Bharti Airtel is first operator to get RBI licence for Mobile wallet services

Source: Airtel

Bharti Airtel becomes first telecom operator to get RBI licence for mobile Wallet. This shows Bharti's commitment to become a lifestyle company from a pure telecom service provider.

The company was granted the license to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the Reserve Bank of India in this quarter.

Semi Closed Wallet are prepaid payment instruments that are redeemable at a group of clearly identified merchant locations/ establishments which contract specifically with the issuer to accept the payment instrument. These instruments do not permit cash withdrawal or redemption by the holder.

This allows a customer to exchange physical cash for virtual money which can be stored on mobile phone to pay for goods/services for transaction value less than Rs 5,000. This will create mobile money / payments as a category in our country. It allows Airtel to offer a safe, secure, convenient & user friendly medium to our customers for making their payments.

"Currently we are evaluating various options that this license provides to find out how best we can create a value proposition for Airtel customers. It is imperative to design a safe & convenient deployment before we can take to the market. It is difficult to give an exact timeline for the launch at this stage," said a Bharti Spokesperson.

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RIL acquires Infotel, aims to focus on broadband services opportunity in India

Source RIL:

The Indian telecom landscape in India is certainly set for a major overhaul in terms of competitive environment with India’s richest person Mukesh Ambani set to re-enter the telecom field through the BWA services route.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) has acquired 95% stake in Infotel Broadband Services owned by the Nahatas. The investment is valued at Rs.4,800 crore and will be way of subscription to fresh equity capital at par to be issued by Infotel Broadband.

Post completion of the acquisition, Infotel Broadband will become a subsidiary of RIL.

The company aims to use the BWA spectrum to offer broadband speed mobile data services as well rich-media content.

“RIL’s initiative will usher in a wireless broadband revolution in both, the urban and

the rural areas all across the country by providing end-to-end data solutions for

business enterprises, social organizations, educational and healthcare institutions

and Indian consumers. This will give a fillip to rural upliftment by seamlessly

connecting information and markets to the rural population on a real-time basis and

will help bridge the rural-urban divide in terms of access to knowledge and

information,” said the company.

Commenting on the initiative, Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director

of Reliance Industries Limited said, “We see this as the next wave of value creation

opportunity in the wireless broadband space. We believe this will pole-vault India’s economy into the digital world at an accelerated pace while creating next generation tools that will enhance productivity and create world=class consumer experiences.”

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications (RCom) which backed out off the BWA auctions in favour of Infotel announced that it too welcomes the entry of RIL in the Indian telecom field. "We welcome the entry of Reliance Industries into the high potential wireless broadband space. As leading telecom infrastructure and content service providers, we look forward to offering our services to RIL and other BWA players, even while we compete for customers in the marketplace through our choice of different technologies,” said a company statement from RCom.

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World’s first voice-blogging service by Airtel

Source: Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel launched a new voice-based social networking blog, Airtel Blog which is believed to be world’s first voice-blogging service. Airtel says that almost 2 million users have already used the service since 3 months of launch of the service.

Users of the service can share voice updates through the mobile medium.

“Perhaps one of our fastest growing Value Added Services in our stable in recent times, Airtel Blog is taking the concept of micro-blogging to an entirely new level,” said Atul Bindal, President-Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel. “As a nation, we love to verbalise and reach out to our social network of friends, families or pursued interests and Airtel Blog enables this added intimacy on the customer’s mobile phone. Some have called Airtel Blog ‘Twitter with a voice’ but we are simply calling it a game changer.”

Airtel says that celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Arshad Warsi, Lara Dutta, Neetu Chandra, VJ Ranvijay and Sonu Nigam.

The voice-based blog service is powered by Bubble Motion which offers voice messaging and social communication solutions for mobile phones........

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Website Ranking by Google........May 2010

http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/

Good Listing by Google & got it from my Boss.....

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Next Bill Gates could be from India or China: Survey

Source: -http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5429678.cms

WASHINGTON: A sizeable number of Americans believe that the next Bill Gates would come from India or China - as the two Asian giants are fast marching ahead on the global platform, a new US survey has revealed.

"When asked where the 'next Bill Gates will come from,' 40 per cent of Americans predicted either India or China," said a national survey released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) on the sidelines of the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow at Las Vegas.

The vast majority of them, about 96 per cent, believe that innovation was critical to the future success of the US as a world economic leader but they were concerned that the rising federal deficit would jeopardize prosperity of future generations, the survey said.

The economic survey, conducted by Zogby International, found that 68 per cent of Americans think innovation was key to the future success of their place of employment, with 50 per cent maintaining that innovation was important for their job remaining in the US.

After the World Economic Forum reported that the US has lost its global competitiveness ranking while India, China and Brazil have gained, 74 per cent of Americans said it was unlikely the US would regain its status next year.

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Top Tech Trends of 2010

source: -http://www.watblog.com/2010/01/11/top-tech-trends-of-2010-the-way-ahead/

1. Cloud Computing – The adoption of this technology will continue to be growing in leaps and bounds. Reason is the data center managers who have initiated running tier 2 and 3 apps. from hosted cloud services, helping the company in saving the the overhead costs of managing and maintaining those types of server infrastructure. Software-as-a-services (SaaS), Platform-as-a-services (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will continue to be dominant and spending on IT cloud services to grow can almost be tripled, reaching $42 billion by 2012. But, to just be a realist, quite a few in the populace think this concept if a bit ambiguous in nature.

2. Social Networking – Customer Engagement is the basis on which Social Networking will increase by leaps and bounds. 2009 has already seen the first steps being taken by companies in India in adopting Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to reach audiences. The trends will continue as some top CEOs of some top companies are also planning to enter the Twitter world. All of this will enable social media to be a growing market for advertising and recommending products in spite of the fact that they result in loss of Employee Productivity.

3. Wireless Technologies - The eternal wait for 3G might just be over in 2010. The auction which is likely to be held in Feb will have the reserve price for 3G spectrum fixed at Rs 3,500 crore and that for WiMax services set at Rs 1,750 crore. But, inspite of this the telecom market 2010 will also see improved growth and stability with worldwide spending predicted to increase by 3%. If sources are to be believed, then the process of mobile internet users being set to outnumber online users will start in 2010. Speaking about macro economics, Emerging Markets especially the BRIC will lead the way forward of adoption and innovation of technolgies.

4. Multitasking Machines – I dare to say, Smart Phones is the way in the future. Having just one device which will solve the purpose of a computer, a mobile, a camera, a recorder etc. Smartphones with cameras of 12 or more megapixel resolution, built-in projectors, enhanced storage memory and a battery back-up of over 16 hours are some of the features that will be experienced, and leading companies like Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and Asus have already started getting their act together. Anywhere, Anyhow and Anytime will be the motto the Multitaking Machines would be using as the Realist Consumer wants ‘Convergence’ of almost all devices into one.

5. Green Technology – It is high time that preachers will start acting in 2010 as this will be one of the key concerns of many organizations. 2010 might see a lot of organizations joining the bandwagon of ones who have a Green Strategy in place. Reduction of Carbon footprints is one of the most talked about targeted areas and the biggies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, IBM, Cisco have already taken steps towards it.

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25,000 Indian-origin British doctors to return to India

Source: -http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/25000-Indian-origin-British-doctors-to-return-to-India/articleshow/5407307.cms

thanks for visit...............

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