India Broadband

Japanese tech giant Toshiba has announced the availability of their eco-efficient consumer and business notebooks in India in collaboration with HCL Infosystems.

These products are complaint with the European Union (EU) RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) directive and are the result of Toshiba’s Corporate Environment Management Division’s efforts.

Toshiba said that the laptops in the business category would feature products including the thin and light Portege M500 ultraportables with 12.1-inch diagonal XGA display and swappable optical drive. The consumer segment would get Qosmio next-generation “four-in-one” audio-video notebook series with HD DVD drive.

Ivan Kam, manager, Distributor Business South Asia, Computer Systems Division, Toshiba Singapore Pte Ltd. spoke on this new development: “Continuing on our promise of creating new technology benchmarks in mobile computing, Toshiba is proud to present our planet Earth friendly range of notebooks. Further, strengthening the commitment to our esteemed Indian patrons and taking them to a new level in digital lifestyle, beyond just mobile computing, we are also glad to unveil our newest campaign – beyond freedom.”

He further said: “Going further in this direction, we are also presenting a revolutionary new range of MP3 players – a first-of-its-kind foray for Toshiba – with a clear messaging that whenever our customers want the best of mobile digital technology – Toshiba is with them.”

Koushik Chatterjee, general manager, Toshiba Mobile Computing, HCL Infosystems Ltd. added: “We are glad to note that our relationship with Toshiba, which spans over years together, is once again going toward a new symbiotic high of enabling digital lifestyle in the nation. We assure our complete support to Toshiba in setting new benchmarks of technological innovation and would optimally leverage the growing opportunities; the Indian mobile computing market has to offer.”

Tata Motors is working on the ambitious Rs. 1 lakh rupee car since quite some time. The company now expects to launch it in the Indian market by 2008.

Interestingly, the company has now said that they might introduce this car in other markets around the world.

Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant said in a statement on possible ventures with other companies: “It’s heartening to tell you that even before the world can see the dream car, whose prototype has been developed, we have proposals from several global original equipment manufacturers for collaboration with us to make this car in their own countries.”

He however declined to name the companies, which have contacted Tata for a possible collaboration in the future. He added that Tata Motors has already finalized 50% of the vendors for the project and the rest will be selected shortly.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom has said in a statement that they are now going to legalize use of low-power FM transmitters in the country. This would allow the customers to use devices like iTrip to connect MP3 players to radios or in-car entertainment systems wirelessly.

The regulatory authority said that they decided to go ahead with this plan after demands from the customers. These devices would be legal to use in the country from December 8 this year.

Interestingly, these devices can be legally sold and bought in the country but they cannot be used. Ofcom added that they would also remove the need for a license to use Citizens’ Band radio.

However, this would still be applicable on those devices, which meets a certain technical specification and does not interfere with radio broadcasts.

Apple Computer is already the market leader in the portable digital music and video player segment. The company is rumored to be working on a mobile phone capable of playing digital music. The latest rumors are that Apple would be launching two such products early next year.

However, this does not seem to worry one of the major players in the Smartphone market Palm. Palm CEO Ed Colligan found the idea ridiculous that a computer company can enter the mobile market and win a major chunk of it easily.

He said: ” We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

He further said that Apple is likely to rely upon their own stores to sell these Apple iPhone rather than collaborating with mobile service providers like Verizon and Cingular.

However, we do know that Apple entered the digital music player market with their iPod, which was earlier dominated by players from Sony and Creative and did better than both of these companies.

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.