VoIP call rates to increase to India

The cheapest calling era to India is coming to an end as the call rate to India mobile are set to go up by more than 50%. However it won’t be that much expensive as it used to be a decade ago. Please check the call rates of your VoIP service to know the change in rate.

TRAI Issues draft Regulations on Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in INDIA

The TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) today issued draft Regulations to facilitate Mobile Number Portability (MNP) implementation in India.

MNP (Mobile Number Portability) allows a user to change mobile operator without changing the mobile phone number. It means if you are using BSNL number and want to switch to Airtel service without changing your BSNL number, you can do it with MNP facility. This facility has already been successfully working in many countries.

The draft regulations may be called as Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2009.

Under this regulation, A mobile subscriber shall be eligible to make a request for porting his mobile subscriber number upon expiry of a period of ninety days from the date of activation of his mobile connection.

Soon we can expect this service available in INDIA. How would it work?
Lets take an example to Porting a BSNL number to Airtel number.

Every mobile subscriber (BSNL) desirous of porting his mobile subscriber number shall make a request in writing to the concerned Recipient Operator (Airtel) or its authorized agent in such format as may be specified by such Recipient Operator.

The Recipient Operator, upon receipt of the porting request of a subscriber, should carry out subscriber verification in respect of the subscriber making the request for porting of the number in the same manner as required for the acquisition of a new subscriber, within five days of receipt of the porting request.

Upon verification, The Recipient Operator has to forward the request to the donor operator (Current number, in this case your BSNL number) for seeking its clearance.

After request, the donor operator shall verify and communicate the details to the MNP service provider within two working days.

Upon receipt of the communication from the Donor Operator, the MNP will decide to accept or reject the application. If accepted for MNP, the mobile operators will communicate with you about the date and time of the porting.

Details: (Copy and paste the complete link)
http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/PressReleases/690/pr30june09no57.pdf
http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/Regulations/87/draftregulation30june09.pdf

Vodafone ZooZoo ads, Animated Cartoons or Humans

If you are watching Indian Premier league IPL2 then you must have watched Vodafone ads of funny acts of egg shaped creature called ZooZoo. These videos are about the Vodafone value added services like call filter, chota credit, stock alert, Phonebook backup, message to group, dating tips, beauty tips, world tour ad, cricket alerts, musical greetings, Vodafone maps etc. I think they have made more than 30 ads in this series.

These advertisements are made by O&M ad agency. This ad agency has really great imagination. They created amazing alien type creatures, their eye contacts, expressions, the way they laugh, smirk, hop like spring, the way they dance effortlessly, slender arms and legs, pot bellies they are simply overwhelming.

Apparently the characters look like Animated Cartoons but actually they are not, they are human begins with mask; you can watch the videos and photos on the making of these ads.

For Photos and slide show

Click here to go to slideshare.net

For making videos 

Click here to go to www.campaignindia.in

ZooZoos are becoming famous in social networking websites like Orkut, Facebook and Myspace and also getting attention on YouTube. Vodafone India has already started their official facebook page which has already has more than 180,000 fans.

http://www.zoozoo.in 

(http://www.facebook.com/zoozoo)

You can watch most of the vidos and phots on facebook, If you have not seen the videos, you can watch it here

What do you think about these ads???

Reliance Netconnect Broadband Plus Review

Recently Reliance, TATA and BSNL have come up with wireless broadband which comes in a small pen drive size equipment. These are based on EVDO technology. We have got a chance of using Reliance Netconnect Broadband+, so here we have come to share the experience with our readers.

First we will see what Reliance is claiming -

• Fastest download speeds up to 3.1 Mbps
  
• Fastest upload speeds up to 1.8 Mbps
  
• Plug and Play
  
• Rotatable USB interface) with Huawei device
  
• Micro SD Card slot for data storage with Huawei device
  
• Broadband coverage in major big cities (32 cities) and seamless 1X network throughout India including 4.5 lakhs villages

Reliance Netconnect Broadband+ offering two devices to use their broadband wireless, Huawei EC168C and ZTE AC8710, We opted Huawei EC168C, as we find more utilities in that (Rotatable usb interface and SD card slot)

Now we will review, their claims and quality of service

Device and Installation

Device looks are nice and fairly modern.

Device is Plug and Play, as soon as you plug in your device, it will setup a virtual CD drive which will install software and 3G modem drivers in your system. But installation takes a little long time and after installation it will take another 2-3 minutes to load drivers, but this is a one time process. (If Plug and play doesn`t work you have a CD in package to install the software). Rotatable USB provides good flexibility as well as durability. (As an added bonus you have an extension usb wire in package). This device has an inbuilt MicroSD card Reader, which can provide you a fair amount of data storage. Well that’s an add on... Device is compatible for both High speed broadband and 1X CDMA. You can select the mode as HSD, CDMA 1X or Hybrid in RConnect Dialer Settings.

Performance

• When you press connect Button in Rconnect dialer it will hardly takes 20 SEC to connect.
  
• Maximum download speed which we have got is 1.2 Mbps (Not so bad)
  
• Minimum download speed 382 Kbps
  
• Average upload speed is 230 Kbps
  

Well on speed front reliance has passed our expectation. When we go for CDMA 1X coverage, we are able to get a speed of 95Kbps. This is best point with Reliance Netconnect broadband+, because if by any reason you loose broadband connectivity you have reliance 1X CDMA coverage.

* MicroSD card reader is little bit slow when it is compared with other card readers.

Account Management Flexibility

Reliance Netconnect Broadband+ lacks in this. You can not change your data plan online. You can check your used data with a lag of 24 hours. Every time you need a change in your account, you have to call customer care.

Cost of equipment

Well both equipment offered by Reliance Broadband will cost 3500 INR from your pocket. Right now this is same as other competitors are offering for wireless broadband service. But still we feel that reliance should consider this area. Remember Reliance old CDMA 1X data card, it started with 5000 INR and then after some time we are able to get it free when subscribing for 3 months data package. So there is a scope to reduce the price of the broadband device too.

Cost of data

I can say....... Very Costly

None of data plan is truly unlimited, Maximum you can get is 10GB that too in 1099 INR (for citywide) and 1750 INR. But I don`t think it is enough for a high speed data service. They claim this service is good to watch video, playing online games, but what will happen if you download 200MB in one hour of video watching.

Typically --

Video streaming/Hour = 245 MB of data

HD Video streaming/Hour = 400 MB of data

Normal Browsing/hour = 6 MB of data

Flash sites/hour = 80 MB of data

Voice chat/hour = 20 MB of data

So no you can choose a plan as per your requirements.

Moreover any additional data transfer will cost you 2 INR/MB , which is just double of TATA Indicom.So be careful while choosing your data plan and don`t go beyond data limits.

Basic plans for Reliance Netconnect Broadband+ are

299Rs Pay as you go ( per MB basis)

650Rs 1 GB

850Rs 2.5 GB

1099RS 5GB for nationwide

1099Rs 10GB for Citywide

1750Rs 10 GB nationwide

There is one 200Rs night add-on pack of 10GB , which is not available as of now.

Final Words

After considering everything, we can say that Reliance Netconnect broadband+ is good for people who want high speed wireless freedom; otherwise you must consider wired broadband services.

Photon Plus :Tata Indicom Launches Hi-Speed Wireless Broadband with Photon+ in India

Forget the word SLOW internet speed. Tata Indicom has launched its High Speed Internet Access (HSIA) with brand name of Photon+ . Basically Photon+ is converted name of EVDO (Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data only). EV-DO was designed as an evolution of the CDMA2000 (IS-2000) standard that would support high data rates and could be deployed alongside a wireless carrier's voice services.

Right Now TATA Indicom has launched this services in selected cities and moreover it depends whether Photon+ service signals are available in your area.

Photon+ claims speeds up to 20 times faster than regular CDMA data speed. Max downlink speed is 2.4 Mbps. This speed depends on various factors like Network strength and time of day. Well we have checked this and we got speed of 1.2 Mbps checked throush 2wire.com speedmeter.

Cost of the service is ,you can say is not so expensive. But this gives you wireless freedom. Photon+ basic plan starts with Rs 500/month with download limit of 0.5 GB. Higher plan is of 1250Rs/month with limit of 15GB traffic. Every Extra usage is charged Rs1/MB

You can access Photon+ service with specially provided USB modem sticks which will initially cost you 3500Rs. All you now need to do is just plug the USB Modem into your Laptop/Desktop PC and you are ready to access a whole new world of High speed internet connectivity.

In future, tata income will also sale wireless router which is easy, quick to install & does not require any wires etc. Just install the activated device in your office or home and it is ready to use. 

Details can be found at (Copy and paste in your browser)

http://www.tataindicom.com/HSIA-service-personal.aspx