for their enterprise services, in so far as providing interception solutions in step with the requirements of the law enforcement agencies,” said a telecom department official with direct knowledge of the matter. The latest developments come as Canada’s Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the BlackBerry smartphone , edges closer to the end-January 2011 deadline of sharing the encryption keys and codes of its secure email and BlackBerry Messenger services with India’s security establishments. In a customer update, aimed at allaying concerns of an impending ban, RIM asserts that it “continues to be as co-operative as possible with the government in the spirit of supporting legal and national security requirements.” Source : Economic Times

To sum up, 'Congress once a party of rationalist, progressive ideals, it's now hard to find any consistent principle in its choices apart from power-mongering. Once a party of movement, run by committed cadres, it has become a family huddle, an organisation that turns to the dear leader at every step. And while there might be persuasive reasons for the DMK's tumult, and Karunanidhi is certainly under pressure to manage the different power centres in his party, their private familial transactions cannot hold up the rest of the country'.

Hey dont generalise about the Operator who dont perform well to one's satisfaction in his locality Accept it, Airtel and Vodafone are the top ones but that is mainly due to the additional highly efficient 900 MHz spectrum they are holding in circles, which they vehemently deny and wont give up.

Your bill never went above Rs.800 then why did you keep such a high credit limit to invite notices when it is out of hand? Keep it reasonable. Or is it a mistake on their part?

Found this interesting Check it out! Qualcomm has been in business for nearly 25 years, its influence ranging from Verizon Wireless' 3G network to the processor in the HTC EVO 4G, and Peggy Johnson has been there almost from the beginning. Johnson started at Qualcomm as a software engineer in 1989, and then moved up into roles with the company's handsets, OmniTRACS telematics and Brew operating system. Johnson now serves as executive vice president of the Americas and India, where she is responsible for global development and the adoption of 3G wireless broadband. Johnson recently spoke about her career, the evolution of the wireless industry and her thoughts on the future of CDMA. Below is an edited transcript of the discussion. Wireless Week: You joined Qualcomm as a software engineer in 1989, when there were very few incentives for women to join that field. Can you tell me the story of how you got into engineering? Peggy Johnson: I always liked math and sciences in high school, but not a single person ever pointed me toward engineering. I went to San Diego State University for business, and I thought that was the field I would go into. I had a job on campus delivering mail, and one day I went to deliver mail to the engineering department, and as I was walking down the hall, two of the women assistants there thought I was joining engineering and they got so excited. When I told them I was just there to deliver the mail, they were so disappointed – basically, they worked on me for a half hour and convinced me to go into engineering. I changed my major that week. They showed me that it was an exciting, challenging field, right up my alley, something that I just hadn't heard much about before then. They weren't even professors, they were secretaries. They just couldn't believe a woman was walking down that hallway. I've never looked back. It was a great change and one that was very fulfilling, very gratifying. WW: You've been with Qualcomm for more than two decades. Why have you stayed with the company for so long? Johnson: I think what kept me here was that it was always changing, it was always challenging, there was always a problem to solve. At Qualcomm, you're never boxed into a single area. If you had an opinion or an interest in an area, they were always so open minded about it. We've had attorneys who have gone into business development, business development people who've gone back to school to get engineering degrees. It's encouraged and supported to look at other areas, and that's what's kept me here. If I saw an interesting area of the company, I could go over there and work. That makes the job stimulating, very gratifying – you feel like you've solved problems at the end of the day, and that makes you wake up the next morning and want to come back in again and do it all over again. WW: During your time at Qualcomm, you've seen the company's technology deployed in markets ranging from the United States to India and have worked on projects ranging from Brew to OmniTRACS. What do you consider your top achievements? Johnson: One that really stands out was my time with Brew. I think a lot of the success that we found with Brew was directly attributed to the team of people I worked with. We ended up deploying Brew across 60 operators globally. Essentially, Brew and our division, Qualcomm Internet Services, built the first app stores. We had this huge micropayments system, so as consumers downloaded apps, developers got paid a revenue share. The money circled back around to developers, consumers would buy new apps, and more apps would be available and consumers would download them. The virtuous cycle that we built there is very similar to what is happening today with the iPhone App Store and the Android Market. It was the basis of app stores as we know them today. WW: I know you're not involved with Brew now, but could you comment on where you see the platform headed since you were so involved with its inception? Johnson: The Brew Mobile Platform (BrewMP) has evolved into an operating system for feature phones, which much of the world still uses because of their cost. We have the ability with BrewMP to turn a pretty low-end phone into something that looks and feels like a smartphone. It has the ability to run on lower-end touchscreen displays and can access all types of applications. It's an important area for us because so much of the growth over the next few years is going to be the transition from 2G to 3G in emerging markets. Brew Mobile Platform will play an important spot there. These 3G phones are going to be essentially the first computers many of these people have. WW: Can you talk about the impact wireless technology has had on previously unconnected communities? Johnson: When you put a 3G phone in someone's hands in an emerging market, it's just huge, it's life changing, particularly in places like India and parts of Latin America. I've seen it change villages and communities – all of the sudden they have access to healthcare, education, commerce that can help them sell products for a higher price. We have a group here at Qualcomm called Wireless Reach that introduces wireless into underserved communities around the world. The impact of it is just breathtaking. WW: Qualcomm is not shy about pushing markets ahead and one of those markets has been India. Qualcomm has moved aggressively to push CDMA and LTE in India. Do you feel your efforts have been successful in persuading more Indian operators to adopt CDMA and LTE? Where do you see that market headed in the future? Johnson: There are four pan-India CDMA operators: Reliance, Tata, MTS and BSNL. They have strong, nationwide CDMA networks that have created good competition and driven handset prices into the $20 level, which means more people can have access. Now they're rolling out 3G. We've just had the 3G auctions in India so we'll start to see that 2G to 3G transition, and then of course the BWA auctions as well, in which Qualcomm participated. We have not stood still with the technology and have continued to optimize 3G. We've launched 1X Advanced in India, where spectrum remains very limited even after the auctions, to put about three times the voice capacity on a network through software and hardware optimization. As data needs grow, you have the ability to run your 1X Advanced network with voice and use the remainder of your spectrum for either 3G data or LTE. WW: Obviously, China is a big growth market for Qualcomm and so is India. Looking ahead, which markets do you see as major growth drivers for Qualcomm? Johnson: Certainly India and China, but Latin America as well. By 2012, 65 percent of the phones shipping in to Latin America will be 3G. Much of Latin America doesn't have access to broadband data like we do here, whether it's DSL, cable or wireless. In Latin America, there are big geographic areas that will never have wired broadband access, so there's a pent-up demand for broadband access we believe will be fed by wireless. WW: As we move from 3G to 4G, how much growth is left in CDMA? Johnson: It goes back to the continued optimizations that we can do on CDMA. 4G won't be everywhere on day one. You need to have the backbone of 3G in place for suburbs, the rural areas. It will take time for LTE to be ubiquitous in the way that 3G networks are today. You want to have a device that's multimode that can fall back to 3G. That's where a multimode solution like we have here at Qualcomm is really the right way to address that. WW: Qualcomm has a lot of technology initiatives outside of CDMA. Where do you see the company headed over the next decade as LTE networks come to the fore? Johnson: I think we'll obviously continue to work hard in the area of merging the modem and the processor, and we have our Snapdragon line of chips. As devices become more computer-intensive, you're going to need more power in the processor, so we'll continue to focus a lot of our research and development efforts in that area. Processors need to be able to handle a lot of video, they need to be able to handle multitasking appropriately, they need to be able to handle power. The other area that feeds into that is the screen itself, which is the biggest driver of power on the handset. Our efforts with Mirasol, our display technology, are going to become more and more important. We believe the user is going to expect that whatever you can do on your desktop, you can do wirelessly. We need to keep up with that demand. Source : Wirelessweek

I find the logo similar to that of Vodafone with the prominent red background. And RED seem to symbolise Warning rather than vibrant Its all in perception.

Not available with the retailer here! Even I am planning to buy it It would be helpful if the actual users can post review on this!

Almost all the telecom operators have tied up with Chinese vendors like Huawei for developing 3G network right? They lose network quality and risk national security in their blind rush to save a few pennies!

It appears to me as a move to reframe its image as a youthful telecom operator. Maybe along the lines of Virgin mobile but they still will skim the people of their money till MNP arrives.

Dont know if it is an inherent flaw with videocon but I found that it has weak signals inside buildings even in city centres! Rest everywhere is under coverage, on par with the incumbents. The voice quality can be passed as good and in peak hours too it is acceptable

Anyone can update here about their new offers? They are pretty aggressive in customer additions, offering free SIM with Rs.75 talk time on per-second basis.

I think the network from which the video call is initiated and the recepient network of the call should have 3G technology for it to work. Is that so? Someone shed some light into this

NEW DELHI: Nearly half of India’s mobile customers use some form of internet and web related data services on their handsets, offering a huge base for telecom companies to tap as they all launch third generation services in the country. The numbers indicate the data potential that India holds: Customers who access some form of internet service on their handsets has risen 70% over the last 12 months to touch 214 million as of June 10, says telecoms regulator Trai. Analysts say this figure has risen to over 240 million as of September 10. This is more than ten times the number of internet connections on a PC in the country. Unlike the West, Europe and other markets such as Japan and Korea, the first experience of the internet as well as email for vast majority of the country’s population is on a cellphone and not on a PC. India has over 650 million cellular connections, but the number of actual customers is estimated to be only about 450 million since many own double of even triple SIMS. A mere 6% of the 1.1 billion Indian have access to internet via computers, but the country enjoys a mobile telephony penetration of over 65%. According to Trai, Bharti has the highest number of data customers at close to 71 million as of June 10, followed by Vodafone Essar at 36 million. “ 3G will enable us to bring fantastic services to this country and the data opportunity in this market is great. Data will be segmented and the plans will be tailor-made for different segments of the population. Data will bring consolidation to the business, because it is nonsense to have 13-14 players with only some offering data services,” Vittorio Colao, chief executive officer Vodafone Group Plc . told ET in a recent interaction. A leading executive with a top telecoms company said that most of the 240 million data subscribers in India were only using free or promotional data and internet related services. “The challenge for operators is to ensure that these customer numbers can be translated to revenues. Currently, only about 10% of the any operator’s revenues is from data, and off this text messages, or SMSs accounts for 50%,” this executive added. “The way GSM services led to mobile phones being the first telephone at home in India, 3G products and services will lead the democratization of information. Proliferation of 3G services will see Mobile Internet far outpacing conventional forms of internet access,” Tata Teleservices’ executive president, mobility Deepak Gulati said. Mr Gulati also added that the company had the first-mover advantage in the 3G space from the private sector perspective, and combined with the partner in Japan’s NTT DOCOMO , it was poised to take up a leadership position in the Internet access space, both on mobile phones and other larger-screen devices. New York based Allied Business Intelligence, Inc, in its latest report has predicted that rapid offtake of mobile data usage in India following the launch of 3G services here would result in the Asia-Pacific region consuming 2,400 petabytes of mobile data annually by 2015, accounting for 23% of global data traffic, only second to North America with an expected consumption of 3,100 petabytes. Source : here

Okay this interesting piece of article appeared in Economic Times as you can see from the source. Hmm arent they supposed to be an authentic, authoritative and reliable one?? Now even I am not buying it! Maybe they have some interests in telecom sector.

Speeds upto 21Mbps can be experienced in HSPA+ device as they suggest. Yesterday I had gone to the local TD DIVE IN store (at Pattom, Tvm) for a demo show of 3G poweress and the speeds attained really took me me by suprise. At once I did a recharge of Rs.750 which offers 2GB of data with 3G speeds upto 3.6Mbps it has a validity of 30days.

yeah the post is TRUE! It will be coming with a nuclear cooler to keep the phone from heating up and burning the fated user's phone. USA will be supplying the uranium for lifetime and will come under the 1-2-3 agreement. HOWEVER, no liablity or claims will be admitted by the manufacturer if the victim, oops the user gets exposed to radiation and turns a blood ****ing mutant. They will be hit and eternally tortured by Will Smith (heck seems like he actually survied the I Am Legend blast) by locking you on Reliance GSM connection, all these unless India finds a place to sit and yawn in the Security Council. So guys start beating up the pillow today and save the world. Gawd! I am so good in this!

they said ''some form of internet and web related data services on their handsets'' right, so it may include ringtones/wallpapers etc that we download from the operator's portal

SEOUL – Alcatel-Lucent expects Asia's first deployment of a 4G wireless network will be India some time in the second quarter of next year. Alcatel-Lucent Asia-Pacific President Rajeev Singh-Molares, speaking in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday, also said he is optimistic about growth in the company's third-generation mobile network in China next year thanks to surging demand for wireless data traffic and because the Chinese government intends to modernize its existing network. Franco-U.S. telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel, along with rivals such as market-leader Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, have experienced a surge in demand in recent quarters, driven mainly by the U.S., where operators have invested heavily to prepare networks for increasing mobile data traffic. Growth has now also returned to other markets, notably China, India and Russia. Alcatel recently announced new contracts with U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless worth $4 billion over four years and three Chinese operators worth a total of €1.18 billion. In the third quarter, Alcatel swung to a net profit of €25 million, compared with a loss of €182 million a year earlier. Revenue rose to €4.07 billion from €3.69 billion. It expects its operating margin to rise to between 5%-9% next year from 1%-5% so far for this year. Speaking on the sidelines of the G-20 Business Summit in Seoul, Mr. Singh-Molares said India looks set to get Asia's first 4G network. "Where's the first 4G network going to be deployed in Asia? I think probably it's going to be India... it could also be Japan or Korea, it depends on how trials go," he said. He said that ongoing shortages in electronics components, a drag on the company's business, should ease in the next two quarters. "Is the problem solved? not yet. But we are aggressively managing the situation, we've made a significant progress over the last three quarters...we are working with our suppliers to improve the situation," said Mr. Singh-Molares. The gear vendor business has been hit by component constraints and electronics-parts makers have struggled to boost capacity fast enough to meet rising demand. Mr. Singh-Molares said Alcatel will "absolutely" bid for any possible orders from South Korean mobile carriers for 4G network equipment for the so-called Long-Term Evolution network, a faster, more advanced mobile network technology than conventional third-generation technology. "We have strong commercial relationships with key Korean customers here. Korea in many ways is probably one of the most advanced markets in terms of mobile infrastructure," said Mr. Singh-Molares. "(It's) pretty clear by next year the LTE network will be deployed in Korea and we fully intend to participate in those requirements." In order to address soaring demand for high-speed data, South Korea's largest mobile carrier, SK Telecom, said in July that it will launch the next-generation mobile network service next year, while hometown rival KT Corp. said it will invest 5.1 trillion South Korean won ($4.3 billion) through 2014 to expand its network service, sparked by a sales boom in smart phones and other digital gadgets. Mr. Singh-Molares also said Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 wireless carrier in the U.S. by subscribers, will soon select a supplier to modernize its existing wireless network. Alcatel-Lucent has bid for the contract. "We are very confident in the superiority of our technology," Mr. Singh-Molares said. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint will exclude Chinese telecommunications-equipment makers Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp. from a contract valued at billions of dollars largely because of national-security concerns in Washington, citing some people familiar with the matter. Telefon LM Ericsson and Samsung Electronics are also in the bid, the people said. Source : here

Well I think we should rename this topic as ''TATA showing true face'' or something It is really sad that they, being respected worldover, patriotic and all are degrading themselves to the likes of Govt. departments. Anyway no use crying over it as they wont least care. In this scenario I am however very much curious to know how the statistics of Operators will change after MNP implementation.

NEW DELHI: More than four million Indians living in West Asian countries will have to shell out more to call their relatives back home, after telecom regulator TRAI on Thursday kicked off the process to raise the fee operators there, have to pay to bring their traffic into India. Call tariffs to India from West Asia may soon go up by up to7 per minute if TRAI accepts the domestic telcos’ proposal. The regulator on Thursday sought inputs from domestic operators here to revise the termination charge, the fee that an operator abroad pays for bringing their traffic into India, but said the exercise will be limited to operators in West Asia. Currently, operators like Saudi Telecom , Zain and Etisalat pay a mere 40 paise per minute for terminating their traffic in India, but on the other hand, charge their counterparts like Bharti, Reliance Communications , BSNL and Vodafone Essar around7 per minute as termination fee for calls that originate in India and terminate in the Gulf countries. Existing Indian laws prevent operators here from charging more than 40 paise per minute as termination fee for incoming calls from abroad. Executives with Indian operators say that TRAI decided to intervene after they had pointed out that operators here got475 crore annually from telcos in West Asia as termination fee, but paid over1,300 crore for terminating their traffic there, leading to a forex loss of825 crore. As part of the proposed solution, TRAI may allow Indian telcos to charge reciprocal termination rates, a practice followed by many other countries in the West. According to industry data, India and West Asia international voice traffic, which is mainly led by the Persons of Indian Origin living in the Gulf countries, is around 10 billion minutes per annum. India-in traffic from West Asia is 8.5 billion and India-out traffic to West Asia is around 2.2 billion minutes. “The India out traffic settlement cost is set by aggressive competition amongst Indian telcos whereas settlement cost in West Asia is set by the monopoly telco in each country. The West Asia charges weighted average 13 cents per minute against a competitive rate of only 1.2 cents charged by Indian international long distance operators for in-traffic from West Asian countries,” domestic operators here said in their communication to TRAI. Indian operators have also told TRAI that increasing the termination rates for international operators would result in a ten-fold jump in government revenues. This is because, all telecom operators share a certain per cent of their total revenues with the government under different forms of levies. “Currently, the Indian government gets30 crore from inbound settlement cost, whereas it could earn up to300 crore per annum, if the termination charges are revised. Due to higher settlement cost the cost of calling to West Asia is higher in India. As a result, Inbound traffic (from West Asia) is almost 4X outbound traffic,” operators pointed out in their communication. Source : here

Cant we do something about the handset activation witg TI? Will writing a letter to Anil Sardana or Ratan Tata himself with a massive sign campaign? This restriction on handset activation is the only area TI pisses me off! Other than that I am pretty satisfied with the tariff and network. It is being used as my primary no. since past 3 years! So wont be quiting them but will be using the alternative ones - Idea, Aircel, BSNL more.

if not for the mask...

TATAs wont quit CDMA business altogether as they got pretty much riding on this. Also they are leading in the profitable wireline and data card segment. A recent survey by Brand Equity placed TATA Indicom among the top 5 service brands higher than any other operator whereas DOCOMO havent found a respectable place. What I am intending to say is, TI has established a hard toiled credible network and image which they wont let go for the sake of its immature GSM wing. But they will lose out the same if they continue to follow these restrictive policies.

Will their GPRS offering of 2gb for Rs.48 and 6gb for Rs.95 still be valid and available after the launch of 3G??

I think he is referring to the newly launched Samsung Mpower txt m369 phone.