Honest

Yes my dear friends, the one who is a copycat, will definetely going to loose its business by fooling their innocent customers. @Venkiteswaran You have pointed to a very true calculation. Regards.

Tatas hike stake in SA’s Neotel to 56% 25 Jun, 2008, 0322 hrs IST MUMBAI: The Tata group has increased stake in its South African telecom venture, Neotel, by 30%, thereby taking the total equity in the communications company to 56%. Neotel, which is in the start-up phase having become operational two years ago, is valued at under $100 million and the stake was acquired for “a nominal amount,” sources told ET. Tata group companies, Tata Africa and Tata Communications (TC, earlier VSNL), bought out the 30% held by South African state companies Transnet and Eskom. Transnet is the custodian of port, rail and pipeline infrastructure in South Africa while Eskom generates, transmits and distributes electricity. Out of the 30%, around 3% has been bought by Tata Africa, the group’s holding company for South African operations while the rest has been acquired by TC, said sources. Of the 26% held by the Tatas prior to the current deal, 2% was with Tata Africa while 24% was with TC. With this transaction, TC holds around 51% in Neotel. The other shareholders of Neotel are Nexus, Communitel and Two Telecom Consortium. TC’s majority stake will help in faster decision-making at Neotel. “In order to get the business growing, it was important for Tatas to have a majority holding. It is crucial for timely decision-making. Moreover, TC’s technological capabilities can be provided to Neotel more seamlessly in case of majority control,” an analyst told ET. TC senior vice-president (corporate strategy) Srinivasa Addepalli declined to comment. “This agreement is subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions precedent, some of which have a period of up to 180 days to be fulfilled,” TC said in a statement in Mumbai. Neotel is the second telecommunications network operator in South Africa. When it started operations in 2006, Neotel announced a capex of Rand 11 billion ($1.3 billion) for developing its networks and services. It provides a range of voice and data services for businesses, wholesale network operators and providers. Neotel also connects the major centres in South Africa within the country and to the world. It is directly linked into Tata Communication’s global tier-1 network.

Bloggers highlight seven biggest iPhone disappointments 24 Jun, 2008, 1340 hrs IST WASHINGTON: Even before the launch of Apple's new iPhone 3G, technology blogs have started to highlight factors that may make it a mere gadget. Top among such factors is the device's high cost, with technology blog 'Bits' calling it "a step backwards for consumers". Bloggers believe that it is not less expensive to own because US mobile carrier AT&T has a pricier data plan to subsidise the up-front cost. In Australia, confirmed iPhone carriers Optus and Vodafone have not revealed the local pricing, but both will offer it on a no-contract prepaid plan. Another biggest iPhone disappointment is the fact that it still doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology, which means many multimedia-rich sites remain off limits. Thirdly, it is not easy to crack open the new device's sleek case to replace its battery. The new iPhone also does not have video recording provisions, something one can find even in the so-called low-end "feature phones" these days. Besides all that, it is unable to copy a chunk of text and paste it into another application. The lack of support for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is said to be one of the most maddening iPhone flaws, reports a magazine. The iPhone does not even have a voice dialling system that allows users to dial verbally. Seven biggest disappointments regarding Apple's new iPhone 3G: · Cost · Doesn't support Adobe's Flash · No replaceable batteries · No video recording · No cut-and-paste · No multimedia messaging service

^^^ @Amit My dear friend, in this thread you are saying that For Prepaid its any easy task to get CDR from Reliance Web World. And at the same time in another thread you are telling just opposite to it. If you forget then here is the link for the other thread, in which you had posted. http://www.rimweb.in/forums/index.php?show...&st=0 And below is the Quote from this thread in which you are telling that getting the prepaid CDR is not possible easily. So, Dear Amit, kindly elaborate on your two different postings in different threads, so that our innocent members cannot be misguided. Regards.

^^^ @Himanshu My dear friend, as I told above also that I'm using these plans only for Voice Calls, so I didn't asked them for any GPRS corporate Plan. Anyways, I will ask them and confirm you about the same. Meanwhile my Voice Plan details for both Vodafone & Reliance Plan is as under : Monthly Rental for Reliance & Vodafone = Rs.50/- per month. CLIP = Free (For Both Reliance & Vodafone) R2R or V2V CUG = 0.15 paise per minute. Reliance to Other Mobiles or Vodafone to Other Mobiles = 0.30 paise per minute. Reliance to Other LL or Vodafone to Other LL = 0.60 paise per minute. R2R or V2V STD = 1.00 per minute. Reliance to Other STD = Rs.1.50 Vodafone to Other STD = Rs.1.30 (SMS) Reliance to Any or Vodafone to Any = 200 National SMS Free every month and additional SMS charged at 0.50 per SMS Local as well as National. So, these are the details of my cool plans from Reliance as well as Vodafone, my dear friends. Regards.

^^^ @Hemant You are always welcome buddy. We are here to help each other. Regards.

^^^ My dear friends, now a days nearly all operators are introducing the one and the same vouchers and schemes. Today I saw a BPL hoarding, stating Jaadu Recharges for Rs.31 & 49 like Reliance. Regards.

^^^ Its really very great collection my dear Dr. Ali and Akshat. Keep posting buddies. Regards.

^^^ @Gaurav My dear friend, now we can expect a new lates upgraded version of this handset very soon. Regars.

In all we can say that this plan is really a very cool plan. And those who take this plan will definetely going to rock. Regards.

^^^ Yes my dear Raccoon. Nearly all operators offer differently in different circles. Vodafone too provide different offers to the customers from different cirles. So as your IDEA too. Regards.

^^^ @Chandan My dear friend, its not true at all. No such thing is going to happen with ICICI. Its just a rumour. Their could be another reason belonged to the closing down of the accounts. One reason could be that from 1st July 2008, ICICI bank is going to increase the minimum balance maintained to Rs.10,000/-, which is till date just Rs.5000/-. ICICI has send the letters to many of its customers that they are going to increase the minimum balance limit from 1st July 2008. Those clients which do want to close their account can do so before 30th June 2008 without any account closure charges. After June 30th, they will be charged for the account closure. So, this can be the solid reason for the many account closures in your area branch. Regards.

A Palm Full Of Smart Features If you're tired of your aging and bulky smartphone, but don't wish to compromise on the convenience it offers by opting for a more compact model, it’s time to rejoice. The newly introduced Palm Centro could be just the phone for you. If you are a loyal fan of Palm phones and the Palm OS, look no further – the Centro is tailormade for you. Form Factor The Palm Centro measures 4.22 × 2.11 × 0.73mm. It's the smallest smartphone offered by Palm till date, and weighs just about 119g. The phone's compact size is one of its major advantages and will attract both men and women, since it's small and slim enough to fit into a trouser pocket or a small purse with equal ease. It definitely beats the bulky Treo, and is pretty compact considering that it is equipped with a transflective 2.4-inch 320x320 colour touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. The 5-way navigation button offers the main browse functionality. 'Talk' and 'End' buttons, shortcuts to the Calendar, Inbox, Phone, and Home Page are very well spaced out, and are easy to use. As far as shortcomings are concerned, the keyboard is cramped and feels as if it's designed for users with either long nails or small fingers. But that's the price one pays for compactness. A volume leveler can be found on the left side of the handset, while a push-to-talk button, an infrared port and a microSD expansion slot are placed on the right. We were happy to see that the microSD slot is protected by an attached cover, but our glee faded a bit on realising that one cannot open it unless one removes the back cover. To add to the annoyance, the SIM card can be inserted only if the stylus is removed. They could simply have allotted more space for the card holder, which would have made the process of inserting and removing the SIM card much easier. A slide button on the top lets you switch the phone between mute and ring mode; no longer do you have to unlock the keypad and move through complicated menus. On the bottom of the handset are a 2.5mm headset jack and multi-connector ports. At the back you'd find the camera lens, a self-portrait mirror and the speaker. The camera is not exposed, which will help to keep the lens clean. Features The Centro is a combination of vital hits and misses as far as features are concerned. It runs on Palm OS 5.4.9 and comes with 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM. Thanks to the backward compatibility of this OS, many applications released for previous Palm PDAs/smartphones will also work with the Centro. That’s especially useful if you already own a Palm and don’t want to give up using any of your favourite applications. This phone has been streamlined to work with many popular applications and services. In fact, searching for freeware third-party applications is a breeze; you can easily lay your hands on the most commonly used apps for free on the Internet. The Centro is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) phone and supports both GPRS and EDGE, but not 3G. The voice features include services like speakerphone, three-way calling, voice dialing, speed dial, and the 'ignore with text' feature, which allows you to reply to a call with a text message if you can't or don't want to take the call. The Centro also supports text and multimedia messaging with the usual text chat view, which is quite a famous feature on the Palm OS. Wi-Fi is lacking, which means you could miss out on an essential part of your business communication, while you are left surfing on EDGE speeds. Though Internet on EDGE is good, Wi-Fi would have been even better. The phone has integrated Bluetooth Ver 1.2 for use with wireless headsets, hands-free kits, object exchange, and dial-up networking, but misses out on the A2DP factor, which enables Bluetooth Stereo Headset use. You could thus miss out on wireless music. Equipped with several choices to access your corporate and personal email accounts, the Centro offers more than meets the eye. The VersaMail application supports Microsoft's Direct Push Technology, which enables real-time synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange Server. VersaMail also supports a wide range of POP and IMAP e-mail accounts. We tested a Gmail account and a corporate account and were quite satisfied with the push technology; it worked well with both. Email setup was easy; we used it on a Vodafone account. We tried it on a normal GPRS connection, which did not work; but it connected well with the advanced GPRS package that allows the phone to act as a modem too. As soon as the setup was complete, the detection was quick and email started arriving right away. Multimedia and Camera The Palm Centro comes bundled with PocketTunes Deluxe Edition, which is capable of playing MP3, WAV and DRM-protected music files. However, the in-box accessories were disappointing – all we detected was a mono headset. That said; the music quality was decent. The Centro comes equipped with a 1.3-megapixel camera with 2x zoom and video recording capabilities. However, just as with the Treo's camera, there are no options to tweak the white balance, resolution and brightness. The camera is really basic, with no settings or special effects of any kind except 2x digital zoom. Click and capture, and you are done. It does auto-adjust to low light levels, but the lack of a flash was evident. Despite all this, we were impressed with the picture quality; images were sharply defined and exhibited good colour in both natural and artificial light. Performance The Centro has a tiny button on the QWERTY keypad that at first glance seems user-friendly, but falls short of the required size. However, the keys are coated with a squishy plastic that keeps fingertips from slipping, which is nice. Just when you start getting used to the Centro, its OS could hang (as we found out). This was tolerable initially but later got annoying. Such an instance might occur when you are attending calls or when you may be about to make a call. Still, this may well be a rare phenomenon as the OS gave a good performance overall in terms of speed and browsing. The Centro is powered by a 312MHz Intel XScale processor, whose performance was good. We did not experience any significant delays. The applications were quite fast; and the most important feature that the Centro boasts of is the Document viewer/editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF). It was very easy to view and edit documents with this. If you're used to pressing the 'End call' key after any action to go back to the main screen, please don’t try it here as such a move not only locks the keypad but also blanks the screen immediately. Features like the Organiser are very basic and do not require any time to get used to. Appointments, Tasks Scheduler, Notes etc. are basic too, but easy to use. One feature exclusive to the Palm Centro is the Agenda View in the Calendar, which puts the whole day ahead of you in appointments, tasks and even unread messages. The transflective display is decent and the screen is fine, especially if you view it in broad daylight. The stylus has a rough exterior that prevents it from slipping down. We found the screen responsiveness a notch lower than what we expected from a touchscreen phone. If it helps to set your mind at rest, the screen comes equipped with a permanent scratch guard. Internet A smartphone with no Wi-Fi doesn't mean the end of the world; EDGE is quite fast. In fact, the Centro’s Internet browser application, called Blazer 4.5, is faster than most mobile browsers we've tried. It has two modes: Fast and Normal. The difference is quite apparent. In Fast Mode, the web page removes images and disables cascading style sheets, making the pages load faster. Disabling images helps you cut down on your data usage, which in turn should facilitate faster web browsing. However, on using the normal mode we realised that the speed difference was not drastic and the page loaded quickly enough. So it's up to you. The Centro also has support for streaming videos. Overall, the browsing experience is satisfactory and to be honest, we did not miss Wi-Fi much. Battery The Centro's 1150 mAH lithium-ion battery claims to offer three hours of continuous talk time and up to 10 days of standby. We made calls, browsed, clicked pictures and sent text messages, and the fully charged battery lasted two whole days. This is quite good, considering the long history of bad battery life associated with Palm smartphones (read Treo). Conclusion With a price tag of Rs 13,990, we would say the Palm Centro is a deal. Its appeal is universal; it's not targeted only at hardcore businessmen. With such an attractive price and with loads of freeware available online, we recommend a buy. If you're looking for a decent smartphone that will let you call, text, chat and browse, this phone is just right for you. Courtesy : Tech2

^^^ My dear friend, still he has to submit your proper documents to get the corporate connection in your name. I'm using two Corporate Connections for my Voice calls one from Vodafone & one from Reliance. But both the connections are activated only after I submited proper documents and full verification has been done. Regards.

^^^ @Himanshu And what about the proper documentation my dear friend ? You won't get it until you have the genuine documents with you. Only one possible way is. Try to find out a friend who works for a Multinational. Employees of Multinationals are allowed to take two connections under their name. One for self and another for family or friends. But in maximum cases, most of the employees take the advantage of this corporate connection and use both of the connections within their family. Regards.

SMS service soon to alert motorists about traffic snarls 22 Jun, 2008, 1241 hrs IST, PTI MUMBAI: Are you sceptical about the traffic situation at one of the many snarl-prone spots in the city before starting a journey? Traffic police have the answer. Starting in a month, motorists will be able to get updates on traffic situation at different spots across the city by sending SMSes to a convenient five-digit number. "We have already applied for the number with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and expect to start the service in a month's time," Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sanjay Barve told reporters here. Support infrastructure like integrating of the traffic control room with the SMS service by the way of which users will be able to get the updates is already being created, he said. Citing an example, Barve said, "Suppose you wish to travel from Chembur to Dadar and are doubtful about the traffic situation at Everard Nagar junction. You just SMS 'LOC REP', which stands for location report, to the five-digit number and immediately get a reply." "The user will have to pay higher SMS charges to get the elicited reply as per the regulations but he can at least plan out his trip in a better way and take another route to complete the journey," Barve said. The traffic police are currently in talks with various private companies to sponsor the project so that the cost to the end user is minimised, Barve said. "A small message from the sponsor will be included in the reply message. It is a very good medium for the private companies to advertise," he said. The SMS service will especially be useful during the monsoons when traffic snarls are reported from various spots in the city, Barve said. The launch of the service will be advertised thoroughly through various mediums like the electronic signboards installed across the city, he said. Motorists in the city can currently complain about the traffic situation by sending an SMS to a similar number or by calling a toll free number.

^^^ My dear Himanshu, you won't get a corporate connection easily unless you are working with some Multinational and which has a tie-up with the service provider. Regards.

Yes I too could stare it for some time with little difficulty my dear friend.

^^^ My dear friend, I don't think that this handset will work on CDMA 1900. Regards.

^^^ Its very bad news my dear friends, for Cdma operators as well as for Cdma users. It seems that all the booty will be leeched by GSM operators first. Regards.

^^^ But my dear friends, in Reliance it is not an easy job to get the CDR. Their are a lot of hassles for getting it. Regards.

^^^ Yes my dear friends, Rs.50/- seems to be quite high. It should be near 25/- rupees and as Raccoon also suggested above, if they can provide the service through Email then it will be much better as that can save on printing cost as well as courier charges. On the one side these people want the customers to join their E-billing system so that bills can be sent by Email and on the other side they want to charge and send printed details. Regards.

^^^ @Chandan My dear friend, AVG and Avast both are best. But AVG does not provide protection against Malware and Spyware, where as Avast protects your system from both of them. You will not get new 128 mb sdram anywhere. They will sell you the old ram and telling you its new. PCI sound card will cost you around 500. Nero needs approximately 70 MB to be fully installed in your system. Regards.

^^^ @Chandan My dear friend, I think this scheme is valid for only one number / friend. But still you can confirm the same from CC of Vodafone by dialing 111 toll free from your Vodafone mobile. Regards.

Defence spectrum for civilian use likely soon: Pallam Raju 21 Jun, 2008, 0946 hrs IST NEW DELHI: National Security Adviser MK Narayanan is to adjudicate on the sensitive spectrum issue that could see the defence forces vacating idle radio frequencies for civilian communications like mobile telephony, Minister of State for Defence Pallam Raju has said. "Our national security cannot be compromised. But we also know that spectrum is scarce. We must do what is best for the nation," said Raju, who was dealing with the subject as the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT and Communications between August 2004 and January 2006. "Some form of an MOU (memorandum of understanding) is being looked at by the NSA (national security advisor), which can be signed between the ministry of defence and the DOT (Department of Telecommunications)," the minister told IANS in an interaction. "I guess it will be soon... In a couple of months," he replied, when asked when the NSA will be able to find a solution. A group of ministers, headed by then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, had given Narayanan the mandate to find a way out to get idle spectrum with the forces vacated, while also finding a secure alternative and the funds to finance the same. Raju, who holds a bachelor's degree in engineering and a master's in business administration from the Temple University in Philadelphia, said the defence ministry was not averse to vacating some of the spectrum allotted to it. He nevertheless maintained that the DOT and other agencies of the ministry also have to come out with the funds that will help in creating an alternative platform for the defence forces that is secure. "It is important for the DoT to understand this and come out with solutions to create an alternative platform," he said. "The Universal Service Obligation Fund could be used for this," the minister said, referring to the money which private sector telecom operators pay state-run telecom companies to ensure communications services in rural areas. "I cannot understand why it is taking so much time," added Raju, who has worked in the US and Norway before being inducted into politics by late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Raju's father M.S. Sanjeevi Rao was a minister in Gandhi's cabinet. With India adding 8-10 million new mobile telephone subscribers to the network each month and gearing up for next generation telephony in 2009, radio spectrum availability has become a hot issue. There are more than 500 applications from private companies pending before the government for allocation of frequencies. Even the industry watchdog, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has not been allowed to make any recommendation in this regard, even though frequency allocation has been the most contested subject by private telecom operators. "Spectrum management and licensing are not in our domain at all. It is entirely and exclusively in the domain of the government and its departments," watchdog chairperson Nripendra Misha said.