deepu

Last year when the Boca Raton headquartered industrial conglomerate Tyco International announced plans to shed its ailing submarine cable business, its investment bank Goldman Sachs invited competitive bids. It was only natural that many of the enthusiastic contenders were companies that Tyco had partnered. High on the list was domestic telecom major, the Rs 3,163 crore (Rs 31.63 billion) Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. At that time, Tyco's cable construction arm was building VSNL's Chennai-Singapore cable link. So in March, when Goldman's Indian affiliate, Kotak Mahindra Capital Co, touched base with VSNL's 46 per cent owner -- the Tata Group's top brass -- for a possible acquisition of Tyco Global Network, it didn't come as a big surprise. And in May, according to sources close to the deal, when the Tata Group assigned the mandate to its investment bank DSP Merrill Lynch, both the parties worked to pull off perhaps the most value-for-money acquisition they had ever partnered. Today, the Tata bosses lay the credit squarely on Arun Agarwal, 32, head of telecom investment banking at DSP. Agarwal, who moved in after an eight-year stint with global consulting firm McKinsey, and helped set up the telecom business for a large CDMA player, had vigorously hammered down TGN's $2.5 billion billing. "The high billing was done during the euphoria days. But with technology changing dramatically, supply exceeded demand, leaving enough room to negotiate," says Agarwal. Adds a Tata manager close to the deal, "Finally, for us, it was like buying my boss' Rs 80-lakh S-class Mercedes for Rs 400,000." That's because if the Tatas were to set up that kind of network, with 12 gateway city connectivity and 30 global points of presence, it would have to shell out nothing short of the original bid price of $2.5 billion. Fortunately for the Tatas, TGN's business was one of the casualties of the dotcom bubble, which very nearly sounded the death knell for Tyco, under its erstwhile chief executive, Dennis Kozolowski. Anointed one of the top five mergers & acquisition deals in India, it ranks behind Reliance Infocomm's January acquisition of UK-based Flag Telecom for $211 million. Now, with more than 60,000 km of an under-sea fibre optic cable network, spanning three continents, it will rule the waves across the trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, trans-America, western Europe and the Far East including Japan. Says Kishor Chaukar, managing director of Tata Industries, "The Tata Group now has telecom and information technology capabilities. With this deal, no one can beat us." An empty boast? Not really. With Sunday's $130 million acquisition of TGN, the Tata Group had once again edged out Reliance Infocomm. The other contender was Phoenix-based Pivotal Private Equity, owner of Network Solutions. The Tatas had earlier breasted the tape against Reliance in January 2002, when it picked up the initial 26 per cent stake in the government-owned VSNL for Rs 1,439 crore (Rs 14.39 billion). At that time, the Tatas bid for VSNL through Panatone Finvest, a special purpose vehicle, where the group's main companies had stakes. Both Tata Power and Tata Sons had a 40 per cent stake each with the balance shared equally between Tata Industries and Tata Steel. This time though, the Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion) acquisition, to be wrapped up over the next six - nine months, will be funded through internal accruals via yet another SPV. At the moment, with cash reserves of Rs 1,600 crore (Rs 16 billion), it expects around Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) income from the sale of investments in Intelsat and New Sky Satellites. The new entity will be housed under VSNL America, overseen by the Singapore-based Vinod Kumar, VSNL (executive director) for international business. He was earlier senior vice president Asia Netcom and CEO of global telecom major, Worldcomm Japan. Again, TGN, with a global footprint, has more than a 10-fold unlit fibre capacity, as what's operational is barely 5-10 per cent of that, say telecom analysts. According to a Tata manager, Tyco's unlit capacities across just the Pacific and Atlantic total around 11,000 gigabits, throwing up huge opportunities for VSNL. Says Chaukar, "We will be a big global wholesaler of bandwidth and big in communication solutions to select people." Then, VSNL gets Tyco's large data carrier clients who are mostly Fortune 500 companies. It also absorbs TGN's 200 employees pushing up VSNL's current 1,800 headcount. Clearly, the acquisition comes at a time when the Tata bosses have been making statements about wanting "VSNL to be a telecom supermarket". Only two months ago, Tata Group chairman, Ratan Tata, had said: "We want to offer end-to-end quality services to corporates in the spheres of voice and data apart from video." It also comes close on the heels of the Tata Group's crown jewel -- Tata Consultancy Services -- which went public on July 29. Moreover, its arch rival Reliance acquired Flag telecom only early this year giving it a 50,000km long cable network. In all this, just how important is TCS in VSNL's current game plan? "Very vital. VSNL has a great opportunity in telecom. If we have to give substantial high value-added service to clients, the synergistic advantages with TCS are very high," reveals Chaukar. Like what? VSNL will leverage TCS' telecom solutions practice. Today, according to a TCS manager, after banking & financial services and manufacturing, the telecom practice is the third largest contributor to TCS' Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) revenues: TCS sells data solutions to corporates all around the world. "With data originating and ending with IT, VSNL can latch on to the same clients to sell bandwidth," says a telecom expert. Reveals a senior Tata manager: "Today, Microsoft is a TCS client and we provide bandwidth connectivity from the American giant's Seattle headquarters to its Bangalore office. For the rest of its requirements, Microsoft has to depend on other partners. Now we can go to our clients and say that apart from solutions, we can give you end-to-end connectivity with VSNL." VSNL can piggyback on TCS in more ways than one. The latter already has a foot in the door at many global companies, liasing with their chief investment officers. Now, as a wholesaler of bandwidth, VSNL's point of contact too will have to be the CIO. "This way, we will be a one-stop shop for our customers," says Chaukar. Adds N Srinath, VSNL's director operations: "The agreement is a major step forward in our ongoing drive to offer our enterprise and carrier customers seamless, end-to-end telecommunications solutions that encircle the globe." Three days ago, he was in Singapore to flag off the Tata Indicom cable network connecting Chennai to Singapore. These efforts have no doubt enthused the markets. Since the announcement on Monday, the VSNL scrip has moved from Rs 172.60 to close on Thursday at Rs 185. Analysts says that while they are happy with the long term prospects for VSNL, the short term is not clear. "We still don't know how it will impact its revenues in the near future," says an analyst. Already, VSNL's once flagship international telephony business is gradually taking a back seat. Revenues from this business are down from 90 per cent from its government monopoly days to 60 per cent now. Other businesses like national long distance, Internet services and television uplinking services are on the upswing. Even so, VSNL's marketing expertise will be tested to the hilt. Already, overcapacity and price wars have pushed global outfits like Global Crossing and 360 Networks into oblivion. Tyco too was on the brink of collapse. Can the Tatas make a dent here? "In this activity, marketing is critical. Our efforts at this stage are mostly 'direct' in nature," says Kumar. It is addressing a focussed group of around 1,500 companies and around 50 carriers where the communication is personalised and customised. "We are establishing ourselves as a thought leader and 'subject matter expert' on the topic of telecommunication in India. We want to help customers recognise that VSNL is a progressive organisation that has evolved and continues to grow in many areas," he adds. When that happens, VSNL will have finally shed its founding legacy.

Opera is an advertisement supported browser... But you can register it by getting the serial number and the advertisement will go once you register it

Any body know about the pricing of this model

Thats exactly the point even though some of Firefox is fast we cannot ignore IE completely. But one thing that I can say for sure is that Firefox is the most standards complaint Web browser available and follows the full W3C recommendations. Opera may have added support for Some IE specific tags which FireFox developpers may not have done till now. For example the <marquee> tag is not a W3C standard HTML tag. This is an IE specific tag and earlier versions of Firefox/Mozilla did not support this. <IFRAME> is another IE specific tag that will not work in earlier versions of Mozilla/Firefox. Now Firefox/Mozilla has support for these tags and works fine in Firefox.

To add on Firefox complies with all the standard HTML has... But Microsoft has added some of their own tags to HTML standards which may not always work with Firefox/Opera. relianceinfo.com some how uses those tags. Thats why relianceinfo.com is not working perfectly in Firefox I have tried browsing relianceinfo.com with Opera 7.54 and the Quick Links are working fine. But the site has a different look when its viewed in IE (the fonts look different)...

Internet Explorer being a Microsoft Product uses lots of features that are already in Windows. So when it is running, it does not need to start these because they are already there along with the OS. To be more descriptive... consider this.. Internet Explorer has the menu, buttons and the look similar to other windows applications. Also Internet Explorer is integrated into windows. Thats why you can start browsing directly from windows apps like explorer, my computer etc.... Firefox mean while has its own way of creating the GUI... Thats why its skinnable and we can change the look of GUI. To be more specific any app which is skinnable will take more memory when compared to plain windows looking applications. The main difference between IE and Firefox lies in the HTML rendering engine. Firefox's HTML rendering engine is much superior when compared to IE. Thats why Firefox loads web pages faster than IE. The difference will be more felt if you use a broad band connection. Some browsers like Net captor, Fast Browser etc are built on IE's HTML rendering engine and using those will give you the same speeds as IE. IE, Firefox and Opera has there own HTML rendering logic. (If there is any thing wrong with these guys pls correct me )

does any one had more details.... pls post

RIM website is optimized for Internet Explorer. It may not work perfectly on Firefox

Really Cooool... Any One knows the specifications of the phone

Sorry for the error... its actually a P4 1.5 Ghz...I got lucky at that time coz RAM price was very cheap (just Rs. 800 for 128 MB). So I got 512 MB in the machine. Even now the machine is really fast and I do not even feel like upgrading. I have tried Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Linux. Now I have dual boot with Windows 98 and Windows XP. Unfortunately some of old softwares which I really need do not work in Windows XP. So I need Windows 98 also.

Me too have never experienced such a problem what is version of software you have on your phone.

I too use ZoneAlarm. I do not think that it reduces the net speed.... It works perfectly.

I have been using Windows XP from Dec 2001 on a P5 1.5 GHZ with 512 MB Ram. Never faced any problems with it till now. Now I have updated with SP2 and it works like charm.

The pervert's dream has come true. A Japanese company, Yamada Denshi, has made a new mobile phone gadget that can turn camera phones into X-ray specs that can see through clothes, report British and Japanese media. The £100 (Rs 8,400) attachment is available on the Internet and can be mounted on high-end cellphones. The company had originally designed these gadgets to help people take pictures at night, but voyeurs have found a new use for them. The 'X-ray mobile camera attachment' allows Peeping Toms to see through clothes -- skirts, trousers, shirts and blouses -- and is said to be particularly effective on dark bikinis. The cameras give users a high-end function like 'night vision' by picking up on heat radiation to create outline pictures. Because bodies are hotter than clothes, the pictures produce an image of the body without the clothes, thus making these cameras a voyeur's delight. The gadget, which has since been dubbed 'pervert filter' by the media, can also be effectively used with high-end camera phones with powerful zooms and autofocus. In Japan, the gadget is widely fitted to the Vodafone V602-SH handset. Mobile giant Vodafone is thus extremely agitated over this development, calling it 'the abuse of mobile-phone mounted cameras.' Although the use of these cameras is not illegal, there are some questions being raised about whether taking people's naked photographs amounts to being within the ambit of the law. The manufacturer of the gadget Yamada Denshi however is noncommittal over the debate. The company admits to the gadgets see-through functions but professes that the technology should be used only for 'academic purposes' and that it finds people taking sneaky photographs 'sickening.' The 'pervert filter', however, has also led to some arrests in Japan. Newspapers report that in the past four months, two Japanese professors were apprehended for taking hidden camera pictures up their students' skirts.

Some more images of LongHorn

I have tried using NAV and AVG.... I think NAV is the best.

Do not try Talisman if you have a slower PC

Who cares of Windows/MSN Messenger..... Instead use GAIM. Visit gaim.sourceforge.net

I do not think there is any download manager endorsed by Microsoft.

Try this link http://www.zeropaid.com/kazaalite/

Kaaza Lite is a totally different version from Original Kaazaa.... It does not contain any spywares or adwares....

See some of the reports about illegal telephone exchanges that operate in India... DoT unearths illegal telephone exchange in Delhi Press Trust of India New Delhi, October 8 The Department of Telecom has unearthed an illegal exchange in Delhi which was converting the incoming international call traffic into local calls using Internet leased lines. A team comprising officials from DoT, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Delhi Police and Reliance Infocomm visited Prime Net Global which was running an Internet leased line of 512 kbps in a illegal manner, an official release said. "This illegal exchange was bringing incoming international call traffic through Internet leased line and was further maturing the call to the called party by using high tech equipment and locally dialing and switching through," it said. "Thus this presented the international call to the called party as local call, while actually the called party was speaking to calling party internationally," the release said. The culprit in the present case, Sanjeev Solanki, has been arrested and case under the relevant sections of Indian Telegraph Act has been registered, it said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Illegal telephone exchange in Borivali By: A Mid Day Correspondent October 3, 2004 The Anti-Extortion Cell of the Crime Branch raided a house in OLG Villa, Medonna Colony, Borivali (W), on Friday and unearthed an illegal telephone exchange. They seized satellite and telecommunication equipment worth Rs 29 lakh and arrested Gopal Shetty (56) for running the illegal operation at the behest of two wanted accused. A case has been registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Telegraphs Act 1950. The operators of the illegal exchange, functioning since January 2003, had made provision for several telephone lines with ISD facilities that enabled these clients to receive international calls by bypassing authorised VSNL and MTNL’s international direct dialling routes, the police said. In the raid, the police recovered 49 telephones, 50 extended chargers, 1 satellite modem, 2 RAD multiplexes, 1 voltage cut-off device, 1 booster, 1 panel of antenna, 1 dish antenna, an antenna tracking device, a computer, etc. Preliminary investigations have revealed that Shetty had retired from his job at a private company and was handling the operations here. The police are now probing if the exchange was used to make any extortion calls, and if any calls were made through the exchange to television actor Mona Singh (Jassi). On September 29, four persons had been arrested in connection with the threats made to the star. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 illegal telephone exchanges unearthed, 4 held Tribune News Service Chandigarh, August 19 The Crime Branch of the Chandigarh police today claimed to have unearthed two illegal telephone exchanges connecting international calls to the USA on local charges by bypassing Indian security monitoring. The illegal exchange are capable of breaking the satellite code for making international calls in alleged collusion with a New York-based licenced private operator. The exchange operators are suspected to have caused a heavy loss to the licenced Indian international telephone call operators, including the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). In the first case, Vishnu Prasad Mohapatra and Naresh Kumar Gupta, who were running a franchise of Internet service provider Sify, were arrested along with special equipment to bypass security and international call routing monitoring in a raid. They were running their illegal business from a cabin in SCO No. 80, 81 and 82 in Sector 34. Mohapatra told reporters that they were operating through voice over Internet telephony (VOIT) technology for which equipment was locally procured for Rs 85,000. They had installed two instruments and had 17 lease lines of M-Tel, Reliance and Connect to run their business. According to the Crime Branch, the detection of the illegal exchange was difficult with this technology as the accused were Internet service providers and their office did not have any antennae to raise suspicion. Crime Branch in charge K.I.P. Singh said the Crime Branch had been following these persons for more than a month. He said the Director Vigilance, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, had made visits to the city recently to detect the exchange causing great revenue loss to the company. However, the VSNL had not succeeded in its attempts. Mohapatra told reporters that his company used to take traffic on behalf of a local person and give a call to the New York exchange to make a call from the USA, a local one. The police said the two allegedly used to get money through hawala from New York. The police had to procure call details from the USA to ascertain the revenue loss to the telecom companies licenced to carry international calls. Mohapatra said he had started the business only a month back but the police was examining if he had been running such exchanges from three different places earlier. Mohapatra said bypassing Indian international call service providers could be done through a configuration done by technical people on the Internet. In a follow-up raid, the Crime Branch detected another illegal exchange running above the Sector 34 branch of Punjab and Sindh Bank. Ajay and Ashish were arrested for running the exchange. This exchange had 15 lease lines of Spice. All four have been booked under Sections 379, 420 and 120 B of the IPC. They have also been booked under Sections 4, 20, 20A, and 25 of the Indian Telegraph Act. Inspector K.I.P. Singh said simultaneous raids were being conducted to arrest others who were also involved in the alleged racket. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But Kaazaa Lite does not contain any spy ware or adwares

www.shareaza.com is not working..... is others having same problem??

I feel that some one should file a petition with consumer court to avoid such ads....