Will open radio access network technology (O-RAN) disrupt the way 5G networks roll out in the country? After all, it promises to offer a substantially lower capital cost, enables the choice of an array of vendors, and provides more network flexibility - all very important for telcos who expect to invest over Rs 60,000 crore to roll out a pan-India 5G network and that's without spectrum costs. But more importantly, it counters the stranglehold of global telecom gear makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung over telcos to whom they sell propriety technology and bundled hardware and software.
And if you have started wondering why such innovations come only from American companies, Ajit Balakrishnan offers the answer.
'Facebook and Google no longer need to have infantry regiments and cavalry like the East India Company because they are inside everyone's phones listening to our conversations.'
When Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceived last December, the idea was to reduce the dominance of e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. It was also to bring in a level-playing field for small merchants in India's fragmented but fast-growing $1-trillion retail market. However, those goals have changed now as large e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon and Ecom Express are in various levels of talks with the ONDC team. They want to form partnerships like integrating with the network as well as providing their expertise to build it, according to the industry sources.
PhonePe said on Tuesday it has launched a service that will allow the fintech firm's Indian users traveling abroad to pay foreign merchants using Unified Payments Interface (UPI). 'UPI international' supports merchant outlets in UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan that have a local QR (quick response) code. Users will be able to make direct payments in a foreign currency from their Indian bank, like they do with international debit cards.
Google Inc on Monday launched the first smartphones powered by its Android One operating system in India, pricing them at around Rs 6,399 ($105) to capture the low-cost segment of the world's fastest growing smartphone market.
Half Pants Full Pants will instantly warm your heart, Divya Nair tells us.
The migration of domestically developed intellectual property to foreign corporations within India reflects an anomaly in the demand pattern of the country's job market, points out Kanika Datta.
Such service providers were given time until the end of October to follow the law of the land.
Are the big five using their dominance to shut out rivals? That is the key question, says Prosenjit Datta.
So far, there seems to be limited debate about their activities in India, where virtually all FAANG companies have teamed up in different ways with India's most powerful businessman, observes T N Ninan.
The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has named Ravneet Kaur, a Punjab cadre IAS officer of 1988 batch, as chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). Kaur will hold the post for five years or until attaining the age of 65. She is the second woman to serve in an 'economic regulator' role after Madhabi Puri Buch, who was appointed chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India last year and the first woman to head the country's chief national competition regulator.
Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal has expressed hope that the government and regulators will step in to ensure the sector remains a viable place for continued investments and asserted that the industry requires "long overdue" support to maintain its current 3+1 structure. In the latest annual report of Airtel, Mittal said as the sector's role in the economy becomes more pervasive, its challenges loom larger. Issues such as unsustainable pricing and low returns in a highly capital-intensive environment, coupled with legacy legal issues, "have extracted their toll", Mittal observed.
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India is estimated to have 302 million Internet users by December 2014, overtaking the US as the world's second largest online userbase.
With over 200 brands and websites as participants this year, the Google Online Shopping Festival is turning bigger.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest nearly $4.4 billion (Rs 36,000 crore) in India by 2030 and support more than 48,000 jobs externally through a new regional service launched on Tuesday, said the on-demand Cloud computing company. AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) is the company's second infrastructure region in India, six years after it opened its first Cloud region in Mumbai in 2016. The Hyderabad region will give customers access to AWS technologies for data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Back home, the Nifty IT index - a gauge of the performance of the IT stocks on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) that has closely mirrored the performance of NASDAQ over the past few years - has lost nearly 2 per cent in CY23.
US tech giant Microsoft is in the final stages of talks with the Telangana government to set up a data centre with a total investment of Rs 15,000 crore. According to sources in the state government, the company has zeroed in on a land parcel near Hyderabad for the facility. "In the information technology (IT) space, Telangana is already seeing some major investments. "Microsoft is establishing its data centre here, and it may come out with a public announcement soon," said a source.
'It's a big technology company and may offer good remuneration, but stability in my career is equally important to me.'
Tanvi Marupally from Conway, Arkansas was last seen in her neighbourhood on January 17 when she left for school on the bus, the Conway police department said.
Your sibling will thank you for these, says Ashish Narsale.
One needs to charge the device every four days, which can provide over 65,000 blood readings and counts.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said the entry of big tech firms into the financial sector poses systemic concerns like overleveraging at the borrowers' ends.
Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said there is a tremendous momentum in cloud adoption, as he termed cloud a "big game changer". Nadella, who is currently in India, addressed Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit in Mumbai on Tuesday. He is also scheduled to visit Delhi and Bengaluru this week, and will be meeting key customers, startups, developers, educators and students during his India visit.
A group of influential lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan legislation in the US Senate to comprehensively overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes and usher in more transparency in the recruitment of foreign workers. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
Smart homes that do your everyday tasks are now coming on the Indian market. Several real estate firms are making this reality as they venture into constructing automated homes.
The US has announced that individuals travelling to the country on a business or tourist visa - B-1 and B-2 - can apply for new jobs and even appear in interviews, but the prospective employees must ensure that they have changed their visa status before starting a new role. B-1 and B-2 visas are generally referred to as "B visas", and they are the most common types of visa issued for a wide range of uses in the United States. The B-1 visa is issued mainly for short-term business trips, while the B-2 visa is issued mainly travelling for tourism purposes.
It is an aspirational smart-speaker with few rivals, says Veer Arjun Singh.
The amount of money Indians invested in foreign securities, property, and deposits in 2022 was likely the highest on record. At $2.1 billion, it was the largest spend for any 12-month period according to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) data going back over a decade. The amount spent for each individual segment was also the highest.
Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe has decided to halt its proposed acquisition of Goldman Sachs- and Xiaomi-backed ZestMoney, a Bengaluru-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform. The deal, which was poised to fetch anywhere between $150-200 million and $300 million, has hit a snag over lapses in due diligence, disagreements over valuation, sustainability of the business, and shareholding structure of ZestMoney, according to people familiar with the matter. The collapse of the deal is also being attributed to a slowdown in the financial technology (fintech) sector in the midst of a funding winter, difficult regulatory environment, and macroeconomic uncertainty, informed other sources.
India could allow global online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc to sell their own products as early as next month, removing restrictions that could boost competition in one of the world's biggest, and most price-sensitive, retail markets.
Innovation ranging from exterior designs of vehicles to EV charger locks grabbed eyeballs at the expo
India's Internet economy has two choices: An immediate $30 billion Sale-and-Leaseback or a $3 trillion value harvesting over decades, observes Vibhu Arya.
In March this year, Worldline India launched Vabox (Voice Alert Box): merchants will now get instant audio alerts on the settlement of UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments via QR codes in languages of their choice when customers check out. "They needn't worry whether the amount has been credited to their account," says Gulshan Pruthi, the firm's executive vice-president. The French payments giant will roll out 500,000 Vaboxes in the initial phase.
'Even during the pandemic we did it.' 'We think it's our responsibility to make sure that we manage the uncertainty.'
Moitra brought two birthday caps in the House to press her argument that the businessman being most talked about had "topi-pehnau-ed" the government.
None of the Big Tech companies or tycoons appears to be playing a meaningful role in the testing, spread, cure, or eradication of the virus or even in contact tracing so far, says Prosenjit Datta.
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