Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

2007-The Year of Broadband
Union Minister for Communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran has said that the year 2007 would be the year of broadband. "The year-2007 will see broadband in India further affordable and promised that people will forget the 256 Kbps and enter the Information Superhighway. The new year will also see the broadband policy to be rewritten," he said. Maran also added that the C-Dot-Alcatel WiMax R&D Center would be rolling out consumer equipments by Q3 2007 for the home-segment.

RelCom to launch Reliance Blue Magic
Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is to launch its "Reliance Blue Magic", direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting service in the country by March 2007. The company had received the LoI from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in September to offer these services in the country. Reliance would use its telecom channel to market its DTH across the country. The company is optimistic to boost its business in the broadcasting sector through its telecom platform.

EMC Signs a Deal With BITS Pilani
EMC has announced the signing of a deal with BITS Pilani, as a part of the EMC Academy Program (EAP). Under this program, BITS Pilani is offering an information management and storage course starting from the current semester. EMC said in a statement that it has forged alliances with 33 educational institutions and over 749 students have undertaken this course across India under EAP. EAP is an education program focused on developing a resource pool of skilled.

Megasoft–Teletalk Bangladesh Deal
Megasoft has been chosen by Teletalk Bangladesh for a suite of mobile services. The range of services Megasoft has to provide include SMS Auto Correct, PowerRoam, SmartRoute, Welcome Notification, InstaRoam, SMS aggregation and others. The deal size is a little over $1 mn. With this deal, Teletalk Bangladesh has become the only operator to provide International SMS with its SMS aggregation tool and instant roaming access to 400 networks.

Ericsson Working on IPTV
Ericsson is working on IPTV as well as researching on enriched communication solutions. Gunnar Heldebro, VP and GM of Ericsson has recently said that the main focus has shifted from pure telecom for the company to develop applications from the end-users perspective and the company is now hugely investing in IPTV. He said that the company would soon be rolling out Napster Mobile applications for the global telecom market.

Ericsson Opens R&D in Chennai
Ericsson has announced the launch of its new R&D facility in Chennai. This is a part of Ericsson's national R&D team that currently comprises over 100 people based in Chennai and Gurgaon. The company would be focusing on developing charging solutions and value-added applications for the pre-paid and multimedia segments. Dayanidhi Maran declared the new facility open in the presence of Swedish ambassador Harald Falth and Mats Granryd, MD, Ericsson India.

VoiceGate to Provide Mobile Content
VoiceGate Technologies, the telecommunications technology solution provider, would soon deliver content to various mobile operators. As an expansion plan, the Hyderabad-based company is eager to scrape up more business outside Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. During the month of Ramzan, VoiceGate had tied up with BSNL to provide moon-sighting announcement. VoiceGate offers 18 value added services on IVR for BSNL customers in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka telecom circles.

Airtel Launches Airtel CallHome
Bharti Airtel has announced its foray into the US with the launch of Airtel CallHome service for NRIs. This service is expected to serve over 2.5 mn NRIs based in the US. They will now be able to call to India at 7.9 cents a minute. Compared to the other options available in the market, this service comes at a significantly 40% less in terms of pricing. This price structure is for calls made to any phone in India – mobile or landline. This is now available with pre-paid option.

Free Insurance from RelComm
Reliance Communications has announced the launch of a scheme that offers 'Free Group Term Life Cover' (TLC) to more than 25 mn CDMA subscribers of Reliance Mobile and Reliance Hello. This, first of its kind scheme in the country, offers Reliance Communications' customers an insurance cover of up to Rs 50,000 merely through an SMS without paying any premium. The minimum cover is Rs 5,000 for the prepaid and Rs 10,000 for the post-paid CDMA subscribers.

LG Launches Hindi T9 Text Software
Tegic Communications has announced that LG Electronics has launched Hindi T9 Text Input software in its latest GSM phone model, LG KG110. Local LG engineers at the LG engineering center in Pune, ported Hindi T9 predictive text input software to the LG GSM handset. Hindi T9 software in Version 7.4 offers users advanced word completion functionality, enabling mobile users to press just a few keys to pull up the desired word.

Qualcomm Hosts BREW 2006
Qualcomm has recently hosted the second annual BREW Developers Conference in Mumbai. The conference saw the launch of several applications. These included the 'Astute Stock Mania' by Astute Systems Technology, Webdunia's 'Pre School Education' and the new BREW applications by Indiagames. Qualcomm is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies.

Avaya to Focus on Upcoming IT Cities
Avaya is focusing on C and D cities to boost the voice business in the country. Sanjay Singh, head, SME Business Unit, Avaya Global Connect, said "C and D cities are the potential areas for growth compared to the major towns. We are focusing in the upcoming cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh and Cochin (Kochi) and boost our channel business in those areas." He added that the company is also planning to increase its channel partners from current 50 to 100 in one year's term.

Motorola's 'Screen 3' Application
Telecom major Motorola has introduced inbuilt 'Screen 3' application in its high-end handsets for the Indian mobile market. It is a feature where the mobile subscriber will be able to access all the services on the screen of the phone. If it is news, it will be scrolling on the screen without pressing any key. This service would be available through GPRS and a third party will provide the content. The company did not provide any time frame for the roll out of this service.

Nortel Trials WiMax in Delhi
Nortel is gearing up to launch its fixed WiMax trial run in New Delhi and Gurgaon. The company officials are tight-lipped about the project details and are not sharing the partner they are launching the test-run with. Mallikaarjun Rao, director (Carrier Networks), Nortel India agreed that the company is going to start the test run in December. In the last month, Intel chairman Craig Barrett visited Baramati in Maharashtra and launched a WiMax network for a digital hospital.

Google–Airtel Partnership
Bharti Airtel and Google have announced a strategic partnership in which Airtel will bring Google search to the Airtel Live mobile WAP portal. Google will also incorporate advertising through its Mobile Ads product on the Airtel Live mobile portal. The Google search engine on Airtel Live mobile portal will enable Airtel users to use the Google search engine to easily access content. Google will power searches on Airtel Live in two areas (on net and off net).

CyberMedia Buys 49% Stake in PSI
CyberMedia, South Asia's largest specialty media house, has acquired 49% stake in Champaign, Illinois-based Publication Services (PSI), through its wholly owned US subsidiary, CyberMedia India LLC. CyberMedia has an option to acquire 100% interest in PSI in three years time. The acquisition of PSI provides CyberMedia's access to a strong client base and team of experienced US-based professionals for its high potential content outsourcing business.

LSI Logic to Acquire Agere Systems
Semiconductor solutions provider LSI Logic has announced that it would acquire Agere Systems, the former chip division of Lucent Technologies for $4 bn in stock. Under the terms of the agreement, Agere shareholders will receive 2.16 shares of LSI for each share of Agere they own. The Agere acquisition would boost LSI's business in chip solutions for cell phones, MP3 players and portable media devices. It will also offer a comprehensive set of building block solutions.

UTStarcom eyes Eastern Europe, N America for IPTV
UTStarcom is focusing on Eastern Europe and North America to market Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). The company sells its broadband, wireless and handset solutions to operators in telecommunications markets worldwide. According to Brian Caskey, VP (Worldwide Marketing) of UTStarcom, most of the telecos worldwide are eyeing to launch IPTV following the initial success of IPTV in China. UTStarcom has recently launched IPTV in India with MTNL.

Cisco to Invest $1.1 bn in India
Cisco Systems has announced the starting of a manufacturing base in India, which would manufacture IP Phones, both for the domestic and overseas markets. For this, the company has tied-up with Foxconn to work on the facility. The company will also invest $1.1 bn in India and would allocate $50 mn for a new R&D campus in Bangalore, to be operational by June 2007. Another $750 mn would go into R&D activities, training and development in India over the next three years.

Webdunia Expands its Portfolio
Webdunia.com has announced that it is extending its catalogue of BREW applications to include content in two additional languages: Oriya and Assamese. Webdunia.com's catalogue is currently available in nine Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Punjabi. The language solution provider offers a diverse collection of innovative content to the users across the country on the Tata Teleservices network.

Avaya's Embedded Communication
Avaya Global Services is working on embedded communication offerings that would be integrated with business processes directly, thus making communication automated while obviating the need for thinking about communication per se. The Pune center has a current headcount of 600 people, and has been growing at 50 per cent for the past few years. The trials of various products are already in progress and Avaya would be shipping the first SOA versions in February as a notification tool.

Undersea Cable to Link Lanka, India
Flag Telecom, the communications arm of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) has tied-up with Lanka Bell, one of Sri Lanka's privately held wireless telecom operators, to lay an undersea cable linking both the countries. The $27 mn deal will see a third landing on the cable that currently runs from India to the Maldives. Sri Lanka Telecom currently has undersea cable links through the SEA-ME-WEA (South East Asia, Middle East and Western Europe) consortium, which helps channel overseas traffic.

Bharti Launches Series of VAS
Bharti has launched a USSD menu browser and payment gateway as the first application in a series of value added services (VAD) to be rolled out in the coming months. This browser enables subscribers to do a VAS content search, such as ringtones, residing on different VAS platforms (SMS/IVR/WAP/RBT) and provides a browser for downloading the content. The user can then make payment for the download through an interface with the payment gateway.

Neotel's Rs 1,300 Cr Debt Facility
VSNL has informed BSE that Neotel, South Africa's second fixed line operator and an arm of VSNL, has announced that it has signed a Rs 1,300 crore bridging debt facility with a funding consortium of South African financial institutions. The consortium will jointly finance Rs 900 crore of the debt, while the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa will finance a further Rs 400 crore. The funds will be utilized for Neotel's network build out.

F-Secure, VSNL Join Hands
Internet security company F-Secure and VSNL have tied up to offer comprehensive managed security services like F-Secure's antivirus solution as well as firewall and spam filtering solutions. In addition, there is also a management platform that small and medium size company administrators can use to easily manage and get relevant reports related to their internal environment. The solution will be available for subscription through VSNL's online platform.

AT&T's 2 New Internet Data Centers
AT&T has announced that it is opening two new Internet data centers in Shanghai, China, and in Oak Brook, Ill. located outside Chicago. The centers, the latest additions to AT&T's 1.8 mn sq ft global Internet data center footprint, will help the company further accelerate its position in the hosting business worldwide. The new Shanghai facility, located in the city's Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, is the second AT&T Internet data center in that city.

Nokia partners IMI to curb piracy
Nokia has entered into an alliance with Indian Music Industry (IMI) to fight piracy and is also launching a new series of music phones. The new phones are embedded with digital rights management, a combination of technologies that help publishers or copyright owners to control and protect digital data. Nokia has launched its Nseries music edition devices - N91, N73 and N70 – and announced the launch of 'Legends of India', a pre-loaded collection of Hindi songs.

Aperto Bags BSNL Order for WiMax deployment
Aperto Networks, a company involved in building WiMax base stations and subscriber units, has announced that it has bagged BSNL's first phase order for rolling out carrier-grade WiMax Forum certified products across six cities and four rural areas in India. The six initial cities getting the WiMax equipment are Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune. The deployment will also cover four rural districts in Haryana and is planned for completion in January 2007. The other four rural sites are in Haryana.

BSNL Chennai Launches RBT service
BSNL, Chennai telecom circle becomes the first BSNL circle in the country to launch BSNL tunes, the ring back tone (RBT) to all its postpaid mobile subscribers. The services have been launched on the short code 567, and is available in six languages, English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. BSNL has partnered with OnMobile to deploy the ring back tone services for the South zone covering the 4 circles of Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.