deepu

Hi-tech 3G mobile phones are here! ------------------------------------------------ Surajeet Das Gupta | March 15, 2005| Courtesy - rediff.com If you're planning to buy a fancy PDA-phone or a 'smartphone' in the near future, check whether it's 3G compatible. If it isn't, it will either be obsolete by the end of the year, or certainly won't be as much fun to use. For, five years after they first made an entrance and enticed a host of European telecom companies to bid over ¤100 billion in license fees, and then go bust, the next generation of mobile technology (3G) is finally here. For those who want to access the Net -- and that's really why you want a PDA-phone -- the 3G offers data speeds of well over 2 Mbps, which is over 10-20 times faster than what's available today on mobile phones that have GPRS facilities, or even on land lines that have what passes for broadband in most homes in the country today. While there are already 20 million customers who have migrated to 3G mobiles (this was around six million last June), from the 2G GSM-platform globally, the state-owned Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd has already floated a tender to four million lines of 3G equipment in India. Market leader Airtel is currently surveying the market to see what capacity it wants to roll out with initially. By the end of next year, there could well be three operators offering 3G services in the country. Since 3G is seen as a pricey technology in what is essentially a price-sensitive market, how well it will do on introduction will depend upon what kind of tariff plans are offered to customers, including the cost of the handsets. While no local player has firmed up business plans as yet, no price plans can be indicated. But the European experience offers some valuable pointers on both costs of instruments as well as tariff plans. 3G-compatible handsets that cost around $700 last year are already down to around $300, and are expected to drop below $200 by the end of the year. By 2008, industry is looking at this halving. The per line costs of a 3G network, similarly, have fallen dramatically, and are around 30 to 40 per cent higher than that for a conventional 2G network today. But the advantage is that for the same amount of spectrum (the airwaves over which telecom signals are carried), a 3G network can carry over four to five times more voice traffic than a 2G network can, apart from giving high speed data access -- the effective costs, therefore, come down to levels that are not too much higher than existing 2G networks. In Europe, 3G service companies have been dropping voice tariffs dramatically, though in return for a certain minimum bill size per month. Packages offered to customers committing to use 1,000 minutes a month in Europe are charging voice tariffs that are around half those available today on conventional 2G networks. As a result, European telecom firms are looking at getting an average revenue per user, or ARPU, which is between 25 and 40 per cent higher than of a 2G bill. Will price-sensitive Indian consumers shift in large enough numbers to a 3G system? While there's no doubt the market is low-value with each customer yielding just Rs 400 a month to the mobile phone companies (after deducting the licensing revenue share), around 5 to 10 per cent of customers pay monthly bills of more than Rs 1,000 per month. Since most European 3G telecom firms are comfortable with customers who pay 25 to 40 per cent more than the average, this means potential 3G networks in India can bank upon a market of at least two to three million to begin with, and a lot more if they offer voice calls at a price lower than that offered by existing 2G networks. Industry experts, however, are of the view that around 10 per cent of the existing 50 million mobile subscribers will move to 3G once it is introduced. Over the past one year, according to data just released by IDC, non-voice revenue (basically SMS and surfing) for mobile phones grew by 139 per cent over the year. This constitutes 5 per cent of current ARPUs and is expected to jump to 10 per cent within the next 12 months. Another potential market that is growing by leaps and bounds today, and which could readily switch to 3G, is the current broadband Internet one, since speeds offered are many multiples of what is currently being offered. And since the government has not allowed private providers to use MTNL/ BSNL's existing copper lines to access customers, broadband Internet simply has to ride on a 3G backbone. Airtel, which has an existing broadband customer base of around 100,000, says the growth is around 10,000 per month. The only hitch right now could be a regulatory one with both GSM and CDMA (Reliance Infocomm, primarily) operators locked in a battle over allocation of the 3G spectrum. While GSM operators argue that the 1920-1980 and 2110-2170 Mhz spectrum frequency is the global standard for 3G operations (whether by GSM or CDMA players), the CDMA operators want this frequency for their current non-3G operations. While the telecom regulator appears in favour of granting the CDMA operators what they want, the telecom ministry has not yet made up its mind on the matter. This decision will determine whether Indians get to use 3G or not by the end of the year.

The photos are great AK3D!!! But while putting on net its better to reduce the resolution a little bit so that they load fast on even slow connections!!

"1 member is celebrating his/her birthday today ananddr(25)" HAPPY BirthDAY!!!

Firefox is nothing new buddy!!!!

"1 member is celebrating his/her birthday today akhileshril(24)" HAPPY BirthDay!!!!

See this link http://www.bittorrent.com/introduction.html Bittorrent is a P2P downloading protocol.... but the main difference is that you download parts of files at the same time uploads them to other users also... Unlike other P2P apps like Kaazaa... you will not be able to turn off the uploading part eventhough you can limit the speed!! For Linux downloading I think its better to use the traditional sort of downloading using Getright as you will be able to use all your available bandwidth for downloading alone!! www.linuxiso.org is the site for you...it has lots of mirror links and you just need to import those links to Getright and see it fly!!!

I am yet to get the CDs.... Has some one got it and tried it already!! How is it??

Great Man!! On 64 bit surely the performance will be great!! What about your DVD Writer... Were you able to use it in PCQ Linux Do post your experiences!!

To access the Net from your Reliance LG phone, first you need to configure the data modem present in the phone so that it can be used as a dial-up modem. For this, from your phone menu go to Settings >Phone>Data Settings> Data Baud, and set the Data Baud to 115200. Next, connect the phone to your PC's USB port, using an LG data cable. Remember to use a genuine LG data cable, available at any Reliance Web World shop for Rs 1,200. After connecting the phone to your PC, boot it into PCQ Linux 2004 and open a terminal window. Issue the following commands to configure the phone's modem. # modprobe usbcore # modprobe usbserial # modprobe ftdi_sio After this, your phone will act as a serial modem. To check if your settings would indeed work, issue this command from the same window. # usbview This opens a window showing all connected USB devices. If the window shows an entry called 'USB---Serial', it means your CDMA LG phone has been detected successfully. By default, Linux uses /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 as the device file of the phone. However, you can create a symbolic link for it, which is easier to remember. We created the link /dev/modem for this as follows. # ln -s /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 /dev/modem And used this link in all subsequent configurations, instead of keying in the entire /dev/usb/tty USB0 path. Configuring PPP dialer Next, you need to configure the PPP dialer on your Linux machine so that it can dial out to the Internet. To do this, edit the /etc/ppp/option file and fill the dialer configuration as given below. lock asyncmap 0 crtscts modem defaultroute usepeerdns onauth /dev/modem 115200 Here the keywords 'lock', 'asyncmap', 'crtscts', 'modem' and '/dev/modem 115200' are the same for any modem configuration. The remaining keywords need to be added when using a Reliance CDMA phone as the modem. The keyword 'defaultroute' sets the default router to the system's routing table, 'usepeerdns' sets the DNS on you machine and 'onauth', also known as stupid mode, eliminates the authentication process between your modem and the ISP. Go to the /root directory and create a file called .ppprc, which should contain the following. user <Your-Reliance-Phone no> password <Your-Reliance-Phone no> Here, enter your Reliance phone number for both the username and password. Creating this file (.ppprc) is mandatory, however, it is not used in any authentication but just used to avoid the appearance of error message, when you dial out using the command pppd. Then you need to create the dial-in and disconnect scripts, which will dial and disconnect the CDMA LG phone modem for you. To do this, open Vi from your Linux terminal window and write the script given below. #!/bin/sh pppd /dev/modem 115200 debug usepeerdns defaultroute noauth connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v ""at+cta=30 OK "atdt#777" CONNECT' mtu 264 Save this dialing script with a file name 'rim' and change its permission as shown below. # chmod 777 rim (Here, 777 gives full permission to all users and group) In this script we are using two commands, pppd and chat. The former is used to establish a connection over a serial point-to-point link and the latter is used to execute modem commands from your machine. The 'at+cta=30' entry is a modem initialization command, 'attdt#777' dials the number 777 and 'mtu 264' sets the maximum transmission unit that a PPP connection can hold. For the disconnect script, open another file with Vi and issue the following. #!/bin/sh killall -9 pppd This kills all the processes running under pppd. Save this as 'rim-disconnect' and change its permission as you did for the dial-in script. Testing Internet connectivity Finally, you have to execute the dialing script that you just created. For this, open a terminal window and execute the dialing script by typing #./rim. You won't find any activity on PCQLinux 2004 showing the connectivity. Just check your phone's LCD panel for this. It should go into data mode showing you the message 'PPP Data Mode'. Then, simply fire up your favorite Web browser and try to access a website. You should be able to access the Internet if you're connected, otherwise there's a configuration issue. To disconnect the LG CDMA phone from the Internet, just run #./rim-disconnect from a terminal window and its done.

Great to see rimweb.com at #6... Lets make it #1

The features seem really good!! I do not think that any other company has a camera with such features in this price range!! The only thing is that you will need to add more memory to it for taking more snaps and that can add some 1 to 1.5 K more!!

I think that people who are willing to make small contribution for a common cause should be welcomed!!

If the owner of the original handset reports to reliance that its lost, then reliance will put the handset under their blacklist and you will not be able to use GSk on it!!

I have seen the same happen for prepaid rconnect vs postpaid rconnect. It was during the period when Reliance had the bug!! At that time I saw that the speed of Prepaid and Postpaid is differing very much!! Perhaps they may be using different servers and different bandwidth for Prepaid and postpaid customers

"2 members are celebrating their birthday today dominichorne(25), tapas0903(39)" HAPPY BirthDay!!!

In Software Engineering terms before releasing a product, a user acceptance testing is a must. Wonder whether Reliance does that!!!

with 50 paise per Mb, 1 Gb will cost Rs. 500.. It can go a bit more cheaper... (25 paise per MB perhaps!!) But it does make sense... Those who are using freedom plan its better to use Opera Browser. Opera has a nice facility to turn on/off images by click of a button.. So for most pages you can surf without images an when you want to see images, you can turn it back on!!

Similar splitting up of huge enterprises have happened before too!! AT&T is an example!! I believe that this splitting up will help Reliance to grow more and wider and globally!!

I think it will be better for you to try out some Linux version optimized for your 64 bit CPU...

I do not know of Indian mirrors... But if you go to www.linuxiso.org you can get lots of mirror locations... Just import them to Getright and I am sure that you can get the maximum download speed for your connection!!

Can you give me more info about this Kodak camera... Sounds interesting...

Try using some freeware smpt servers like "Local SMTP server" for sending out emails instead of using the SMTP server provided by the service provider . It will work..

"1 member is celebrating his/her birthday today annish(37)" HAPPY BirthDAY!!!

Why the heck do they introduce such pathetic phones without any testing!!!

Hi, March version of PCQ will come with PCQ Linux 2005. They will come in CDs and not DVDs Installation is simple and any one can do it. I think NTFS can be mounted as Read only in Linux.. (I still use FAT32) But you can always limit others from using that partition... Thus other users will not be able to mount it except the root user.. I think this version is for 32 bit computers and not for 64 bit....(I have not got the cds yet) Fedora core 3 is available for AMD 64.. You can get it from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedo...e/3/x86_64/iso/