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| Monday, November 26, 2007 |
| IOL Broadband - MTNL VoIP |
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 IOL Broadband has signed a VOIP service providers agreement with MTNL. MTNL has taken a bold step in introducing VOIP services in keeping with the global trend of telcos to enhance their ARPU's. This agreement will allow the company to interconnect with millions of MTNL subscribers with local / STD / International calls at very low rates. The company's spokesperson said that in the first year, the company is planning a capacity of 100 million minutes going upto 1 billion minutes in two years time and expecting huge increase in VOIP and broadband connections in the near future.
The company announces availability of videophones to all its broadband subscribers along with VOIP phone and teleconferencing services. With this agreement the company is now able to offer bundled voice - video - data - triple play services in addition to IPTV Services. |
Published on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 10:48 PM  |
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| Tuesday, November 20, 2007 |
| BSNL's WiMax - Update from Kolkatta |
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 State owned company, BSNL which is in the best form to deploy wired broadband on demand across India for some reason has a very laid back attitude. Nonetheless, the company wants to provide broadband services via WiMax in rural India.
Using the USO funds contributed by all other Telcos in India, BSNL wants to connect 25,000 villages on the WiMax broadband Information highway involing a cost of Rs 2,000 crore [$500 mn]. BSNL also wants to setup 50,000 Wimax kiosks in rural India. What we fail to understand is the arrogance of BSNL which is sitting on a large Copper Network, unwilling to serve nor open the network for private companies and thus denying the urban Indian consumer broadband services, making him wait for months in vain.
The most interesting part is BSNL, Kolkatta has promised to clear all the backlog by end of December [You are lucky, if they do so]. They also have ambitious plans to enhance its broadband services from 2 Mega Bytes(MB) per household at present to 100 MB in the urban areas, and 2MB in the rural areas.
The 100MB plan will be implemented in stages. The first phase will see the connection of all the nodes by fibre (Fibre to the node-FTTN+), while the second stage will bring the fibre to the premises (Fibre to the premises-FTTP+). If we see the light at the end of the fibre by 2010, then Kolkatta is the place for broadband hungry persons like me :-)
Related Reading:
BSNL Bangalore WiMax - A flip-Flop
The State of WiMax in India |
| Published on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 2:21 AM |
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| Monday, November 12, 2007 |
| Stay Away from Indiatimes.com |
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Indiatimes.com, is reported to be serving malware. Upto 434 files located on its web servers are tweaked to do so. Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at ScanSafe said at least 18 different IP addresses are involved in the attack.
The report has been shared with Microsoft since hackers are exploiting Windows vulnerabilities [Most likely Internet Explorer vulnerabilities]. We have asked ScanSafe for more information and we shall update as soon as we receive details from them. It is not clear if sub-domains of indiatimes are also infected or not ?
Until then, even if you have to visit Indiatimes.com, we strongly recommend that you use firefox browser to visit the site. Stay tuned. |
| Published on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 5:25 AM |
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| Thursday, November 08, 2007 |
| Promise Vs Performance |
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 Former Telecom Minister, Dayanidhi Maran declared 2007 as year of broadband. With just another 2 months to go lets review the state of broadband in India.
At the end of 2006, India had 2.05 mn broadband subscribers.
March-2007: 2.34mn
June-2007: 2.52 mn. At the end of Sept-2007, we have 2.67 mn broadband subscribers. We may end the year with 3 mn subscribers i.e a 50% YoY growth which is a pathetic number since we are growing on a small subscriber base. Mobile subscriber numbers which are in billions is also growing at 30% YoY.
Readers of our blog are desperate to establish broadband connection in various Indian cities. I took up the matter with broadband service providers. Here is our view on the same.
We would not recommend customers to go for Tata Indicom Broadband and Reliance Broadband due to very poor customer care, wrong billing and mental harassment. [Another disgruntled user of Reliance Broadband]
Surprisingly, BSNL with its vast network is penetrating aggressively with its DataOne DSL broadband service. Visit their office 3 or 4 times, you are sure to get service and it can be rated average to above average. They are upgrading equipments at central exchanges and as on today they are the largest broadband ISP in India.
Bharti Airtel is one of the best when it comes to service. However, the company is well aware of the terrific demand and yet unable to do anything. [Recall Mittal's statement in press few days ago ? most of the time he is competing with his hands tied at the back] When i spoke to their executive, they told about the Right of Way is a major problem in most Tier-I cities. Rapidly changing technology has also made them go slow because they are now thinking of higher capacity pipes so that they can also serve 8 Mbps broadband and IPTV. [Airtel's IPTV project is directly under Sunil Mittal and until he signs-off, you won't have it :-) ] At least in Bangalore, Airtel's broadband availability on demand will be true by March-2008, which will cover 80% of Bangalore reaching even peripheral districts.
Their are lot of other smaller service providers such as Sify, You Telecom, etc who are our life savers now. Looks like until the end of 2008, we can't boast of a considerable broadband subscribers base. |
| Published on Thursday, November 08, 2007 at 8:03 PM |
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| Wednesday, November 07, 2007 |
| Xbox Live Offer - 500 Points from Microsoft |
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 Microsoft is running an exclusive offer on XBox Live. Buy your 12 month Gold Subscription Card through any of the following Retail Stores. You need to activate the card before Dec-5th. After 5th of Dec, you will receive a 16 digit code, on your Windows Live id which is registered with Xbox Live. Enter the 16 digit code and get 500 Microsoft Points free. [Kindly verify the Offer Terms when you are at the retail store]
What use are the Microsoft Points for ?
Microsoft Points is the exciting virtual currency for Xbox Live. It allows you to BUY loads of exciting content like Multiplayer Maps, Dashboard Themes, Gamer Pics and more.
What are you waiting for ? Halo-3, the most played game on Xbox Live has 3 Million people worldwide playing it online already. |
| Published on Wednesday, November 07, 2007 at 12:15 AM |
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