India Broadband

Delhi’s North-West District Consumer Forum has by its order dated 08 Nov ‘06 directed India’s ISP SIFY Ltd (SIFY Broadband) to pay compensation of Rs 8,200/- including refund of Rs 1,200 paid for two months internet connection to a consumer, Ankur Raheja, an IT lawyer by profession for indulging Unfair Trade Practices and deficiency in service.

The case related to non disclosure of significant terms and conditions, which included hidden conditions that after downloading of 750 MB data in a month the speed would be reduced to 14 Kbps and also a new condition that if a customer downloaded more than 150 MB data in a day, then he was penalized in the form of reduction of package validity by one day, but still packages were advertised as unlimited.

It has been regarded as a landmark judgment as for the first time technical deficiency has been proved in the court of law in India against an Internet Company. And further Court interpreted the matter from the point of view of definition of Broadband as laid down by TRAI, which lays down criterion of minimum speed of 256 Kbps to be regarded as Broadband. Accordingly, Court has held providing of 14 Kbps speed instead of 256 Kbps is in itself a ‘deficiency in service’.

It has also been held that SIFY BroadBand has poor customer service that did not redress to Customer complaints and selling packages as ‘Unlimited Packages’ when there existed Hidden conditions, amounts to deficiency in service on the part of SIFY Limited and indulging into unfair trade practices.

The case was supported in the Cyber World by hundreds of SIFY customers from all over India, who all experienced similar problems and supported the case throughout, whose testimonials were also included in the original complaint as Annexure!

CyberLawTimes.com is cyber law portal by Archer Softech Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi

Reliance Communications has announced in a statement that they are collaborating with state owned telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

As per this deal, 80 million subscribers of their services would be able to access 1-800 toll free services provided by either operator.

This would begin in the starting of network-independent access to 1-800 services in India for the first time.

Reliance in addition is also talking with HFCL (Punjab) and other major operators around the country for similar collaborations.

This would be beneficial for the people in India as 1- 800 numbers currently are only accessible from BSNL and MTNL phones only.

Search engine giant Google has announced a major upgrade to their recently launched service Google Apps for Your Domain.

This new upgrade would make the service easier for large corporations to use. The company added that they have two new customers for the product: Arizona State University and Clarin.

The company already is serving tens of thousands of businesses and thousands of schools through a free version of this service which enables them to offer privately-labeled e-mail, instant messaging and calendar features.

Google is now offering a new start page, based on Google’s custom home page which becomes a central access point for Google Apps for Your Domain. The company is further planning to add more features to this service including some kind of integration with Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

They are also working on a premium version of Google Apps which can be sold to large corporations.

Microprocessor Company AMD has confirmed that they are cancelling their Personal Internet Communicator project.

AMD had launched this project with their vision of a low cost computer targeted at the developing world.

The Personal Internet Communicator device was first launched in 2004 as part of the company’s 50×15 project. The aim was to bring Internet access to half the world’s population by 2015.

The device was launched at a price of $185 and used AMD’s Geode processors. However, it was not a success and never helped AMD improve its bottom line.

The company has now confirmed that they are no longer pursuing this device’s development in a statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

However, the company is still engaged in a similar project named One Laptop Per Child started by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte.

US based mobile phone maker Motorola has said that they would soon launch mobile phones powered with Qualcomm chips.

These phones would provide high speed wireless connectivity for net access. The news helped Qualcomm’s share as they gained value at the stock market.

Qualcomm is the developer of chips powering the CDMA technology which is very popular in the United States. They are also working to build a business in UMTS chips, a market which is currently dominated by Texas Instruments.

Prudential analyst Inder Singh spoke on this new deal between the two tech giants: “For Qualcomm, the benefit is clear to us. The company strengthens its relationship with the No. 2 mobile handset vendor, and it adds to the UMTS growth potential.”

Motorola of course already uses Qualcomm’s CDMA chips for their mobile phones.

US based mobile service provider Cingular Wireless has launched their latest device named Cingular 8525 Pocket PC.

The company claims that this is the first PDA in the U.S. that can use 3G UMTS/HSDPA networks. It offers broadband connections at speeds approaching 1 Mbps.

Cingular Wireless is hoping that these new generation products would help it improve customer experience and get it more customers away from rival networks.

They are targeting this new product at the business users on the move. The device offers high-speed access to e-mail and corporate information as well as digital multimedia content.

Cingular 8525 Pocket PC is powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 OS.

Apple recently announced their plans to launch a device named iTV which would enable users to broadcast their iTunes purchased content from a Mac to a television set.

Microsoft has now launched a similar service named Xbox Live Video. This would be available starting November 22 and users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live video game service will be able to download movies and TV shows from the net to view them on their television sets.

The company has teamed up with Hollywood studios to sell shows and make available movies and other content on rent. Currently the service allows the gamers to download movie trailers and game demos.

Microsoft has already signed on deals with CBS, Warner Bros Home Entertainment, MTV networks and Paramount Pictures for this service. They aim to offer 1,000 hours of programming content by the end of the year.

Movies won’t be available for sale though the users would be allowed to buy TV shows.

Software giant Microsoft has said in a statement that mobile service provider Vodafone is the first one standardize the software on its handsets.

The company added that they are working with other mobile service providers to do the same to make it easier for their consumers to upgrade to newer generation of handsets without any issues.

Pieter Knook, senior vice president for the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft said in a statement: “Vodafone is the first to go into this direction, but there are others doing similar things and we will be talking about them in due course.”

Vodafone has selected Microsoft Windows Mobile in addition to two other platforms Linux and Symbian Series 60 for their future handsets.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has suffered a minor setback as the Delhi High Court has restrained them from awarding any contract for its GSM network expansion till the next hearing on November 16.

This decision was taken by a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Kailash Gambhir. They were hearing the petition filed by Motorola. Motorola was disqualified by BSNL on technical parameters from participating in the bidding.

The original tender was opened last month for the mega expansion of its GSM network to add over 45 million lines over a period of three years. The project is worth around Rs 20,000 crore and Ericsson had emerged as the bidder with the lowest offer.

S D Saxena, director (finance) of BSNL spoke on this decision of the court: “We respect the direction of the High Court. Since the matter is subjudice, we cannot comment further in this regard.”

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has suffered a minor setback as the Delhi High Court has restrained them from awarding any contract for its GSM network expansion till the next hearing on November 16.

This decision was taken by a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Kailash Gambhir. They were hearing the petition filed by Motorola. Motorola was disqualified by BSNL on technical parameters from participating in the bidding.

The original tender was opened last month for the mega expansion of its GSM network to add over 45 million lines over a period of three years. The project is worth around Rs 20,000 crore and Ericsson had emerged as the bidder with the lowest offer.

S D Saxena, director (finance) of BSNL spoke on this decision of the court: “We respect the direction of the High Court. Since the matter is subjudice, we cannot comment further in this regard.”

India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world and is catching up with leaders at an amazing pace.

The country is now hoping to achieve a mobile user base of around 500 million by the end of the decade.

This means that almost every second Indian citizen would have a cell phone. With call charges being the lowest in the world, more and more first timers are purchasing mobile phones.

India’s Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said in a statement: “The number of cellular phone customers has already increased from 75 million in 2004 to 175 million until September this year. And the number is expected to grow to 500 million in the next four years.”

With companies like Nokia and Motorola manufacturing phones locally, the target might just be attainable.