BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews

Just 1 vote could bring govt down

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:04:00 +0000

This could be a replay of the last trust motion in 1999 when the Vajpayee government was brought down by one vote.
The gloves were off as UPA and the Opposition squared off for the July 22 trust vote with the numbers still too close to call and both sides resorting
to snatch-and-dash tactics to poach rival MPs, escalating a ding-dong battle marked by desperate deal-making and breathtaking brinkmanship.
With each and every vote now absolutely crucial, late night reports suggest that CPM has renewed pressure on Somnath Chatterjee to quit as Speaker after publicly saying it was up to him to decide.

The numbers game
UPA can count on 268 MPs. A couple of Independents might join. The combined opposition tally is 270. This figure might be eroded by defections. There are just four undecided votes. These can split between UPA and opposition. It is still anybody’s match
Political slugfest
UPA gets a jolt with RLD chief Ajit Singh and JD(S) leader Deve Gowda joining hands with Mayawati. In a counter move, it secures Soren’s support and claims two JD(U) MPs are set to defect. Amar Singh parades BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh
Emerging alliances
Third Front may have got a new leader in Mayawati. Though cooperation limited at present, poll pacts cannot be ruled out. Even if UPA loses, Cong-SP pact will endure. NDA hopes that some UNPA parties like INLD and AGP will join it. Left-BSP dialogue to continue It’s down to four fence-sitters

Source: Times of India, New Delhi

UPA has slight edge - Advani not against N-deal, wants renegotiation

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Exuding confidence that the UPA will win Tuesday's trust vote, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said senior BJP leader L K Advani got the hint in this regard when he said that the Opposition was not to destabilise the government but to defeat it.

''We are very hopeful, Advani has got the hint that the government is going to survive. This is evident when he said that NDA is not to destablise the Government but to defeat it,'' Mehbooba, PDP's lone Lok Sabha MP said.

Source - NDTV.com

Industry Reviews|Great Lakes placement sees fewer IT,BFSI firms

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:19:00 +0000

Recruiters From Manufacturing & Consulting Cos Increase; Average Salary Up Marginally

THE GREAT Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) saw a decline in the number of IT and financial services firms visiting the campus this year, giving way to more consultancies and manufacturers. Average salaries went up marginally.
However, the placement season for the fourth batch of Great Lakes saw a 40% jump in the number of recruiters, with 27 companies making a debut at the campus this year. Average salary went up to Rs 9.7 lakh from Rs 9.3 lakh a year ago. The highest salary was Rs 12.1 lakh a year.
“The notable trend this year is that the IT and BFSI component has come down while the recruitments from FMCG and manufacturing has risen,” said Mr S Sriram, director, Great Lakes. For example, 60% of the students were placed in the IT sector last year, but this year it is down to 48%. At the same time, 7% of the students were recruited in the consulting stream last year; this year it is 11%.
A total of 165 students, with an average work experience of three years, sat for placements this year. While students with twofour years of work experience got an average pay of Rs 9.52 lakh per annum, the students with more than four years of work experience were paid Rs 12.1 lakh per annum.
The recruiters included KPMG, Technopak & Accenture in consulting, HSBC, Citibank & Kotak in BFSI, Caterpillar, Cummins & Tata Motors in manufacturing, Cognizant, Infosys & Satyam in IT. Though IT scored over the other segments in terms of the number of visitors, it wasn’t high in the number of offers accepted.

Source: Economic Times, Chennai

Industry News| Goldman Sachs invests Rs 100 cr in TVS Logistics

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:56:00 +0000

GLOBAL investment banking major Goldman Sachs has invested nearly Rs 100 crore for a double-digit ‘significant minority stake’ in TVS Logistics. This is first ever private equity investment in the $5-billion turnover, family-owned TVS group.
TVS entered the logistics business in 1997 and formed TVSL as a susbidiary in 2004 with a paid-up capital of Rs 12 crore. The PE money will boost its net worth.
The company is upbeat on growing at 35-40% a year and achieving a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore by 2010 from Rs 338 crore in 2007-08 and increasing employee strength to 5,000 from 3,000 at present.
Of the Rs 338 crore, domestic business accounted for Rs 240 crore (with TVS group accounting for 20% and the rest by non-group companies), and global business claimed a share of Rs 100 crore (with 60% from the group and rest from nongroup companies).

The company will leverage the contact and reach of Goldman Sachs to further accelerate growth, he said, noting that the group had pioneered and identified logistics as sunrise industry 10 years ago.

TVSL recently picked up 50% stake in Greenarches (based in Mumbai) and renamed it as TVS Infrastructure. This venture will create logistics parks and has proposed to invest nearly Rs 500 crore by itself and through SPVs for building warehousing and other infrastruture.

The company already owns 20 acre in Pune and 10 acre in Chennai and has plans of building a land bank of around 200 acre in automotive centres like Hosur, Gurgaon, Halol, Lucknow, Singur, Uttranchal and Indore. TVSL also holds 75% stake in the newly formed TVS Dynamic Global Freight Services which will focus on the auto and non-auto segments and is expected to clock a turnover of Rs 250 crore in three years.

Source- Economic Times, Chennai

Industry Reviews | Google's Android work far from finished

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:29:00 +0000

As a wise man once noted, the waiting is the hardest part.

It's been nearly six months since Google sent ripples through the mobile phone industry with the announcement of its plans to develop Android, a Linux-based operating system. But after an initial splash, Google has been pretty quiet. So much so, in fact, that several representatives of companies within Google's Open Handset Alliance professed frustration at the ambiguity of some important details at the CTIA 2008 conference this week in Las Vegas.

Much is still up in the air, just a few months before the first phones are expected to arrive. Google has yet to make crucial decisions about the code base that will accompany Android; such as, which applications are required to make it an Android phone? How will that base be maintained into the future? And how much freedom will Android developers and partners really have to tweak the software?

Google is aiming high with Android. "Android has two goals: First, to be an excellent mobile platform on its merits, and second, to be open and open source," wrote Dan Morill, a Google engineer, on the Android Internals discussion board last week. But in this new world of advanced mobile computing, those goals can conflict.

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Industry Reviews | Yahoo Counters Google’s Mobile Onslaught With Voice

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:06:00 +0000

Yahoo, with the second generation of its oneSearch product, has thrown down the gauntlet in the mobile search wars. Whereas Google employed a clean and easy-to-use interface to win over the desktop space, Yahoo is trying to make gains in the mobile space by taking a different approach: voice.

The more time I spend with my mobile, the more I realize what a godawful pain it is — even with a QWERTY keyboard — to type. Anything that would make the process less time-consuming (and free up my hands) is welcome, and is precisely the reason I use voice services such as Jott and Goog-411. So using voice (powered by Vlingo) for oneSearch is a compelling proposition.

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Latest Industry News | India short of 6 lakh doctors

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:01:00 +0000

Even as India faces an acute shortage of manpower in the healthcare sector, the country holds the top position when it comes to its physicians migrating to developed countries like Britain and the US. According to a Planning Commission report, while India is short of six lakh doctors, 10 lakh nurses and two lakh dental surgeons, Indian doctors who have migrated to developed countries form nearly 5% of their medical workforce. Almost 60,000 Indian physicians are estimated to be working in countries like US, UK, Canada and Australia alone. India, on the other hand, has a dismal patient-doctor ratio. According to the report, for every 10,000 Indians, there is one doctor. In contrast, Australia has 249 doctors for every 10,000 people, Canada has 209, UK has 166 and US has 548. India also faces an acute shortage of dental surgeons. At present, the number of dental surgeons registered in India stands at just over 73,000 against a requirement of 3 lakh. Similarly, the health ministry estimates that there needs to be one nurse for every 500 people. According to this, India required 21 lakh nurses in 2007. But only 11 lakh nurses were available. This has made the Planning Commission suggest that the medical education sector should be opened up completely for private sector participation and companies should be allowed to establish medical and dental colleges just as they have been allowed to open nursing colleges. "The group is of the view that the only way to accomplish this (bridging the gap in doctors) is for the medical education sector to be opened up completely for private sector participation. Other entry barriers such as the requirement of land and built-up space need also to be lowered to realistic levels in order to facilitate the opening of new colleges. Government's role should be limited to opening a few high quality institutions dedicated to research," the report said.

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Industry Reviews | AT&T would offer Google Android Mobile Phones

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:39:00 +0000

US based telecom giant AT&T has said that they would indeed offer Google Android powered mobile devices.

The company had earlier decided to stay away as they were afraid that Google would require them to provide all of their applications.

The search engine giant has now assured them that the operators would be allowed to customize Android phones to include any applications.

A company representative spoke on this new development: “That’s attractive to us. We were concerned that maybe the focus was just on Google apps”.

Latest Industry News | Google trims DoubleClick workers; 300 fired or put in "transitional" jobs

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:34:00 +0000

Google is cutting jobs at DoubleClick, the online advertising company it bought last month for $3.24 billion.

About 300 of DoubleClick's 1,200 U.S. employees were fired or placed in "transitional" roles, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement. DoubleClick has about 150 employees at a data center in Thornton.

The purchase, Google's largest in its nine-year history, bolsters the company's technology for selling and measuring the effectiveness of display ads, which include pictures and video.
As part of the reshuffling, Google split DoubleClick's online marketing business, called Performics, into two units. One division sells services that help ads show up in search queries, while the other links advertisers and publishers, Google said.

Latest Industry News | Adobe joins Linux Foundation

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:01:00 +0000

Adobe Systems is to join the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering growth of the open source operating system.
The Foundation was created last year as a result of a merger between the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group. Members include HP, IBM, Google and Nokia.
"Adobe's decision to join the Linux Foundation is a natural extension of its commitment to open standards and open source, which demonstrates its leadership and foresight in the software industry," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation.
"Adobe's membership will contribute to our goal of even more application development on Linux with a specific emphasis on web 2.0 applications."
The announcement was designed to coincide with the release of an alpha version of Adobe's Air for rich web applications on Linux.
Air for Linux allows developers to build rich internet applications for the Linux platform that work with popular web technologies, including HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex, without the need for extra platform code.
The alpha quality release of Air currently works only with Sun Java, although Adobe is promising compatibility with GNU Java in the final version.
The final product is expected to arrive later this year and will feature multiple language support, according to Adobe.

Latest Industry News | MPs attack Google's web vetting record

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:26:00 +0000

Google's vice-president, Kent Walker, came under fire from MPs today after admitting that his company does not employ a single person to proactively vet online content and for failing to censor a YouTube video of a gang rape.

One member of the Commons culture, media and sport committee called Walker "objectionable" after he attempted to defend the mistake by YouTube, the popular video sharing website owned by Google, over the gang rape.

Walker admitted that footage of a gang rape, reported to be of a woman in south London being set upon by a group of teenagers, received 600 page views before it was taken down from YouTube last month.

He said that the incident was "clearly a mistake on our part", adding that it was one of a "tiny, tiny number of mistakes" when the company's record on censoring inappropriate content was good.

"Once flagged, more than 50% is removed within half an hour; a large majority is removed within an hour," Walker added, giving evidence to the select committee's inquiry into harmful content on the internet and in video games.

He also drew criticism from MPs on the committee after revealing that Google did not employ anyone to proactively monitor footage on YouTube.

For More Information Click Here

Latest Industry News | Dexterity ventures into customer informatics vertical

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:19:00 +0000

IT and KPO company in the research and analytics space, Dexterity today announced its foray into Marketing and customer informatics vertical and the appointment of Anantha Krishnan, former partner of IT company Accenture, as Chairman and CEO.

Addressing a press conference in chennai on 26 March, Palanivel Kuppusamy, Founder, Dexterity said the company, with the new thrust in the marketing and customer informatics space will focus on the demand-side business processes through its targeted business solutions- maketing and customer data management, analytics, insight delivery and market research outsourcing(MRO).

As part of the appointment of Krishnan, the company will see Kuppusamy and Pravin Shekar, the founders of the company overseeing Strategy and Global operations and International Business Development & New Initiatives respectively.

Krishnan said, "The addressable market for marketing and customer informatics is growing rapidly and is about eight times larger than the current USD Four billion addressable market in the MRO space

Latest Industry News | April Fooled by Google and Virgin?

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:43:00 +0000

Now that Google has effectively conquered Earth, the all-powerful Web giant is setting its sites on a new frontier: Mars.

Calling it "The Adventure of Many Lifetimes," Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin just announced a joint venture with Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson to colonize the Red Planet because, as the press release states, "Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B."

Uhhhh, right. Happy April Fool's Day, folks.

There's nothing funnier than billion-dollar corporations taking time out of their busy multinational money-making days for a little light humor.
Here's what's been announced on the Google blog:

"For thousands of years, the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision ... So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."

Why Mars? Google representative Andrew Peterson cleverly dodged the question, explaining, "Because software engineering isn't rocket science, producing truly stellar products requires us to boldly innovate where no technology company has innovated before."
Ah, corporate branding still going strong in the midst of April 1st tomfoolery.

For More Information Click Here

Airtel Launches Internet Portal

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:16:00 +0000

Airtel yesterday announced the launch of "airtellive.com", claimed to be an all-in-one Internet portal for its customers. This makes the company the first telco in the country to launch such a portal, it said.

The portal is looked upon as a milestone for Airtel; it builds upon the existing Broadband ecosystem to establish an Internet destination for Web applications, said Atul Bindal, president of Airtel Telemedia Services during the launch.

Airtel's move is expected to give its customers easy access to Google's simple yet powerful applications over the company's fast and reliable Broadband network. At "airtellive.com", Airtel customers will can access -- for free -- Google's Applications messaging and collaboration Suite that includes email services, Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Services are co-branded and powered by Google and Airtel Broadband. Airtel claims it has also partnered the likes of shaadi.com, 24x7guru, and naukri.com to offer exclusive deals and discounts on its portal.

Bharti Airtel, spear-headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal, is the country's leading integrated telecom services provider with a total subscriber base of nearly 61.91 million.

Yahoo targets women with new 'Shine' site

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:44:00 +0000

Yahoo on Monday will launch a new Web site aimed at women. The site, called "Shine," will feature original blogs and content from major publishing partners including Conde Nast, Hearst, and Time.

The site is Yahoo's latest foray into vertical sites, which include the popular Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, as well as Sports and Entertainment, and the much less popular Yahoo Tech and Yahoo Green. This site is Yahoo's first targeting a specific audience and not just a topic.

Yahoo aims to be the top destination site in the lifestyles category, said Amy Iorio, general manager of Lifestyles at Yahoo. Women as a demographic is a good target, particularly given the number of women who use Yahoo (40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 every month) and the fact that females tend to blog more than males.

"This is really a key audience for Yahoo," she said. "We've been calling them 'chief household officers' internally."

Pepsi, Cognizant among America's 50 best corporate performers

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:38:00 +0000

Global beverage giant Pepsico and outsourcing major Cognizant, both headed by Indian-origin persons, figure on a list of '50 best corporate performers' by US financial magazine BusinessWeek.

However, both the companies – Indra Nooyi-run Pepsico and Francisco D'Souza-headed Cognizant Technology – have dropped from their previous year rankings.
PepsiCo beats Coca-Cola

While PepsiCo has managed to beat arch-rival Coca-Cola in the annual BusinessWeek 50 list, it has fallen one rung from its previous year's ranking. Cognizant has shed seven places from its 2007 rank.

PepsiCo, which has Chennai-born Nooyi at the top as its Chairman and CEO, has been ranked at 31st position in this year's list, where Cognizant has been placed at 19th.

D'Souza, who was part of Cognizant's founding members, had become its President and CEO with effect from January 1, 2007.

Besides Pepsi and Cognizant, Google, Goldman Sachs, Amazon.com, Lehman Brothers and Moody's have also dropped from their previous year's rankings. Google has dropped to 34th position from its first position in BusinessWeek 2007 list.

However, those like Apple, Colgate-Palmolive, Microsoft, Starbucks, Verizon, AT&T, Coach, Gilead and CB Richard Ellis have improved their rankings since last year. Firms like Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Nvidia and BJ Services were not on the list last year.

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Cognizant | A twist in the outsourcing story

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:32:00 +0000

There is a story that Cognizant employees love to tell. Some years back, India’s No 1 software company, Tata Consultancy Services, and a relatively unknown Cognizant Technologies were pitted against each other to clinch a lucrative project. TCS, the big daddy, was the first to present it credentials. It showed many examples of work similar to the project on offer and seemed poised to clinch the offer. Until a man from Cognizant (CTL) walked in with his team. That man was Lakshmi Narayanan.

He ran a little sermon. "I know TCS made a great presentation. I know you are all impressed by their credentials. Just a point or two before you sign the project in their favour. I am a TCS product, the other two who are here with me are also TCS trained guys and the several examples that TCS showed you were implemented by us. Now we are all with Cognizant." The rest, they claim, is history.

Chennai’s IPL team launched | Main sponsor Aircel

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:16:00 +0000

In a glittering function that had loads of dance and music, the Chennai Super Kings cricket team was launched here on Saturday.

The team — none of the foreign players could make it due to “prior commitments” — was introduced to the gathering.

Chennai Super Kings assistant coach, V.B. Chandrasekhar, described the team as a group of “fearless entertainers.”

K. Srikkanth, the brand ambassador of the Chennai Super Kings, explained why he was the perfect man to represent the team. “As a player I never lasted more than 20 overs. Did I?” the former India captain said.

M.S. Dhoni, the skipper of the team, said he is proud to lead a young team. “Our ultimate aim is to win the Trophy,” he said unveiling the team apparel whose sponsor is Reebok.

The Brand ambassadors of the team, actors Vijay and Nayanthara, Gurdeep Singh, Chief Operating Officer, Aircel Cellular Limited, the team sponsor, were also present at the function.

Google launches YouTube insight

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Google has introduced a free YouTube tool which will allow those posting clips, including advertisers, to view detailed statistics about the videos uploaded.

YouTube Insight will mean those uploading can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions or how popular they are, relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time.

The tool will also allow uploaders to look at the lifecycle of videos, to see how long it takes for a video to become popular and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

Insight will allow advertisers to study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing.
Tracey Chan, product manager at YouTube, said: “This really enables programmers and marketers to optimize their presence on YouTube.”

Google contest spurs innovation among engineering college students

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:45:00 +0000

You are never too young to innovate — and when it comes to software products, learning and doing can go nicely together. Which is why Google decided that any quest to unearth cool, new ideas in India must begin with college students.

A nationwide contest among computer science students drew entries from nearly 100 teams of between 2 and 5 members each. After assessment, 12 were supported by Google with a grant of Rs. 50,000 each, so that they could buy any software or tools required to execute their ideas.

“We wanted to encourage and celebrate the innovative talents of young Indians — but we have no agenda beyond that ... there is no Google tool or product they are obliged to use. The seed money gave them the freedom to use whatever software they wanted,” explained D.R. Prasad Ram, Head of Google India R&D.

The top prize of Rs. 5 lakh went to the team from IIT-Bombay consisting of Aman Parnami, Prekshu Ajmera, Sanchit Garg and Vipul Shingde, for “Collaborate-Draw,” a web tool that allowed multiple users to jointly work on drawings, charts and blueprints. Trying out the tool, this correspondent found the palette of draw and paint options easy to use and as good as the best of the commercial offering out there.

The first-runner up team, which took a Rs. 2.5 lakh prize, was also from IIT-Bombay: Ankit Gupta, Chinmay Jain and Raghuvar Nadig, created “Polls,” a tool which helps set up your own online opinion poll, quiz your friends or your community of the like minded and, most usefully, analyse the results at lightning speed in multiple ways.

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Earth Hour across globe & on Google

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:05:00 +0000

People switched off lights for an hour across the world on Saturday night, dimming buildings, hotels and iconic landmarks in a symbolic expression of concern for a planet threatened by global warming.

Up to 30 million people were expected to switch off their lights for 60 minutes by the time Earth Hour — which started at 8pm local time in Suva, Fiji, and Christchurch, New Zealand — completed its cycle westward. People from more than 370 towns and cities scattered across 35 countries have signed up for the campaign.

“Earth Hour shows everyday people are prepared to pull together to find a solution to climate change. It can be done,” said James Leape of the World Wide Fund for Nature, which is running the campaign. “But we need to harness some of the co-operative spirit we’ve seen with Earth Hour to find a global solution,” he said.

Source The Telegraph
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Trai ready for legal battle if operators move court against penalties

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:37:00 +0000

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today said it was ready for a legal battle if the telecom operators moved the court challenging its decision to impose penalties on service providers for unsolicited calls to the subscribers.The telecom regulator had on Monday said that for the first unsolicited communication, a service provider would have to pay a penalty of up to Rs 5,000, which could go up to Rs 20,000 for each subsequent call.The telecom operators’ associations yesterday strongly opposed the decision, which they said was “unfair”.The letter, jointly written by both the GSM and CDMA operators’ associations — the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Association of United Service Providers of India (AUSPI), also stated that there was no way a service provider could ensure that the telemarketer had scrubbed the calling list in an appropriate manner before making the sales call.n spite of all the efforts made by service providers to ensure that all telemarketers register, only 13,600 telemarketers have registered with the national ‘Do-Not-Call Registry’, out of an estimated total of over 75,000, it said.
Source Business Standard
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Now, hackers sneak into govt websites

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:36:00 +0000

Remote injection, authorisation bypass and Cult of the Dead Cow are terms that one would imagine keeps the ministry of health awake. But these are elements that make up a wider nightmare, which government departments — from Railways to Trai to Customs — suffer now-a-days. Website hacking, especially of government sites, has attained critical mass in India and the Centre is donning the riot gear. The last few months have seen hackers attack the website of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Indian Railways, Department of Telecom, Air Cargo Customs, National Institute of Social Defence, Forward Markets Commission, National Institute of Health & Family Welfare and BSNL, among others. Ironically, the hackers even disfigured the website of the Department of Information Technology, the nodal agency that is supposed to fight the menace. Hackers have also crashed into the website of the wireless planning and co-ordination wing of DoT, the body which handles spectrum allocation. In a bid to stem the tide, the IT department says it is in the process of hosting all servers of the key ministries in the country itself.

BlackBerry emails may be on govt snoop list soon

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:33:00 +0000

Electronic mails sent from BlackBerry handsets, manufactured by Canada's Research In Motion and distributed in the country by the two top cellular service providers, may soon join the long list of the government's snoop list.The home ministry has asked the department of telecommunication (DoT) to work out modalities for lawful interception of e-mails sent from this handheld device.The BlackBerry is a patented service that allows users to receive and send e-mails on the move just like text messages in any conventional mobile phone.It transfers data in an encrypted format and does not allow interception. At present, mails sent from a BlackBerry — unlike those originating from any normal computer — cannot be intercepted by security agencies as the device works through a server outside India.The government wants the service to come under the scope for lawful interception owing to security implications, especially when members of terror outfits are increasingly using e-mails to communicate among themselves.A blanket ban on the service is, however, not preferred as it will hit nearly five lakh mobile subscribers using BlackBerry.The MHA wants DoT to work out a solution with the Canadian firm. Sources said that DoT has already written to Indian telecom operators providing the service in India, asking them for monitoring facility for lawful interception of data transferred through the devi

Look East: TCS Hat Trick At BE Quiz ’08 Kolkata Round

noreply@blogger.com (BICC News - Latest Industry News | Industry Reviews) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:32:00 +0000

Team Holds Nerve And Lead To Beat ISBMIT’S IN human nature to root for the underdog. And this was amply evident during the concluding moments of the Kolkata round of the Idea Brand Equity Quiz ’08, held on the evening of Wednesday. As favourites TCS prepared to square off against International School of Business & Media (ISB&M) in the final round, quizmaster Derek O’Brien did a spot poll to see which team the 200-strong audience wanted representing Kolkata in the national finals. Popular sentiment clearly lay with professors Gautam Ghosh and Mahuya Maitra — although TCS loyalists were by no means few in number. However, TCS finally triumphed, making it to the national finals for the third year in a row. “No disrespect to TCS who played brilliantly, but my heart was with the professors,” O’Brien admitted.The Kolkata round had 23 teams — including SBI Life from Bhubaneshwar and Tata Motors from Jamshedpur — slugging it out to make it to the dais. The six that made the grade were IMS Learning, ITC, Standard Chartered, ISB&M and two teams from TCS. In fact, at one stage, both the teams from TCS were way ahead of the pack, before ISB&M got its act together and edged into the final showdown. The quiz saw healthy audience participation, helped in no small measure by generous doses of goodies that O’Brien handed out for every right answer from the spectators. Questions ranged from the relatively simple to the really hard. During World War II, what did the British call ‘Tatanagars’ — the armoured vehicles built by the Tatas. What is the ‘Sundown Rule’ that Wal-Mart strives to achieve — dealing with customer requests by the close of business on the day they are received. Every year, what does the Kolkata Municipal Corporation buy 400 tonnes of at a cost of Rs 50 lakh — broomsticks. Whose designation reads managing director, LeftWord Books — CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat. Sanjay Budhia, MD, Patton Group, and Utpal Chatterjee, senior VP, Chirag PCs, gave prizes worth Rs 1.42 lakh to the winning team.The Brand Equity Quiz 2008 is presented by Idea Cellular, and the grand prize sponsor is Mahindra Scorpio Lx. The associate partners are Times Now and Radio Mirchi, and the quiz is powered by economictimes.com. The airline sponsor is Kingfisher Airlines, while the official time partner is Pierre Cardin. National prize sponsors are Star Cruises, Nokia, Spykar, Provogue, Vedic Spa Village, bookmyshow.com, Roncato (Italian travel gear), Digjam, ITZ Cash Cards, Gitanjali Gems, Zenith Computers, Chirag PCs and Quick Heal Anti Virus. The hospitality partner for the Kolkata round was Peerless Inn, while IIAS was the knowledge partner. Local prize sponsors were Seagram’s 100 Pipers, Patton, YES – Your Everyday Stationery, Coffee Pai, VLCC, Inspirations and Nik Nish.