Readers of John Dvorak’s column on MarketWatch are going to be astounded by some extremely poor reasoning this week. Dvorak talks about why municipal wifi is turning out to be a pipe dream in most American cities. Read more

For all who go to town declaring that India has an entrepreneur-friendly, liberalized Telecom sector, here’s a dampener. TRAI’s recommendations on “ Review of Internet Services“, a report dated May 10th 2007, show just how much (or little) babus in the ministry understand the Internet. We’re light-years away from a truly liberal Telecom policy, because the DoT hasn’t even grasped the concept of creating a free, healthy market. Read more

… is that while the country is the world’s second-fastest growing telecom markets (an astounding 5 million new connections per month), its adoption of high-end mobile technology is far behind the rest of the world. Here are two contrasting articles from BusinessWeek and The Financial Express, that highlight the growing divide between growth at the low end and the high end. Read more

It’s expensive:
I use the Airtel GPRS service very heavily. Because in Pune, it’s unlimited (in terms of volume and time) as long as I pay Rs. 150 per month. I use it for checking email, catching up on blogs, and using it as a Bluetooth modem for my Thinkpad so I can dial into my corporate network. It’s cheap, I’m connected, and I’m happy. Read more

Here’s something I’m unable to figure out - why are Broadband tariffs in India still metered either by time or by data transfer? What is preventing providers from launching fixed-rate plans on a monthly basis? Read more

This announcement by Lenovo to include Cingular’s 3G implementation with its notebooks throws up some interesting questions. Right now, 3G only supports data transfer speeds of about 400-700kbps, and it is primarily used in high-end mobile smartphones. However, as this standard evolves, and it is able to support transfer speeds in Mbps, it’ll begin to compete with WiFi itself. Read more

India’s biggest problem today…
… is an interventionist State. Despite a brief start at reforms between 1991-93, the Government continues to be in the business of running businesses. Inevitably, when it is also the policy-maker, protectionist policies are bound to arise, and private players are bound to be put at a perennial disadvantage. Consider the Government’s decision on the 30th of November to deny private operators use of BSNL’s and MTNL’s “last mile” copper wire infrastructure. From the Economic Times: Read more

The Indian Express has two articles today showcasing the state of wireless Internet access in India. They could not be more contrasting.

One article talks about the burgeoning use of WiFi by the upper middle class, especially in Mumbai and Bangalore. It’s exciting to know that entire residential complexes (Hiranandani - the real big builders - are profiled in here) are being provided with ready-to-use wireless Internet access. Further, the major vendors of traditional Internet access are WiFi-aware, and WiFi-ready too. For instance, Hathway and AirTel are already offering WiFi installation services. And at least in the major cities - Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Pune, malls, cafes and bookstores seem to have wireless access enabled. Judging by the prices they’ve quoted in the article, WiFi internet access doesn’t seem outrageously expensive too. Read more

The SQL Slammer Worm hit businesses the world over in Jan 2003, causing, yet again, losses of millions of dollars. But this worm was just one member of a steady stream of viruses and worms to attack the Internet in the last few years. This brings us to the larger issue of the sheer vulnerability of current software, particularly Microsoft’s, to such attacks. Read more

Mr. Sanjiv Mathur, Head of Marketing, Microsoft India, had his viewpoint on Open Source Software in Governments published in the November 27 issue of the Economic Times. Here is a point-by-point rebuttal of his claims made in the article. Read more

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