It’s been a long time but I had been extremely tied up with the academic commitments. I promise to return to full time blogging once I am free from them.

Over the past few months, I have become cautious about the privacy on the net. One of the first moves was to switch over the name to Administrator.  I had already moved away from Google; but more importantly, the last vestige was Google Reader; this too was given the boot in favor of Newsblur an independent developer based in New York and an excellent news reader.

Apart from this, I strongly recommend Ghostery and Noscript add-ons for your Firefox.

I have been following the 2G and the 3G scam but unfortunately, due to political compulsions, nothing has come out of the Supreme Court order. The key players are all out of jail.  So all that drama that ensued was all for the show.  Apart from this, there is no concrete action on ground regarding anything new in the pipeline, barring the 4G that is in the air. Airtel is rumored to launch it soon in key areas and beyond the wireline, Airtel is hoping that it would be a key determinant for it’s bottom line. Of course, the restrictions for “limited broadband” remain on course. You are unlikely to see “all-you-can-eat broadband” anytime now.

Interestingly, there is a trend of co-branded handsets for bundled offers for  data. It’s not a sign of matured markets but rather a sense of desperation on part of the telecom companies to be able to sell anything. I don’t have any clue about the development of mobile apps but with overt reliance on Android to drive Google’s penetration in the heartland, mobile phones are slowly becoming ubiquitous. Well, there are more mobile phones than the toilets in this country!

Lets wait and watch for 4G.  Lets see how it works out.  I’d be back soon.

 

 

 

Tags: 2G, 3G, 3G, Airtel, android, Bharti Airtel, blog, Broadband, Google, handsets, Mainstream media, Mobile, mobile phones, Mobile Service Providers, Other Service Providers, privacy, Reliance, scam, Site Updates, Smartphones, Telecom, Telecommunications India, US, Value Added Services (VAS)

I wanted to see for myself as to what the hoopla about the 3G services is all about. Over the past few months, I have shifted to Linux Mint Debian having given up Ubuntu all together. Hence, I was keen to know about how their product worked in Linux.

There are excellent guides available to enable your wireless networking on your Debian and then choosing Tata’s apn to access the Internet. I would not go in those details. I had used a 3G stick and after ensuring the proper network coverage, on a Windows machine, added it to my Debian based laptop. Although recognized, it failed to connect on to network and neither there was any way to install the company issued dialer.

However, it worked fine in Windows world; it was auto-recognized and I could work on that. What I noticed was the horrible lag and the ping times, clearly making it useless for any one for online gaming. It’s next to impossible. At the same time, the video buffering was relatively smooth although nothing to write home about.

With pathetic “download limits” and huge costs, I had to nix the plan of going in for Tata Docomo; although I must confess that they have a reasonably good customer care. My point of contact has been their on line chat and their email’s work, albeit very late. This, in my opinion, is better than the other companies who don’t give a shit about after sales.

Would you go in for an expensive hardware and huge recurring monthly expenses? 3G is NOT for the data but for more efficient spectrum utilization. The voice market dominates because these operators have no intention of improving on the value added services.

Thats where their bread and butter lies. If 3G data services were really to become “cheap”, to so called “market forces” would determine the outcome. I find it amusing when people crow about prices coming down eventually. There would never be an “unlimited plan” because shoring up the capacity on wireless networks is a huge sunk in investment which is not easy to recover.

For the time being, this is a worst case alternative to a proper wireline/wifi model. If you don’t have any other frigging option in this heartless world, go for it.

 

Tags: 3G, 3G, Broadband, data services, docomo, GUI, Internet, laptop, Linux, Mobile Service Providers, Opera, Personal Experiences, Spectrum, Tata, Tata, US, Value Added Services, Value Added Services (VAS), Wifi, Windows, Wireless

I have never been a big fan of Nandan Nilekani. I came across thewhich aims to profile all the Indians.

It’s easy to see the bias of the author about the “impoverished” Indians but there is too much optimism about targeting the benefits. The fact that the Aadhar scheme doesn’t really address the basic issue of data privacy, it is too much of a gamble.

Nandan also mentions about setting up a massive server farm for the data requests. The lack of Broadband at the peripheral level has hampered the data collection (that was a no brainer); which means that the basics have not been sorted out. The article also mentions about the queries to the database and problems cropping up later to be fixed. If I am not mistaken, this is as dumb assholism as it can get. Reason? All potential issues need to ironed out before data collection on a massive scale is carried out.

In my opinion, having a fault tolerant broadband over fixed line is imperative. The growth of the mobile telephony and hence the crappy 3G implementation is not in the public interest. Given the price structure of the data plans, there is no way that a reliable network geared for the public good is utilized for it’s need.

At the same time, public service networks like BSNL/MTNL need to be flogged for dragging their feet for missing the rural broadband plans. Wimax/LTE etc are good enough in theory but there is a theoretical limit to the extent of the data that can go through wireless.

Aadhar scheme is a hair brained exercise; much like the emperors clothes. Useless in execution with purported benefits not spelled out and absolutely no word on the data privacy.

Tags: 3G, 3G, author, Broadband, Broadband, BSNL, India, Indians, Mobile, MTNL, privacy, Proprietary Software, US, Wireless