Edu-training 600 Million + is the opportunity -Mobile Industry now 2% of the World’s GDP!
July 31, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Sharing an interesting report which give some numbers to “gut feel”, that mobiles have made & are making far-reaching positive changes to how we live, learn,work, & “Socially Network “.
In India it has provided access to people across “digitally divide” and empowered all, much more than the State could have done – 2G/3G Scams not withstanding!
India is the place where much of the innovation in mobile Value Added Services & applications is happening.
My current work is to leverage the mobile ecosystem to deliver, affordable, high relevance, (even 100 % customized) Education & training – direct to each user to his hand-held device . There are /will be 800 Million of them in India and increasingly all of them “smart Phones” with data access, in over 75% of inhabited area -deep down to the villages
The universal access provided by delivering content in text +video (read You Tube ) format in the their own language, has transformational potential .
This has to be made fun & engaging for the “learner “ and save many years otherwise lost in the traditional literacy route from local dialect to – Hindi /English.
And the so-called IT training which is focused more on Hardware & Software –taught again mainly through English.
If you can hear& see it you can understand it much faster.
I am happy to mentor application developers in this space with product ideas, validation, and technology guidance, share customer insights & save on their learning curve.
I have ”been there & doing that”!
The market for education & training is 600 Million plus, at conservative levels, just in India.
So what are you waiting for?
Today India. Tomorrow the World!
Full report below
Solicit your opinion &guidance and ,as I said, Happy to Help
Manoj Pant
Mobile Industry is Now 2% of the World’s GDP, Analyst Reports
Researchers for the Chetan Sharma Consulting group have put together a 2011 State of the Global Mobile Industry mid-year assessment and have come up with some very interesting results.
The entire global mobile market weighs in at about $1.3 trillion or close to 2% of the world’s gross domestic product. Of that giant $1.3 trillion pie, about $300 billion is expected to be through data revenues. That means that people are starting to use data at much higher rates and Americans are on the forefront of data usage even as India and China are the fastest growing mobile markets in the world.
The report notes that mobile is fundamentally changing the way people interact with the world and is a heavy influence on how people buy goods and services. Here is the money quote concerning mobile applications in the report.
“Mobile is fundamentally reshaping how we as consumers spend from housing and healthcare to entertainment and travel, from food and drinks to communication and transportation. Mobile not only influences purchase behavior but also post purchase opinions. When the share button is literally a second away, consumers are willingly sharing more information than ever before. Mobile is thus helping close the nirvana gap for brands and advertisers who seek to connect advertising to actual transactions. The long-term battle is however for owning the context of the users. Having the best knowledge about the user to help drive the transaction is the simply the most valuable currency of commerce.”
There will be more than six billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2011. According to the report, it took 20 years of mobile development to reach one billion connected devices. The jump from five billion to six billion took 15 months.
The global market for smartphone users stands at 26% of all phones (which are a subset of total “mobile devices“). The U.S. recently passed the threshold of 50% of every new phone purchase is a smartphone and the Sharma group predicts that the U.S. will be the first market to eclipse 50% smartphone ownership (it stands at 38% currently).
Here is a graph of the largest telecom operators by revenue.
The Sharma group notes that Apple is dominant in the tablet space and that is not going to change any time soon. This, as we know, is not news and the report does not say anything that we do not already know (a Windows 8 tablet could make inroads and cheaper Android tablets will eventually gain market traction).
In terms of smartphones, the report says that the battle is now on for third place behind Android and iPhone, respectively. Nokia/Windows Phone and Research in Motion are the contenders for third place, which actually is being very kind to Nokia/Windows and bearish on RIM’s prospects. HP Palm gets a nod for finally bringing products to the market but also says the “lack of an effective ecosystem means lack of traction in 2011.”
When it comes to actual devices made, Nokia still has the global lead, tough its numbers are down from the last several years when the Swedish cellphone maker was absolutely dominant.
In terms of market dynamics, Sharma notes that the landscape is difficult to judge because everybody wants a slice of the pie and certain companies want certain slices where they may not have traditionally created revenue. AT&T is now going after former partner Cisco in enterprise and unified communications. Verizon and Visa have been traditionally separated from each other as market leaders in different industries but are not clashing as in the mobile payments realm. Mobile has muddied the waters of the traditional industry model. That tends to happen when $1.3 trillion (and growing) is on the line.
p.s. From : http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_industry_is_now_2_of_the_worlds_gdp_analyst.php
Training World-class technicians -short term intensive hands on training programs.
February 24, 2011 § 1 Comment
We all know how difficult it is to get a skilled electrician, fitter, plumber, electrician, carpenter or masons, for your home, office, factory
Even when available it is common experience that they are mostly self trained over a period of time and do not have either the education or training, to do the work professionally and with new materials and equipment.
There is a huge shortage in the quality & number of such skilled technicians we need to sustain the projected Indian growth rate of 8.5 %.
While there has been a lot of investment in providing MBA, Engineering and IT courses all over the country very few have focused on providing technician training in large numbers so that the country’s growth requirements can be met.
While there are ITI’s( Industrial Training Institute) the total number of certified technicians each year is not more than ~10,000 while the need for such technicians is in hundreds of thousands .
Majority of the Govt. run ITI’s do not have the faculty or facilities to actually impart any quality education and just of shortage, just having degree from these ITI’s is often enough for such students to get a job in industries. As the skill gap is huge.
But are they adequately trained for the needs of today &Continuous Professional Development 3 rd EDU ConvEx 5 Feb11 Rev 1 tomorrow?
The answer sadly is, no!
The current and projected situation in terms of shortage of the right skills is a matter of great concern to the government, who are encouraging setting up of such technician training through various initiatives including National Skill Development Corporation, India & asking private companies to run the ITI’s.
“NSDC Objective
To contribute significantly (about 30 per cent) to the overall target of skilling / upskilling 500 million people in India by 2022, mainly by fostering private sector initiatives in skill development programmes and providing viability gap funding.
The NSDC was set up as part of a national skill development mission to fulfill the growing need in India for skilled manpower across sectors and narrow the existing gap between the demand and supply of skills.
The Finance Minister announced the formation of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in his Budget Speech (2008-09):
“…There is a compelling need to launch a world class skill development programme in Mission mode that will address the challenge of imparting the skills required by a growing economy. Both the structure and the leadership of the Mission must be such that the programme can be scaled up quickly to cover the whole country.”
I am attaching a powerpoint presentation which was delivered at the 3rd Annual EDUConvex Seminar held at New Delhi on 4&5 Feb 2011.
A video file of part of the Seminar is also uploaded.( Not great quality but will have to make do, with this , for now !)
Go to : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cetK7RJegE
Maybe you’d like to read it &solicit your feedback, comments & guidance
This is a pioneering venture in a domain which has been neglected by most as it is neither “fashionable nor trendy “!
But an area where need is greatest for any nation building effort.
Happy to help others in anyway I can.
Thanks you for your patience to read uptil the last line !
Related Articles
The future of communication is very “Social”. Twitter & Facebook likes will rule!
November 19, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Suddenly email has become “fuddy duddy”/dated?
See the pace of digital morphing:)
PLU ( People Like us eg on FB ) seek more real time interactions -One to One or One to Many /all-
Future is very “social ‘ and the future is here :
Sharing an interesting post below :
It is truly remarkable how the right people with the right idea at the right time can change the world. Larry Page and Sergey Brin did this in 1999 with PageRank. To a large extent, this simple fundamental insight helped Google organize the Internet in the early days just as the web was exploding. Building on this, Google became the de facto front door to what I will call the “content web,” where most users are searching for, and finding, information created by publishers in a fairly static manner.
Fast forward a decade, and today, more and more content is created and curated by people on networks such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The content web has lost its primacy as the main source of information that matters to most people on a daily basis. Instead, a person’s Facebook news feed or Twitter stream is increasingly becoming the place to go for people to tap into the web. Users discover interesting news articles, get recommendations for movies and browse funny videos via their social streams. On an average day, I click on more links from these places than from a Google search results page.
This “social lens” to the web is becoming more valuable and Twitter and Facebook are evolving to be the new gateways to the Internet.
Just as PageRank fundamentally revolutionized how the content web evolved, I think there’s a new metric, which will shape how these social streams evolve and become more useful. I like to call this an “engagement score.” The link juice of this world is basically the level of social engagement that a person can generate with a post on their stream.
Tied to a web identity across many platforms, this score would be a measure of how “useful” the person’s stream is to other people. Whether it’s curating good content, creating interesting social content or just being important enough to make news, a person’s engagement score is a measure of how much they contribute to the quality of the social web.
For example, Om sharing this post on Twitter will be more effective than me doing the same. His tweet will reach more people, get more impressions, clicks, re-tweets and more “@” mentions than mine, and his Facebook update will get more likes and comments than mine. Om’s social engagement is clearly higher than mine.
It’s likely that users who engage with Om’s tweet have a higher social engagement score than users who engage with mine. Just like the PageRank of a website is determined not just by the number of links to the website, but also by where the links are coming from, social engagement should be determined not just by the sheer number of followers, re-tweets, comments but by considering who the commenters and re-tweeters are.
It’s also valuable for this engagement score to be network-agnostic and tied to a web identity rather than a single network. Om’s audience is his, irrespective of whether his posts are read on Twitter, Facebook or this blog. A robust model for measuring social engagement will help shape and organize the social web and will become integral to effective information organization and discovery on the Internet.
Bindu Reddy, is CEO of MyLikes, a word of mouth advertising platform. Previously, Reddy was a product manager at Google. During her career there, she worked on multiple Google products, including Google Search.
Image courtsey flickr user crsan: http://www.christianholmer.com
Add your ” take outs ” on this .
Thanks
Manoj Pant
manoj.pant@shankhinc.com
19 Nov 2010
Mumbai, India
Read more at
http://gigaom.com/2010/11/18/why-we-need-pagerank-for-the-social-web/
12 iPad applications that mean Business
October 5, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Assuming you’ve got yourself a funky iPad and had multiple orgasms playing around with the sleek form factor etc you may feel the need for using it for some “real business work ”
That’s when you may find some limitations of what can be done with present version of the iPad! {“But an out-of-the-box iPad can be a disappointment for business tasks. Its rudimentary word processor, e-mail client, contacts directory and calendar are slim pickings, especially for those who want to use the device for work on the road.”}
Link below is worth reading up and where it suits you buy the Apps from iTunes store .
The ones specially recommend for the ‘road warrior ” in you, are summarized below for ready read .
Feedback your experience with them should you buy /use any of them .
1. Pages, Numbers and Keynote – Mac names for MS-word, excel & powerpoint .
In case you haven’t used these on a Mac , I find Keynotes awesome & so far ahead of PowerPoint that I don’t consider .ppt as any competition . Do go to any demo to see why I say so . BTW If you’re currently using Windows machine & planning your next /replacement, take my advice. Go for a Mac in any shape, size or form( Mac Book, iMac, iPhone or iPad or all of them if you want to really splurge ) connected in your home/office over a Airport Extreme ( Apple Wifi With back up hard disk( 500 GB or 1 TB) . Its streets ahead of any normal Windows WiFI Router /back up . More on Airport later)
2. Fax Print & Share Pro for iPad
{“One thing you won’t find on an iPad is a button for printing. (Some resourceful people have actually put the iPad screen-side down on a photocopier to print what is on its display.) Ndili Technologies’ $8.99 Fax Print & Share Pro for iPad (FPSP) is a better way to put it all on paper. Apple’s iOS 4.2 upgrade, due in November, will add native printing, but for now, FPSP is a valuable addition.”}
3. Pocket Informant for iPad
4. FlightTrack Pro ( Dont undersestimate the functionality of this !)
5. Desktop Connect
{ “Antecea Inc.’s Desktop Connect ($14.99) lets you view the files you need when you’re away from the office. The $15 app works with Windows, Mac and Linux.
Because Desktop Connect has to take over the host computer, setup is a little complicated and takes about an hour. After that, however, the application is easy to use. The app uses password protection and 128-bit encryption to safeguard your data.”}
6. Network Utility ( For the serious Network Admin in you 
Have fun discovering what you need !
If you know of others please share them also.
Most apps under $ 10 each
September 2, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Most people tend to dismiss Twitter & Facebook as juvenile applications.
Fact is,the future will be leveraged using such applications
As I said elsewhere even the future of education is via Facebook & Twitter .
In a lighter vein, children will tweet their mothers for milk /feeds :->)
Read below for some pointers in this direction
Manoj Pant
manoj.pant@shankhinc.com
Twitter: @manojpant
How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the future
Today’s CEO is not social. So says Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony. Very few of the CEOs at top companies in the U.S. and the rest of the world have any material presence on the popular social media sites. Colony believes they should be social though, and all signs are pointing to a future filed with CEOs who can speak the language of the people — social media.
While one can only speculate about the future of CEOs and social media, there’s no question that social media plays a huge part in life and the world as we know it right now.
As younger CEOs replace older ones, news consumption habits change and social media continues its trend towards ubiquity, there’s little question that the man (or woman) at the top will need a firm grasp on social media — whether that be for recruiting, scouting, public engagement or social CRM.
The Next Generation of CEOs
When it comes to CEOs, there’s a vast disparity between the young ones heading up startups and the more seasoned CEOs running the world’s most powerful companies. That disparity is social media — the young are more versed than the old. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to different generations and different attitudes around content and information meant for the public and private domains.
No one is predicting that the venerable CEOs will be booted from their lofty perches for lack of a Twitter (
) account. In fact, younger CEOs with a predilection and savvy for social media may find their visibility to either be a contributing factor to their rise or a liability once they graduate to bigger, hence more vulnerable, publicly traded companies.
Let’s have a gander at some stats on the status quo. In April, Colony let it be known that most CEOs are not social. In fact, by his own research and calculations, Colony has concluded that, “None of the CEOs of Fortune Magazine’s top 100 global corporations have a social profile.”
Social media abstinence even appears to extend to CEOs of tech companies. “Eric Schmidt of Google is an infrequent Twitterer and is not a blogger; Steve Ballmer at Microsoft has no blog and no Twitter account; Michael Dell is on Twitter but is not an external blogger … Steve Jobs of Apple, and Larry Ellison of Oracle have no Twitter, Facebook (
), LinkedIn (), or blog presences that we could find.”
His findings paint a bleak present tense. In the coming years, however, there will be a changing of the guard that favors social media over silence.
We Live in a Social Media World
Let us pause and reflect on the fact online users spend 22.7% of their time on social networking sites. That’s twice as much time as we spend on any other online activity. Consider where people are getting their news today. More and more, it’s not through direct sources like USA Today, The New York Times, or TV broadcasts, but through social networks.
Plus, industry is social. In the future, every company, no matter how small or how big, will be influenced and impacted by social media internally or externally. In the entertainment industry, for instance, social media has the potential to significantly bump up live television viewing audiences. Network executives such as Greg Goldman, formerly an executive director at ABC and now CCO at Philo, are nearly certain it’s happening now and will become more obvious with time.
Take what you know about the world today and then ask yourself, can a CEO remain relevant if they’re not versed in the new language of the people they serve?
SCVNGR’s youthful CEO Seth Priebatsch doesn’t believe so. The 21-year-old CEO says he’s “never lived in a world where I didn’t use social media.”
Priebatsch compares social media to cloud computing, and makes the analogy of how building applications for the cloud is a given. “It never occurred to me that you would write software to run on machines as opposed to access it through a browser. Why would you do that?”
For Priebatsch, social media is a given.
“Those companies that actively monitor, react and engage with what people are saying about them are at a huge advantage. If I’ve just launched a new feature on SCVNGR and people like it (or don’t) I know immediately. And that’s powerful. And what’s even cooler is that I can dig deeper. Someone says on Twitter: ‘Hey @SCVNGR, love the new social check-in. Way cool!’ and I can tweet back immediately ‘Thanks @user. What have you been using it for?’ And immediately get more information on how people are using SCVNGR, why they like it (or don’t) and how to make it better. That’s real power. It combines huge scale (tons of people talking) with massive granularity (ability to dig deep into one response).”
CEOs and the Future
The business leaders of tomorrow will be versed in social media, and we don’t need a crystal ball to predict how CEOs in the future will use social media. It’s the socially versed CEOs of today who help manufacture the following:
Opportunity Knocks
LIVESTRONG CEO Doug Ulman, himself a social media advocate and user, believes that perceptions around social media being too risky for CEOs are beginning to change.
“I would predict that more and more executives will see this as an opportunity rather than a risk,” he says.
Certainly the opportunity is there. Ulman pulls from his own work at LIVESTRONG as proof of concept. “Transparency and authenticity are two important factors in our work and social media allows us to amplify both in a significant way.”
Plus, given the digital landscape of the world we live in, future CEOs using social media is practically a given.
“Those who are currently growing up using these tools and mediums will have them integrated closely with their daily lives as they begin to enter the workforce, so they will come to expect their colleagues to be engaged as well,” according to Ulman.
Colony also sees social media as a platform paved with opportunity. He believes that CEOs should be social if the CEO “has something valuable and distinctive to say,” and has “a specialized strategy for social.”
For CEOs looking to start their social path, Colony prescribes a four part methodology that involves targeting the right audience, defining a clear reason to be social, setting up social expectations, and choosing the right platform(s).
The Ultimate in mobile phones ! Pomegranate NS 08 : How do you want your coffee, you said ?
August 19, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Concept phones are always “wish list” design concepts which later transform into something as close or beyond , as possible .
I am not sure how real is this story but for sure the designer has captured
what you & I would love to get from our mobile devices – of the (not too far ) future !
As a”tongue in cheek ” also it’s hilarious
I shall buy one ahead of iPhone 8 or whatever is then avatar of iPhone
Unless Steve adds the “bells & whistles “& steaming coffee brew by then!
Visit YouTube below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-v8c7J1xCw
(p.s. Added 21 Aug 2010, Sure enough .Pomegranate is a fake ad . See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate_%28phone%29
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/11/11/pomegranate-ns08-the.html
But except for the Shaver & Coffee maker most other features do exist /can become real )
Have great day ahead
Manoj Pant
Mumbai
Privacy issues in Facebook & such Social Networking sites ( Orkut , etc )
August 14, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Facebook is one of those “killer Apps ‘ which is the stuff dreams are made of !
$ 20-25 Billion =valuation of Facebook .
Current stats for this site read like( Source Business Today Aug 22, 2010 page 26)
500 Million =number of users on Facebook ! They crossed this number circa ,end July 2010 .
12 Million is the number of Facebook users in India .Indian users upload 53 Million photos /month
2 Hours /day = time that Indian urban youth spend on networking sites , every day . ( Source IndiaBiz news & Research Services )
17 % of all Europeans who are on Facebook
Facebook has spawned an entirely new class of PC users from the very young to the very old -the ones one did’nt think would come to a keyboard !
Now all this is great but in all this fun and oh so very easy to do stuff , lurks a great danger of what are called Privacy Issues .
I shall post some tips & tricks & warnings on how to make your Social networking presence “controlled ” & as private as you wish -if you wish
My 2 cent advice remains - “better safe than sorry “
Sharing the recent on this issue( 13 Aug 2010, Networking URL at end ), from Computerworld – a very reputed site .
)
Urge you to read carefully { (Highlights /Bold are mine Manoj}and immediately go and at least find out and change your privacy settings from the Account tab then privacy settings at top right- drop down menu
or ask me .
Take care
Watch this space for more
More below
Share feedback and add your own inputs please
Thanks
Manoj Pant
manoj.pant@shankhinc.com
Mumbai Sat 14 Aug, 2010
Computerworld talked with analysts to come up with five suggestions to protect you and your personal information if you’re one of the half a billion Facebook users sharing pictures, videos and updates about your latest dates or upcoming vacations.
1. Understand Facebook’s security settings and use them
Most analysts called this step absolutely mandatory. Users need to find out where the security settings are on Facebook and take the time to learn how to use them to control what information is shared with people, applications and Web sites.
Users should seriously consider sharing their information only with their online friends.
To do that, users can access their privacy settings by clicking on “Account” in the upper right-hand corner of their Facebook page, and then clicking “Privacy Settings.” People who want to set their privacy settings as tight as possible can select “Friends Only.” Also uncheck the box marked “Let friends of people tagged in my photos and posts see them,” and then click “Apply these Settings.”
2. Who’s your buddy?
Come on. This is not high school and Facebook isn’t a popularity contest. You don’t need to be “friends” with everyone.
Actually, a good reality check is if this person is actually a friend or family member in real life. If they’re not an actual friend, why would you want them to know when you’re stuck working late, getting ready to go on vacation or that you just bought a new computer or flat-screen TV?
Remember that sharing with friends only is the strictest level of security that exists on Facebook. Be sure the people you befriend are ones that you know and trust.
Corollary: Review your list of friends and delete the names that ought not to be there.
3. Beware of those applications
Using a Facebook application can give broad permission for whoever developed that application to access your data … and your friends’ data.
That means you may want to think twice before you take quizzes with titles like “Would you make a good FBI agent?” or “What’s the theme song to your high school years?”
Only use applications from sources you trust. And periodically check the list of applications you’ve used and given permissions to. You might be surprised how many you’ve approved. Much like your PC, you probably want to regularly remove any applications you don’t use and trust.
Go to the bottom of Facebook’s Privacy Settings page to find the “Applications and Websites” link. There, you can click on the “Remove unwanted or spammy applications” option.
4. Ummm, sorry Grandma! Think before you type
You have to protect yourself and think through every post that you put online. The golden rule, say several analysts, is to think about whether you want your mother, your boss (and any potential future bosses) and your significant other to read what you’re about to write. If you don’t want any of them to see it, don’t post it.
It’s a simple concept, but people still just don’t get it.
It’s so important for users to realize that when they post personal details on social networking sites, they have to assume that information could be exposed to everyone in the world with a computer and a screen.
One approach is to ask yourself if you’d wear a T-shirt with the details you’ve posted about yourself. If you would, then you’re probably OK. But if that thought makes you cringe, then you’d better re-evaluate what you’re putting on the Web.
5. Malicious eyes
Sit down and closely look at your Facebook page and consider what a malicious person could do with any of the information you’ve posted.
Try to be objective and ask yourself, ‘If I really hated this person or wanted to take advantage of her, is there anything I could do with this information to mess with her?’ If the answer is yes, then consider what kinds of information you’re posting on your Facebook page and make the appropriate adjustments.
Do not post any information that could be used in an identity theft scheme. Avoid listing your full birth date, home address, children’s names, phone numbers and social security numbers.
Summarised from:
Not just BlackBerry, now 3G Video Calls also on hold
August 11, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Home ministry tells DoT to put 3G on hold
TNN, Aug 11, 2010, 12.21am IST
Though currently only public sector telecom companies – BSNL and MTNL – provide 3G services to nearly 19 lakh customers across the country, the move may affect the year-end schedule for launch of third generation mobile services by private players if they fail to put in place the required infrastructure to intercept all services including video calls.
The freeze order is aimed particularly at J&K where secessionists have used modern telephony to circulate streaming videos and clips to inflame opinion on the streets.
The order also marks a toughening of stance of the government towards service providers who have not heeded its security concerns. The home ministry is upset with the continued failure of service providers to verify users of SIM cards. Home ministry and intelligence agencies are also annoyed because telephone companies have defied the directive not to provide services on handsets which don’t have the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. This despite the finding of security agencies that terror gangs were using unverified SIM cards as well as handsets without IMEIs – all Chinese – to plot violence.
The exasperation found expression in the tough stand against Research in Motion, makers of BlackBerry, after they pleaded their inability to provide access to encrypted messages being sent and received by users of the smart phones.
All these issues are likely to figure in a meeting of service providers called by home ministry on Thursday.
Sources said the ministry was all set to read the riot act to telephone companies, even telling them to discontinue encrypted services on BlackBerry if the Canada-based RIM refused to play ball.
“The issue along with other matters including that of interception of the BlackBerry messenger service will be discussed in a meeting of service providers and DoT officials on Thursday,” said an official.
It was recently found that there were nearly 30 lakh unverified SIM cards in Jammu and Kashmir alone. A sample study in the border state revealed the use of unverified SIMs to an extent of 50% of total active connections.
Similarly, in case of IMEI number, it was found that compliance rate from service providers over shutting down services to handsets without a genuine IMEI number had been extremely poor. As a result, law enforcement agencies are finding it very difficult to intercept targets that do not have a legitimate IMEI number.
The move may affect the year-end schedule for launch of 3G mobile services by private players if they fail to put in place the required infrastructure to intercept all services including video calls.
Its all here :http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Home-ministry-tells-DoT-to-put-3G-on-hold/articleshow/6289803.cms
Does RIM/BlackBerry have (face saving )solution for Saudi Arabia ?
August 8, 2010 § Leave a Comment
My Views :
RIM ( Research In Motion ) now faces a surging demand from many Countries to open their messaging for “monitoring ” .
Saadi Arabia , UAE ( From Oct 16 2010, ) India ( imminent ) for starters .
As long as they allow Messenger services between BlackBerry (PIN’s ) I personally dont care if my messages are monitored or not .
Big Brother US is anyway sniffing away at all the “bits& bytes ” passing on any media including ether !
Saudi telecoms test fix in tentative BlackBerry deal
Souhail KaramSun, Aug 8 07:54 AM
The Saudi telecom regulator told the kingdom’s telecom operators on Saturday to test a proposed fix to the perceived national security threat posed by certain services available on Research In Motion ‘s BlackBerry smartphones.
The regulator had threatened to cut off BlackBerry’s Messenger function to Saudi Arabian users on Friday, but so far has allowed the service to continue.
On Saturday, the Communications and Information Technology Commission said it gave the three telecom operators — state-controlled Saudi Telecom, Mobily and Zain Saudi Arabia — 48 hours to try out “the proposed solutions and fulfill the requested regulatory requirements.”
The regulator’s brief statement did not say what the solution was, but a source told Reuters on Friday that the makers of BlackBerry were looking into using servers in Saudi Arabia to address government concerns.
The Saudi Arabian government wants access to RIM’s encrypted network.
RIM has come under increasing scrutiny from governments, including India, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Algeria, over the potential threats its network could pose to security.
With about 700,000 BlackBerry users, Saudi Arabia is RIM’s biggest Middle East market.
Neighboring UAE, with 500,000 users, has proposed a ban starting Oct. 11 targeting email and Web browsing, as well as the Messenger service, on the device.
The U.S. and Canadian governments have expressed concern about the implications of banning such services.
(Reporting by Souhail Karam; Writing by Ann Saphir in Chicago; Editing by Eric Beech)
From : http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20100808/371/tbs-saudi-telecoms-test-fix-in-tentative.html
Shankh Inc :Technology Strategy Consulting services .What we can do for you.
July 21, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Our focus area & experience is in the field of Mobile communications specially Value Added Services, User Interface , end to end linkages from content to display & controls from Mobile devices , Customer Service, as well as adding a telematics & telemetry capability to legacy systems through SMS/GPRS based Mobile access & control .
We are based out of Mumbai and can be contacted on +91 9820018300 +91 9820018300 +91 9820018300 & manoj.pant@shankhinc.com
‘Personal Cloud’ to Replace PC by 2014 & I’m lovin it!
March 16, 2012 § Leave a Comment
‘Personal Cloud’ to Replace PC by 2014, Says Gartner
Smartphone users sometimes dont realize that most of the processing of their commands /queries is actually being done somewhere in the clouds& not on their devices
The user experience is so smooth, swift& seamless .
iCloud like offerings will take this user experience to a different level where content becomes device independent & one has access to same content from any device & from where one may have signed off.
This has great value for all & with the “Personal Cloud ” forecast to replace the PC , the future is even more exciting .
For starters read below & keep your head in the clouds
Cheers
Manoj Pant
There’s no doubting the cloud invasion. But the research firm Gartner believes the personal cloud will replace the PC as the center of our digital lives sooner than you might think: 2014.
“Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices,” Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement on Monday. “Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”
Google plans a cloud-centered future with Google Play and its market-leading Android mobile OS. But the personal computer will also not miss out on the cloud, as Microsoft and Apple are planning to weave the cloud into the next generation of their desktop operating systems, Windows 8, and OS X Mountain Lion.
But a cloud-happy future will not be as easy as that, because “it will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users.” That’s a point echoed by two new bloggers at Cloudline. Todd B. Nielsen outlines what he sees as the perfect storm for cloud computing, noting that he is “in awe at the businesses and executives that are not treating cloud computing as a strategy to improve their company.” And Contributor Alexander Haislip drove home the missed-opportunity sentiment recently in his post, What the New iPad Won’t Do:
The new iPad may be the most impressive piece of computing hardware I’ve ever seen. Yet its true power is held back by large enterprise software corporations that cannot keep pace with the new devices designed with cloud computing in mind…. It’s as if they’ve completely ignored one of the most successful computing platforms ever built, outselling the total number of PCs its closest competitor sold last quarter.
With the new iPad sold out, it seems only a matter of time that those not on board with the cloud — and with their wares available on any device — will face an existential question.
And Gartner says a number of factors are converging to make for a perfect personal cloud storm by 2014:
Megatrend No. 1: Consumerization — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Gartner has discussed the consumerization of IT for the better part of a decade, and has seen the impact of it across various aspects of the corporate IT world. However, much of this has simply been a precursor to the major wave that is starting to take hold across all aspects of information technology as several key factors come together:
- Users are more technologically-savvy and have very different expectations of technology.
- The internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.
- The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.
- Users have become innovators.
- Through the democratization of technology, users of all types and status within organizations can now have similar technology available to them.
Megatrend No. 2: Virtualization — Changing How the Game Is Played
Virtualization has improved flexibility and increased the options for how IT organizations can implement client environments….Megatrend No. 3: “App-ification” — From Applications to Apps
When the way that applications are designed, delivered and consumed by users changes, it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market….Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud
The advent of the cloud for servicing individual users opens a whole new level of opportunity. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do….Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want
Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices….
“The combination of these megatrends, coupled with advances in new enabling technologies, is ushering in the era of the personal cloud,” Gartner’s Kleynhans said. “In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared in the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.”
But he says it’s not about the oft-referenced post-PC era, “but rather about a new style of personal computing that frees individuals to use computing in fundamentally new ways to improve multiple aspects of their work and personal lives.”
That’s a point former Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie made recently, saying, “People argue about, ‘Are we in a post-PC world?’. Why are we arguing? Of course we are in a post-PC world,” Ozzie is is reported to have said at a GeekWire-sponsored conference last week. ”That doesn’t mean the PC dies; that just means that the scenarios that we use them in, we stop referring to them as PCs, we refer to them as other things.” Ozzie, who left Microsoft in 2010, started a company called Cocomo, which he said last week has it sights set on the center of the personal cloud storm: mobility and communications.
Jon Udell, another newcomer to Cloudline who will chronicle the personal cloud weekly on Fridays, writes in his first post:
The cloud platform has become a real option for companies needing managed, pay-as-you-use IT capacity. But you have to squint hard to see the emerging personal cloud. That future is already here, as William Gibson would say, but it’s unevenly distributed.
I see signs of the personal cloud in services like Dropbox, Evernote, and Flickr. You can use them for free, or you can pay for higher capacity and enhanced customer service. But the personal cloud also arises from a way of thinking about, and using, any of the services the web provides.
Weigh in: Will the personal cloud replace your personal computer at the center of your digital life? Extra fodder for discussion: Any way we can rebrand to drop “PC” once and for all, or is it now set to live on for another generation?
Posted originally by Mike Barton
iMessage Vs. BBM, which will come out on top?
June 7, 2011 § Leave a Comment
One key reason I have stuck with the Blackberry has been its amazing innovative, secure Messenger Service – with its unique “read” notification as well as ability to send “Voice Notes ” across to any other BBM user -free over a wi-fi network /unlimited Data Plan .
No other platform/device came even close !
This has stopped me from migrating to iPhone ,till now that is.
Tried the cross-platform messenger services like whatsapp but somehow they didn’t really work for me.
Now with Apple announcing launch of iMessage for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad,as Apple’s answer to BBM the scenario will change for me – & for many other die-hard BBM users
Sharing a good post below by Cell Guru – which captures key aspects of emerging service and competition for RIM
May the best Messenger win!
Manoj Pant
iMessage Vs. BBM, which will come out on top?
When RIM launched their proprietary BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging application, it was nothing more than a convenient, secure way for business men around the office to keep in touch with each other; using their monthly allotted data plan to chat without the annoyance of filling their already saturated email inbox’s with short sentences, and also avoiding the then costly regular use of standard text messaging. Companies loved it because it saved money, RIM loved that they had created a niché; everyone was happy.
Then the unthinkable happened: BBM went viral. Though very bare-boned, it worked. It was an efficient, quick, and cheap way to keep in touch with friends locally or worldwide without incurring the often exorbitant fees associated with standard text messaging. RIM was floating high with their newly found fame; no one offered what they did and more importantly, no one could. At the same time, Microsoft was losing market share by the minute with their then rapidly fading Windows OS’s, Apple was getting ready to unleash their iOS device software to the masses, along with a then very basic – but still game changing – iPhone 2G, and at that time, Google’s Android OS was nothing more than an unconfirmed rumor. So on top of having a proprietary instant messaging app, they also had little to no competition in the mobile space. In short, RIM owned the smartphone market and quickly became the go-to device for both companies and consumers alike, largely because of BBM.
Now you would think things are all peachy keen right? Wrong. BBM was – and still is – only for BlackBerry OS and with competition naturally comes imitation; iPhone (and soon Android) users’ wanted an IM (instant messaging) solution as well and developers saw it and recognized it, thus ushering in a wave of apps claiming to fill the void lost when users’ made the switch from BlackBerry. Many briefly did well, but as fast as they grew, they also lost steam; whether it was due to a lack of consistent updates or what not, there were – and are – only a select few that really caught on over the years and are still widely used now (whatsapp, kik, and liveprofile just to name a few). But the biggest reason for said apps losing steam? They just weren’t BBM, nor were they official apps acknowledged by Apple; this has forced many, myself included, to annoyingly carry two devices. Many of my contacts/friends around the world are active on BBM and it remains the fastest, cheapest, most widely used and easiest way for us to communicate. It also provides a sense of security; because unlike most apps you aren’t forced to give out ANY personal information and have the ability to delete and/or block if conversations get inappropriate. To put it boldly: BBM has become a benchmark IM that, to date, no one has successfully duplicated to its entirety.
Then came today’s World Wide Developers Conference or WWDC for short. Apple’s yearly conference which – as per normal – gives them the worlds attention to announce the latest and greatest to come from their labs in Cupertino. Other than the expected iOS5, OSX Lion, and Cloud announcements, Apple pulled something from way out of left field: iMessage for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, directly positioned to be Apple’s answer to BBM. If anyone could finally compete with RIM, Apple was it. The instant chat app (set to launch this coming fall as an added feature of OS5) will let Apple users exchange text messages, photos and videos, just as BlackBerry users do with the popular BBM program. And like with BBM, iMessage will include prompts showing when a message has been received and read, and when other users are typing. Apple says all messages will be securely encrypted – one of the biggest selling features of B2B BlackBerry sales.
While this news is well and good for Apple die-hards, BBM has become an entity in itself, a household name if you will; brand recognition of that caliber doesn’t go away overnight, regardless of falling stock prices. BlackBerry’s are and always will be the best communication devices around, period. That being said, do I think iMessage will “take down” BBM? No. BBM is too big for that. I don’t even think that RIM should look at it in that way. iMessage has a lot of potential and will definitely give BBM a run for its money if launched properly, becoming a solid catalyst going forward for consumers – business or non – to take the full leap. But I think it’s way to early to start assuming it’s the “be all end all”.
As I stated before, MANY have tried to steal BBM’s thunder, many have also failed. Maybe this latest news will be the final push RIM needed to open up the use of BBM for other OS’s. Does iMessage – and its solid backing – even have what it takes? Or is it another destined to fail? Many questions are left unanswered, and until official release, will remain that way. So for now, sound off in the comments with your thoughts.
MP3 for phone calls An idea whose time has come !
May 31, 2011 § Leave a Comment
MP3 for phone calls An idea whose time has come !
Telephone calls and video conferences with a sound quality that approaches that of direct communication are now possible with a new audio coding technology — it is almost as if the discussion participants are sitting across from one another.
MP3 for phone calls — Considering the poor sound quality of many phone calls, this is a great idea. Videoconference phone calls in particular can be unintentionally awkward because the participants start to speak at the same time due to the time delay in the transmission. The reasons for this are long delay times and the poor quality of today’s video calls. Fraunhofer’s task was therefore to improve the quality and simultaneously minimize the delay time. The technology that makes this possible is called Enhanced Low Delay Advanced Audio Coding, in short, AAC-ELD. It was developed by Manfred Lutzky, Marc Gayer, Markus Schnell and their team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen.
Fraunhofer IIS is known as the main inventor of MP3, the audio codec that made it possible to greatly reduce the size of music or other audio files without impairing the sound. To implement something similar for the telephone and other devices was easier said than done. “The algorithm requires a certain amount of time to encode the data and to decode it again at the other end of the line. The process requires data that is still in the future, as it must wait for the data to arrive. This can result in a situation where interactive communication is very difficult,” explained Markus Schnell.For several years, the IIS team continued to improve the algorithm even further to shorten the delay and not impair the quality at the same time. The solution, “We attempted to further minimize the area that is forward-looking and to only process current data. We did that until we found an optimum balance between quality and delay,” said Schnell.
One technology — many applications
The results are audibly good as the delay with Enhanced Low Delay AAC is only about 15 milliseconds. During this extremely short timespan, the algorithm manages to reduce the audio data to less than one-thirtieth of its original volume without major losses of sound quality. Due to its enormous performance capacity, the coding process has already prevailed in many areas. Marc Gayer explains, “Currently, AAC Low Delay, the forerunner of AAC-ELD, is the actual standard for many video-conferencing systems. But the process is also increasingly applied in radio broadcasts, for example for live sports reports.”
The advantage of improved speech transmission is also heard in mobile devices, such as the iPhone4 and in the iPad2, for example. Video telephone transmissions in particular are supported in these devices. The developers created a very special application was to promote the communication between groups that are socially close to each other. A system was created that makes it possible to play games across the borders of cities or countries. “Thanks to the optimized image and sound quality, there is the impression that game partners who are far apart from each other are not in front of screens, but actually sitting across from one another,” said Manfred Lutzky.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110526091254.htm
How to make “Social Network” work for you. Starter kit FAQ!
May 5, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Recall some time back one used to hear ” I don’t need/want – mobiles, PC, email & then Facebook & Skype et.al. (My children use it & Yes I use it but only to talk /see my children & grandchildren in US but its not for me /may age/need!
Then suddenly Social Networking happened & now it’s Mobile Social Networks (MSN).
Looking forward -email is already “passé/too slow/”my fathers generation & thus fuddy duddy:).
Because you are reading this you are “On Facebook ” have many Friends all over & pretty much hooked on it.
Maybe some miss their daily “fix ” if net/device deprived
For those on Facebook who have not tried Twitter (twitter.com Register now). Get yourself a Twitter “handle ” which is basically your name you choose – it can be any name for anonymity and send 140 character “free SMS “ to your “followers “
You can control if you don’t want to be followed too just in case you started getting worried !.
It reads like @manojpant which is my twitter “handle”
On Twitter you can send me a “direct message “ only to one or to all.
User has full control.
I am sharing this to show you the seamless integration of Twitter & Facebook & all other Social Apps.
Invite you to read more on SN on another page here & below
http://manojpant.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=216&action=edit
Signing off with my Thought for today :My daily Prayer -” Lord, give me today, my daily Net!
Have a great day ahead, hopefully tweeting away .
Watch this space for more or just call/mail/tweet me ,
Happy to help anytime, if able
Higher education The latest bubble? by Schumpeter in The Economist: Apr 13th 2011,
April 23, 2011 § Leave a Comment
While written with a US centric view, situation in India ,is not very different or better.
Some collected thoughts below & solicit your feedback & views.
My mail trails on this below :
1.Madan :Thanks for sharing.
Great piece that only reinforces what you’ve been forecasting for long – except not reported in The Economist under your byline. Yet!
Now Paul Krugman saying the same thing in same words!
“Paul Krugman has pointed out that, contrary to popular wisdom, expounded relentlessly by the OECD among other august bodies, technological progress may reduce the demand for high-end jobs, not just low-end jobs.
Computer software is now employed to perform tasks that used to require armies of lawyers, engineers or highly educated workers.”
2. One reaction to above was
“I do not agree. Indian situation is very different, if not diametrically opposite. It would take another piece like Schumeter’s, to fully state the reasons and arguments. And I would leave it for the chat, when we meet the next time,”
3. To which below clarification by Dr. M. M. Pant.
“The key fact is that in India quality higher education is scarce and good education is being out-priced.
We have already seen trends of closure in mediocre Engineering and Management Programs.
Even the IIT’s with 40% faculty shortage, inability to attract enough high quality faculty and 3 fold expansion may not be able to keep their brand value for too long.
So a better school education with programs emphasising technical and behavioural skills to follow will replace a large chunk of erstwhile higher education.
Also do observe the higher ‘intelligence’ and sensory dimensions of emerging software.
So shouldn’t dismiss the argument straightaway. Of course there are differences and the details may vary but the overarching trend has to be taken cognizance of
Do read the article below .
Share comments , Thanks
Higher education The latest bubble?
Business and management: Apr 13th 2011, by Schumpeter
The Economist
ON September 2nd 2010 I wrote a mischievous column (“Declining by degree”) likening America’s universities to its car companies in about 1950: on top of the world and about to take an almighty fall. Since then I have heard the argument dismissed and denounced by the presidents of Harvard, Princeton and New York University. John Sexton, NYU’s affable president, even likened me to a member of the tea party, for which there is no more damning condemnation in academic circles.
So I am particularly delighted to read Peter Thiel’s latest thoughts on the higher-education bubble. Mr Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a legendary investor, has a long history of identifying bubbles. He insisted on striking a deal, against everybody’s advice, when the market valued PayPal at “only” $500m, on the ground that the dotcom bubble was about to burst (this was March 2000). He refused to buy property until recently, figuring that the dotcom bubble had simply shifted to housing.
Mr Thiel believes that higher education fills all the criteria for a bubble: tuition costs are too high, debt loads are too onerous, and there is mounting evidence that the rewards are over-rated. Add to this the fact that politicians are doing everything they can to expand the supply of higher education (reasoning that the “jobs of the future” require college degrees), much as they did everything that they could to expand the supply of “affordable” housing, and it is hard to see how we can escape disaster.
Here is Sarah Lacy’s summary of Mr Thiel’s argument about the safety-blanket role of higher education:
Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.
Mr Thiel’s own solution to the problem befits a man with money and a mission: he is offering 20 students $100,000 scholarships, over two years, to leave school and start a company rather than enter college.
While I’m on the subject of higher education, I’ll point to three other bits and pieces that have caught my attention. Paul Krugman has pointed out that, contrary to popular wisdom, expounded relentlessly by the OECD among other august bodies, technological progress may reduce the demand for high-end jobs, not just low-end jobs. Computer software is now employed to perform tasks that used to require armies of lawyers, engineers or highly educated workers.
The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information — loosely speaking, that computers help those who work with their minds, while hurting those who work with their hands.
Some years ago, however, the economists David Autor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane argued that this was the wrong way to think about it. Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.” Therefore, any routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, non-manual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.
And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Notably, with production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of US employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Roombas are cute, but robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.
Of course, the value of education cannot be reduced to dollars and cents, as much as elite universities try to do so. Education is its own reward. But I wonder about the quality of a great deal of higher education, especially in the humanities. The best academics, the Gordon Woods of this world, produce wonderful stuff. But I am regularly shocked by the quality of the books that flow into The Economist’s offices from university presses, by the tediousness of the subject matter, the contortions of the prose and the willingness of the authors to bow the knee to various exhausted academic pieties (the various “isms”) in the name of challenging conventions (try looking at anything produced by Duke University Press, for example).
I was struck by a recent review in Slate, by William Deresiewicz, of Marjorie Garber’s new book “The Use and Abuse of Literature”, which begins thus, and goes on to become even more brutal:
Marjorie Garber’s new book brought me back to my days as an English professor; I thought I was reading a freshman essay. My marginal comments might as well have been written in red: “What is the point of this paragraph?” “Where are we in the argument—and what exactly is the argument?” “Sloppy thinking.” “You need to unpack this.” “Again, is there a point here, or just a mass of notes?” “You have to develop your thesis, not just keep reiterating it.” The Use and Abuse of Literature purports to be a rallying cry for serious reading by a decorated and prolific Harvard professor, but once you pick your way through its heap of critical detritus—its mildewed commonplaces and shot-springed arguments, its half-chewed digressions and butt ends of academic cliché—you uncover underneath it all a single dubious and self-serving claim: that the central actor in the literary process is, what do you know, the English professor.
And Ms Garber, remember, is a leading professor at America’s leading university, or one of them anyway. Imagine what the average exercise in literary theory is like from a professor at a second- or third-division school. It is hard to regard this sort of stuff as a contribution to either knowledge or civilisation.
My third article is also from Slate. This suggests that applications for law school have dropped by more than 11% since last year, in part because students are beginning to realise that it makes no sense to pile up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to join the legion of unemployed lawyers.
According to data from the Law School Admission Council, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the number of applicants to law school has dropped a whopping 11.5 percent year-to-year—to the lowest level since 2001 at this point in the application cycle. Some schools are still accepting applications, so the numbers will change in the coming weeks, says the council’s Wendy Margolis. But about 90 percent of applications are in, and the pattern is clear.
This fits in with my own observations of what is happening in business schools, which have been relentlessly raising their prices by 6% a year. Middle-ranking schools are seeing a significant drop in demand, which they have masked by taking weaker candidates, but which will eventually force them to start cutting back.
Perhaps the education bubble is already beginning to burst.
Save money in International Roaming:Reliance Passport World SIM Passport International Calling Card
March 4, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Reliance Passport World SIM – Travel Anywhere in The World With A Single SIM
Sounds like a good option to carry around- better than Matrix cards maybe.
Just read about below
http://www.reliancepassport.com/mainindex.html
Prima Facie a very good option to carry around for international travels ( carry a second GSM Mobile for this)
Its International Calling Card service via GSM SIM
So no need to enter painful 16 digit codes !
In fact can be used by other country residents also
In Country calling Rs 15 / Calls to India Rs 40 &/SMS rates at Rs 10 ( For most countries )are better than GSM Roaming and Matrix cards
Even lower than calls billed in Euro/GBP/$/minute rates, maybe?
Available as Post & Pre paid
Corporates can keep this in stock & issue to outbound travelers with good Budgetary controls and no need for activating International roaming on Home SIM .
You have an International Calling in Number
Just get one & keep for use anytime needed.
Can only be used out of Home Country Network
Smart Product in my view .
I am going to try one soon
Haven’t read (* ) Terms & conditions apply – if any !
Let me know if you find such * hidden away somewhere in the fine print
Passport World SIM Passport International Calling Card
Introducing Passport World SIM – travel to over 100 countries with a single SIM. Make and receive local, national and international calls and save not only on exorbitant international roaming charges, but also the hassle of carrying multiple SIMs.
Passport International Calling card allows you to save up to 90% compared to international roaming! Available in denominations of Rs. 500, Rs. 1000 and Rs. 1500 with full talktime, Passport international Calling card can be used from over 30 countries. Make calls to India and over 200 countries across the globe from any local mobile, landline or payphone at highly affordable rates
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