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| Tuesday, August 28, 2007 |
| Sify Anywhere + Classifieds Deal - Desperate Move to Mature |
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 NASDAQ listed Sify has taken two major decisions in a desperate move to mature and survive the point of inflection.
It announced the launch of Sify Anywhere, which will allow Sify users access to the Net from anywhere. Sify broadband subscribers will now be able to access their accounts from any Sify kiosk at airport, hotels. Sify Wi-Fi spots or Sify iWay cafe.
In another development, Sify today handed over the classified section of its portal to be managed by Sulekha. Essentially, Sulekha will serve the same ads on Sulekha Classifieds and Sify Classifieds. Sulekha is powered by Google AdSense and Google as a search engine hates to see the same content on two different websites. The site which the Google crawls first will be treated as original and other as duplicate and this may severely affect the rankings of Sify Classifieds as Engineers at Sulekha will automate the submission process to Google such that their portal gets higher rank. |
| Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 11:50 AM |
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| Sunday, August 26, 2007 |
| ISP License and Entry Fees - A Step Backwards |
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The Government of India wanted to cleanup non functional ISPs, but the consequence of the policy towards this exercise is a burden on existing ISPs which are likely to pass it on to their subscribers - a hefty 6% revenue share clause.
The Government under DoT recommendations have imposed a License Fees, apart from the Entry Fees [Rs 10 or Rs 20 Lakh]. All District level ISPs have to migrate to State or National licenses.
I am wondering what is the rationale behind such a move ? Ministry of Commerce in fact encourages small and medium businesses. As long as these small operators are providing value for money, they will survive, why is the government having vested interest in strangling them ? Their is a terrific demand for Broadband Internet in India and even a dozen ISPs of the scale of Bharti Airtel will be unable to fulfill this demand.
Mr. Amitabh Singhal, Director, ISAPI, said
The new recommendations will do nothing to lift the broadband penetration in the country. The whole exercise has been to merely modify and roll the 1998 policy even further back. It offers no new grounds for innovation, customer benefits and actually throttles the Internet sector, and is unprecedented for any democratic country and its governance of Internet. Thank you Government of India. |
| Published on Sunday, August 26, 2007 at 8:23 PM |
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| Thursday, August 23, 2007 |
| MTNL Triband VoIP based ISD Calling |
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 MTNL's Triband Broadband customers in Mumbai and Delhi will be able to make VoIP based ISD calls at just Rs 1 / Minute. The good news is that you can do this using your regular MTNL Phone. However, you will need to have an Analog Telephone Adaptor which will cost Rs 1,500 and additionally you should be a subscribed to MTNL Triband broadband.
Globally this service is offered by companies such as Vonage, Packet8, etc. I have used Vonage in Bangalore over Airtel Broadband and didn't have any issues. MTNL is offering this in association with Aksh Optifibre. I really don't recommend MTNL's service because of poor customer service [Well that's the fate of Government controlled companies]. Also, their Broadband tariffs are highly unreasonable.
Recently, MTNL launched a portal in association with AOL. MTNL has half a million broadband subscribers in Mumbai and Delhi. |
| Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 8:31 PM |
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| Tuesday, August 21, 2007 |
| Hindi + Tamil - Classifieds Up and Running |
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 Kijiji India a subsidiary of eBay Inc had launched Local Classifieds in Indian Vernacular - Hindi and Tamil on a pilot basis. We were aware of the launch and were waiting to see the response form consumers.
On browsing the Hindi Classifieds, we see most of the content is still posted in English. Call it lack of availability of tools [software + hardware] in Indian Vernacular or lack of awareness or poor internet penetration in Rae Bareli. Tamil is another local language in which Kijiji was launched a month ago and we see similar results. Since both Rae Bareli and Thanjavur don't have English sections for classifieds, it is obvious that residents of both the places will continue to post in English. But we should be able to see some local language ads Hindi or Tamil soon. Local Language Newspapers dominate the Indian market so why not on the Internet ?
One obvious problem I noticed while browsing Rae Bareli. Both of these [One, Two] are different links but resolve to the same page in IE and FireFox.
If you have tried to post ads in those sections and have faced difficulties, then you can send us your feedback to feedback @ BroadbandIndia.com |
| Published on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 11:35 PM |
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| Thursday, August 16, 2007 |
| Naukri's Loss is Monsters Gain |
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 Back in 1999-2000, Times of India's Ascent published ever Wednesday was the major source for Jobs Classifieds. The situation is entirely different today and is changing rapidly.
In the past few years, Naukri, Monsters and TimesJobs have all gained traction. In a study conducted by JuxtConsult, Naukri has substantially lost ground to Monsters and TimesJobs. Their are around 18.4 million job seekers according to a survey of 10,000 respondents.
Going forward into the era of Web 2.0, jobs will be filled through Social and Professional networks. In fact, this is the reason techTribe and brijj have been founded. Specialized blogs are another source of jobs in the Web 2.0 world. |
| Published on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 6:08 AM |
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| Monday, August 06, 2007 |
| Airtel Ties up with Google |
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 Bharti Airtel Broadband just a while ago announced that it has tied up with Search Engine giant Google Inc to provide web services to Airtel broadband subscribers in India.
Services include e-mail, chat and search. We all know that Google's Search and Google's Gmail are the best products available in the market and Bharti has done an excellent job by going for a partnership with Google.
Atul Bindal, President of Bharti Airtel said,
The company will provide customised home page to customers to give them a new internet experience. The suite of services will be offered free of cost to all Airtel Broadband subscribers in India. E-commerce applications will also be added to the suite in a period of time.
We were the first one to recommend the use of Google Apps [Office Productivity Suite, Customized E-mail, Chat, etc] It is not very clear if Airtel is paying Google to host its subscribers. Airtel Broadband had 0.63 Million customers at the end of June-2007. Will Reliance Broadband vie for a similar arrangement with Google or Yahoo or Microsoft ? |
| Published on Monday, August 06, 2007 at 2:16 AM |
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