3G hype fails to woo customers in India

Will 2011 turn out to be a revolutionary new year for India's half a billion mobile subscribers? While telecom companies are already hyping the brave new world of 3G services, standards of basic telephony services continue to languish in the basement.

The nine leading telecom operators, including state-run BSNL and MTNL, who had burned their pockets to pay Rs 67,718.95 crore to acquire 3G spectrum, much to their dismay, are finding it difficult to sell-off these airwaves to those telecom operators or companies who had not bid for it.

The worries for these operators have compounded further as they have invested another whopping Rs 20,000 crore and more to develop the 3G infrastructure, which they expect to roll out by early next year.

"3G is not successful. The operators paid too much to buy the 3G airwaves to freeup congestion in voice calls. They also feared losing customers once the mobile number portability (MNP) is rolled-out. Most of the newcomers have ample spectrum and they don't anticipate 3G requirement," said an industry expert.

Despite the fact that state-run telecom operators BSNL and MTNL were given 3G airwaves two years back - private operators have got it in October this year - they have not been able to do much with their first-mover advantage in 3G. Both are now in the process of outsourcing their 3G networks. But both MTNL as well as BSNL are yet to find any potential client for selling-off 3G airwaves. Heads of both the state-run BSNL and MTNL had written to the telecom minister for refund of licence fee paid for 3G and BWA spectrum.

However, operators like Bharti Airtel, who already have 3G services in many circles are in talks with operators who have got 3G for roaming pacts for ensuring a pan-India footprint. There have been speculations that Bharti could enter into strategic alliance with Idea and Vodafone for pan India 3G rollout. But other operators who do not have 3G airwaves have largely ignored the need for it in the near future.

For instance, Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL), a joint venture (JV) between Sistema of Russia and the Shyam Group of India, which operates CDMA mobile services under the brand name MTS has already clarified that it does not need 3G services and that it has enough bandwidth to support faster data services and jam-free voice network.

"We have adequate spectrum and we don't anticipate its need," said a top SSTL official. Then there are worries whether the bruising tariff war currently on in 2G will continue into 3G. When Tata DoCoMo launched 3G services at 0.66 paise per second Bharti Airtel said it had paid heavily for 3G spectrum and cannot afford a tariff war.

Tata DoCoMo is keen on subscribing to 3G network to stay afloat in the Indian market. It does not have even start-up spectrum in certain circles.

Moreover, the industry experts have a view that 3G services will hardly matter for large number of subscribers. "I don't think 3G will make much of difference to most of the subscribers. We hardly have less than 20 per cent of them who use services beyond voice calls. Over half of the subscribers are those who use nonvoice services," said Col SN Aggarwal, consumer activist and telecom expert.

"3G is hyped. We have already told Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) that consumers first need to get better services rather than 3G services. We continue to get spam calls. There is no check on operators and telemarketers. The Trai, as a regulator, has become toothless. We need better regulations to govern the sector effectively," points out Randhir Verma, a telecom expert.

Source: 3G hype fails to woo customers in India

China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'

Senior Chinese figures were behind the hacking of Google earlier this year which forced the search engine to quit the country, leaked US cables suggest.

One cable, released by whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, cites a "well-placed" contact as saying the action against Google was "100% political".

A politburo member is said to have been angered after Googling his name and finding critical comments online.

The cable says it is unclear whether China's top leaders were involved.

Other cables show Beijing has been "extremely concerned" about the use of high-resolution satellite imagery on Google's mapping software, Google Earth.

In January, Google said it had been subjected to a "sophisticated cyber attack originating from China" - it said the e-mail accounts of human rights activists were among those hacked.

In the ensuing row over internet censorship, Google abandoned mainland China and moved its Chinese-language operations to Hong Kong.

The company did not say who it thought was responsible but the cables, released by Wikileaks and published on the Guardian website, show the company had repeatedly raised concerns about the issue.
'Forbidden fruit'

The BBC's Nick Childs says the allegations contained in the cables will reinforce both the perception that the Chinese government is highly sensitive about the internet and suspicions that it was behind the hacking attacks on Google.

Read more China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'

What is Wikileaks ?

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is once again at the centre of attention.

It is preparing to unveil a new set of US secret documents which it says are bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last month, Wikileaks posted online almost 400,000 documents detailing events in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, months after releasing some 90,000 secret records of US military incident and intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan.

It is the latest in a long list of "leaks" published by the secretive site, which has established a reputation for publishing sensitive material from governments and other high-profile organisations.

In April 2010, for example, Wikileaks posted a video on its website that shows a US Apache helicopter killing at least 12 people - including two Reuters journalists - during an attack in Baghdad in 2007. A US military analyst is currently awaiting trial, on charges of leaking the material along with other sensitive military and diplomatic material.

In October 2009, it posted a list of names and addresses of people it claimed belonged to the British National Party (BNP). The BNP said the list was a "malicious forgery".

And during the 2008 US elections, it published screenshots of the e-mail inbox, pictures and address book of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Other controversial documents hosted on the site include a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta, a document that detailed restrictions placed on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Legal wrangles

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and still splits opinion. For some it is lauded as the future of investigative journalism. For others it is a risk.

In mid-March 2010 the site's director, Julian Assange, published a document purportedly from the US intelligence services, claiming that Wikileaks represented a "threat to the US Army".

The US government later confirmed to the BBC that the documents were genuine.

Read More: What is Wikileaks

Farms to harvest rare animal parts 'are not the answer !!

Farming rare animal species will not halt the illegal trade in animal parts, a conservation group has warned.

Care for the Wild says the fact that the animals are worth more dead than alive is hampering efforts to save species such as tigers and rhinos.

They add that selling parts from captive-bred creatures would not result in a halt of illegally traded animal parts and would instead fuel demand.

A kilo of powdered rhino horn can fetch £22,000 on the black market.

Mark Jones, programmes director of Care for the Wild International, said recent media reports suggested that the South African government was considering "a feasibility study on some kind of farming or ranching of rhinos for their horns".

"This flagged up that these sort of farming initiatives are still being considered at quite high levels," he explained.

"Rhinos are in quite a lot of trouble at the moment, with the value of their horns going through the roof, especially in Vietnam."
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Tiger in the scrub (Image: AP)

A recent report said wild tigers were still at risk as a result of poaching

* 1,000 tigers 'killed in a decade'

Media coverage in 2009 reported that a member of the Vietnamese government said he took rhino horn and his cancer went into remission, prompting a growth in the demand for the illegal product.

"The sums that are being paid for powdered rhino horn are just astronomical."

There are two species of rhino found in Africa. While the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) has enjoyed a surge in numbers in recent years, taking the population to about 17,500, it is a very different story for the northern sub-species Ceratotherium simum cottoni.

It is listed as Critically Endangered, and conservationists have warned that it is on the "brink of extinction" with four or fewer individuals remaining.

More than 200 rhinos have been killed in South Africa for their horns since the beginning of this year. This week, the nation's defence minister told BBC News that troops would be deployed to help rangers fight poachers.

Read more: Farms to harvest rare animal parts 'are not the answer

Alien' planet detected circling dying star !!

Astronomers claim to have discovered the first planet originating from outside our galaxy.

The Jupiter-like planet, they say, is part of a solar system which once belonged to a dwarf galaxy.

This dwarf galaxy was in turn devoured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, according to a team writing in the academic journal Science.

The star, called HIP 13044, is nearing the end of its life and is 2000 light years from Earth.

The discovery was made using a telescope in Chile.
Cosmic cannibalism

Planet hunters have so far netted nearly 500 so-called "exoplanets" outside our Solar System using various astronomical techniques.

Read more:- Alien' planet detected circling dying star

Huge antenna launched into space !!

A US satellite carrying the biggest commercial antenna reflector ever put in space has been launched successfully from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The mesh structure on the Skyterra-1 spacecraft is 22m (72ft) across.

It will relay signals for a new 4G-LTE mobile phone and data system for North America run by Lightsquared.

Callers whose networks are tied into the system will be automatically switched to a satellite if they are out of range of a terrestrial mast.

Lightsquared is the latest effort to try to establish a hybrid satellite-terrestrial system in the US.

Two previous ventures ran into financial problems. Both Terrestar and DBSD North America had to seek legal protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy rules while they sought to restructure enormous debts built up as they rolled out their systems.
Skyterra-1 (Boeing) The satellite has been built by Boeing

LightSquared has promised a different approach. It says its business will be wholesale only. It will be selling capacity to carriers who wish to offer go-anywhere connectivity to their consumers, be they phone or data users.

The system will be capable of supporting smartphone-sized devices, it says.

Under a schedule approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the company has to have a ground network of terrestrial stations in place to serve 90% of the US population by the end of 2015.

The Skyterra-1 satellite was launched from Baikonur on a Proton rocket at 2329 local time on Sunday (1729 GMT)

The 5.4-tonne satellite will be located at 101.3 degrees West longitude and is expected to have a service life of 15 years.

The launch was the 10th Proton flight of 2010, and the seventh organised by International Launch Services, the company that sells the Russian rocket to commercial operators who need to get satellites into orbit.

A second satellite, Skyterra-2, will follow in 2011.

Huge antenna launched into space

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf warns over address changes !!

The internet could face years of instability as it moves to a new addressing system, one of the network's original architects has warned.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, spoke as the UK was urged to begin using the new addressing system.

With current addresses due to run out in 2012, nations and businesses must get on with switching, said Mr Cerf.

During the switch internet links could become unreliable, making sites and services hard to reach, Mr Cerf said.

"This has to happen or the internet will stop growing or will not be growable," he said of the move to the addressing system.

The net has grown to its current size using version 4 of its addressing scheme (IPv4), which allows for about 4.3 billion addresses.

Estimates suggest that this pool of addresses will be exhausted by the end of January 2012.
Priority issue

A system with a far larger pool of addresses has been created, called IPv6, but progress towards using it has been sluggish.

"The business community needs to understand that this is an infrastructure they are relying on and it needs to change for them to continue to grow and to rely on it," Mr Cerf said.

He criticised global businesses, saying they were "short-sighted" for not making the shift sooner.
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"They cannot grow their business if they do not have an address space to grow it into," he added.

The problem of the switchover will be exacerbated, said Mr Cerf, because the two addressing systems are not compatible.

As parts of the internet do eventually convert to IPv6 those trying to get at the parts still on IPv4 may not reach the site, resource or service they were after.

The net would not stop during the switch, said Mr Cerf, but access could get "spotty".

That instability could last years, he suggested, as even search giant Google - his current employer - took three years to get its IPv6 network up and running.

"There's work to be done," he said.

"It's not massive work but it is meticulous work."
Clock, BBC Time is running out for firms to get using the replacement addressing scheme

Mr Cerf was the keynote speaker at a launch event for 6UK, a non-profit group set up to get UK businesses converting to the new addressing scheme.

Currently only about 1% of data sent over the internet is wrapped in IPv6 packets, said Mr Cerf, adding that moving to using the bigger address space should now be a global priority.

Some nations, such as China and the Czech Republic, had made great strides in using IPv6 but others had not even started.

"There is turbulence coming," said Nigel Titley, chairman of RIPE, the body that hands out Europe's allocation of IPv4 addresses.

He said it was only a matter of time before the shortfall of addresses started to hit business.

Attempts to get more people online, close digital divisions or to boost e-commerce could all be hampered by a lack of addresses, Mr Titley said.

The key to accelerating the shift to IPv6 would be making internet service providers (ISPs) offer the service to their customers, he said, something too few were doing at the moment.

"Sooner or later BT is not going to be able to provision a new broadband customer," said Mr Titley. "That's when the accountants might wake up."