Airtel on top in telecom companies
Airtel has retained its position as a leading telecom service provider and positioned 5% growth with a revenue of 842.212 million USD. Meanwhile, Aircel recorded a 37.2 % increase among operators in 2009-10. It also recorded the highest growth, with a revenue of 102.010 million USD. This shifts its position to number eight.
Vodafone recorded 13.7 per cent growth to appear as the third largest player with revenue of 503.529 million USD.
BSNL witnessed a fall in its revenue for the second repeated year to 656.379 million USD- a fall of 14 % – despite the fact that it retains the number two position among telecom players. Meanwhile, the company’s mobile subscriber foundation grew by a third to touch 70 million.
Reliance Communications reported a negative increase of 3.5 per cent with revenue of 480.354 million USD, to occupy the number four position.
Idea Cellular positioned at number five with a revenue of 247.232 million USD. Tata Communications positioned at six with revenue of 238.757 million USD and Tata Teleservices remains at number seven with revenues of 149.771 million USD
Airtel suggests termination charges on Bulk SMS to tackle “Do-Not-Disturb” in India
Amidst protests against telesales calls and messages, Bharti Airtel has proposed to impose a termination charge on bulk messages, which will help control the practice of tele marketing companies interfering with the privacy of subscribers.
Termination charge is the fee companies pay to one another for carrying out calls or messages on their networks. Most of the telecom firms, including Airtel, Tatas and Aircel, sell bulk SMSes and air time to telemarketing firms.
Following Airtel’s response, Telecom Minister A Raja gave out orders to stop unsolicited calls by tele marketing company right away.
According to Airtel, it is hard to ban these services but there can be strict implementation of rules like ”Do Not Call” registry, as was suggested by the regulator Telecom Regulatory authority of India (TRAI). The relevant data is available and it should not be difficult to find out which are these players, who are offering this bulk messaging facilities in violation of the rules and regulations.
Apple to fix security gaps in iPhone software
Apple is planning an update to liberate a fix for a safety gap in the software that works on its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.
If the desired update is accomplished, hackers will not get access to data stored on Apple Inc.’s gadgets by putting a PDF file with hidden code onto a website and then entice people to visit that site.
It is extensively considered that Apple will include the fix for the security gap in upcoming IOS 4.1. However, there is no conformation on when would the software be out.
It may also be noted that a German government agency has issued an official warning about the flaw.
Mobile and Android together a big hit
Gone are the days and those Mobiles phones without Android. A lot of mobile phones have inbuilt attractive features and designs but when Mobiles with Android comes to the market people tend to forget every other phone released .
Past times witnessed the acclaim of Android based phones worldwide . Around 60,000 Android phones used to get shipped every single day . As a matter of fact , the Android platform powered by Google was released not too long ago, but shows its supremacy significantly by various Mobile giants with the establishment of the Open Handset Alliance.
If the last year smartphone companies were remembered for the launch of Android based phones this year it would be remembered defeat its opponents.
If we talk about Android as a whole, it is an operating system (OS) urbanized by Google for mobile devices including cellular phones, tablet computers and netbooks. The OS is based on the Linux kernel and GNU software. According to the fresh report from NDP Group, Android OS smartphones ranked 1 with 33% unit sales ahead of BlackBerry OS, which holds number two position with 28% unit sales in the world. Apple’s iPhone iOS comes third with 22% ,next to RIM BlackBerry.
Below mentioned are some of Androids attractive features :
• Video/still cameras, touchscreens, GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, proximity and pressure sensors, thermometers, accelerated 2D bit blitz and accelerated 3D graphics.
• Handset layouts: VGA, 2D graphics library, 3D graphics library based on OpenGL ES 2.0 specifications, and traditional smartphone layouts.
• Storage: SQLite is used for data storage purposes
• Connectivity: GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX.
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, and Android Cloud to Device Messaging Framework(C2DM)
• Web browser: open-source WebKit layout engine, coupled with Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine
• Java support: It runs on Dalvik virtual machine but does not support J2ME
• Media support: audio/video/still media formats such as: H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC , MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP
• Development environment: Includes a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE
•Bluetooth
American Tower buys Essar Group’s infrastructure
American Tower Corp. (ATC) set to fully acquire Essar Telecom Infrastructure (ETIPL) in one go cash deal.
¬The deal values ETIPL, one of independent tower companies, at an enterprise value of around US$455 million.
ETIPL has a portfolio of 4,630 wireless communications tower sites, together with a number of towers under construction. It has functions across 14 telecom circles in India. TIL is an indirect wholly owned Indian subsidiary of American Tower Corporation, a leading independent owner and operator of more than 27,800 wireless and broadcast communication sites and distributed antenna systems globally.
According to ATC, the combined portfolio will significantly strengthen the company’s unique ability and capacity to serve the wireless telecom customers enhance their network coverage, reduce the Capex and Opex and help launch new technologies like 3G and WIMAX.
This third acquisition in 15 months period demonstrates the company’s commitment to the Indian market.
Barclays Capital acted as Exclusive Financial Advisor to the Essar Group on this transaction
