The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has authorised service providers to either penalise errant telemarketers with a fine of Rs 500 per unsolicited call or disconnect their lines following subscriber complaints.
Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani has proposed that the government should make it mandatory for telecom service providers to surrender additional spectrum that they are not utilising. Putting his proposal into practice, Ambani has also conveyed his willingness to surrender the extra 1.8 MHz spectrum that his group has in the Bihar circle.
Upping the ante in the ongoing spectrum war, Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani has shot off a missive to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), accusing GSM operators of having cornered spectrum under the valuable 900 MHz.
The herculean effort and complexity involved in getting IT-BPO employees and employers to register - coupled with the high costs incurred in the process - is likely to force IT industry body Nasscom to miss its March 2008 target of 500,000 registrations for its National Skills Registry (NSR) by a huge margin.
Chennai-based Indowind Energy is in advanced stages of negotiations to acquire a wind energy company in Europe for an estimated price of around $100 million (Rs 400 crore). The acquisition, if successful, will help the wind energy and farming company to expand its footprint both in domestic and global markets.
Vodafone-Essar, the leading GSM operator is raising around $500 million (Rs 2,000 crore) through overseas borrowing. This is the first fund raising by the telecom major after British telecom major Vodafone acquired a majority stake.
The entertainment industry is not amused by her activities, neither is the IT sector since it has given rise to a new breed of e-criminals (piracy is a crime according to the Indian Cyber Act 2000). Moreover, system administrators abhor her existence since her downloading clogs their corporate networks, weakens their firewalls besides disseminating unregulated content.
New Delhi-based e-learning company Educomp Solutions has worked on a novel business model under which it will invest over Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) to "enable" setting up around 150 schools over the next four years.Under this model, Educomp will earn its return on investment by providing intellectual property (IP) for the schools through its Educomp School Management programme and leasing infrastructure through its subsidiary Educomp Infrastructure.
Rohit Kapoor, COO and co-founder, EXL Service, talks to Business Standard about the company's third-quarter performance, growth plans and outlook.
To encourage innovation, IT industry body Nasscom and ICICI Knowledge Park are setting up a $25 million venture capital fund to help startups that are in the intellectual property space. The fund -- to be registered with market regulator Sebi -- will look after the brick-and-mortar costs of startups.
In August this year, ABN Amro Bank decided to renew the lease for its 3,100 sq ft office space at Nariman Point's Sakhar Bhavan, but the landlord dropped a bomshell by jacking up the rental to Rs 500 per sq ft.
The spectrum tangle has also resulted in the fall of telecom share prices as investor confidence was eroded after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) decided to permit CDMA (Code division multiple access) players operate GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) services in their existing circles.
Poor broadband penetration, high priced set-top boxes and last-mile (to the home) connectivity problems are delaying the telecom industry's much-touted plan of rolling out Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services.
Situated in a special economic zone in Noida, HCL Technology's upcoming campus is spread across 46 acres of land. The half-constructed new HCL tech-hub provides a picture of the grandeur that is to follow as the campus is scheduled to be completed in the next five years.
With the US dollar poised to go below Rs 38 mark, the future looks bleak for the small infotech companies. Even as the nearly $40 billion information technology industry is still trying to stabilise itself from the impact of the rupee exchange fluctuation, since most of their business comes from overseas, the roots of smaller companies have been shaken further.
The company recently received permission to launch GSM services within its existing license and is awaiting allocation of spectrum, the radio frequency that enables wireless communications, from the government. CDMA and GSM services cannot be operated on the same spectrum.
Though in its infancy in India, mobile advertising is emerging as the biggest competitor to Internet advertising. It might even cannibalise online advertising, states a new study by global analysis firm Thomas Weisel International. India's online advertising is expected to reach an inflection point by 2009-end - a time when mobile advertising is predicted to grow at a scorching pace.
Indian IT service providers are increasing their exposure in the healthcare and pharma segments. Multi-million dollar deals in this space by IT firms over the past three-four months only buttress this trend. Healthcare outsourcing has moved away from just undertaking medical transcription and business process outsourcing (BPO) work to core functions such as drug discovery, testing, research and development.
Telecom subscribers in the country can now make intra-state call at the rate of a local call, with the state-owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) extending its group-dialing facility to private operators. Group dialing facility enables local dialing within a state by pre-fixing `95' to the receiver's number.
The process started from October 6, and trademark owners have the chance to register domain names in the new .asia top-level domain (TLD), prior to a general release of .asia names in 2008. With the support of 73 countries in the region, .asia is looking at means to bind the Asian community.