Monthly archives: September 2004

CIOL The GSM Association has urged the regulator to veto a proposal that could effectively isolate India from the global mobile market :

The GSM Association (GSMA) has encouraged the Indian government to maintain its alignment with the global community and protect the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) recommended IMT2000 core band for 3G services.

According to the press release, GSMA has urged the country’s telecom regulator to veto a proposal that would effectively isolate India from the global mobile market, a risk that would undermine the current growth and development of the country’s telecommunications industry and restrict the ability of mobile users to roam internationally….

Via Slashdot Pual Graham, founder of ViaWeb which was aquired by Yahoo in 1998 writes : What the Bubble Got Right. The Bubble are the days of .COMs and .GONEs.

had a front row seat for the Internet Bubble, because I worked at Yahoo during 1998 and 1999. One day, when the stock was trading around $200, I sat down and calculated what I thought the price should be. The answer I got was $12. I went to the next cubicle and told my friend Trevor. “Twelve!” he said. He tried to sound indignant, but he didn’t quite manage it. He knew as well as I did that our valuation was crazy.

Yahoo was a special case. It was not just our price to earnings ratio that was bogus. Half our earnings were too. Not in the Enron way, of course. The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings. What made our earnings bogus was that Yahoo was, in effect, the center of a pyramid scheme. Investors looked at Yahoo’s earnings and said to themselves, here is proof that Internet companies can make money. So they invested in new startups that promised to be the next Yahoo. And as soon as these startups got the money, what did they do with it? Buy millions of dollars worth of advertising on Yahoo to promote their brand. Result: a capital investment in a startup this quarter shows up as Yahoo earnings next quarter– stimulating another round of investments in startups.

Yesterday I used BitPim to get into my Reliance India Mobiles’s Handset and modify the Ringtones (of LG-RD2030). The handset stores only 3 additional tunes and if you delete those , all the tunes would be lost. I had to reload the tunes from RWorld and use “Overwrite” option to change the tune (melody05.dat, melody06.dat and melody07.dat). I spent more time in finding the right tune than looking at the software, hence more updates later. But a friendly warning : You might screw your phone while doing so. So please do not play with it.

BitPim

BitPim is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on LG VX4400/VX6000 and many Sanyo Sprint cell phones. This includes the PhoneBook, Calendar, WallPapers, RingTones (functionality varies by phone) and the Filesystem for most Qualcomm CDMA chipset based phones. (Note: you need to use the 0.7 development releases if you have any phone other than the LG VX4400).

BitPim is distributed as open source and free software under the GNU General Public License (aka GPL).

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

There are no warranties as stated above (ie this software may damage your phone). This software is in no way associated with Audiovox, LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sanyo, Sprint, Verizon Wireless or any other handset manufacturer or wireless carrier. It has not been certified or endorsed by them, nor was it written using information directly supplied by them.

Om Malik writes how cisco is betting heavily on India:

So my statement that the ‘axis of technology has shifted to somewhere in the South China Sea’ is finally coming true. Couple of days ago, Cisco Systems announced that it was setting up a $32 million R&D labs in China. Today there is news that Cisco Systems is setting up a venture capital arm in India.

Cisco is bullish on the Indian market, which it says is amongst the top three strategic markets worldwide and its fastest growing. New product launches and the recent establishment of separate vertical business groups there have buoyed hopes for Cisco in the country, whose own manufacturing and services industry has been maturing in recent years because of de-regulation and privatization. [Venture Wire News]

‘India has been referred to for years as ‘the land of eternal promise’ because its markets always seemed on the verge of really taking off,’ Daniel Scheinman, senior vice president of corporate development for Cisco told News@Cisco. ……

Om Mallik’s Related Posts :

- India, the new land of opportunity

- India, the next telecom boom market

Wired has this article on extreme outsourcing which means that not only big MNCs but even Startups and small time contractors are outsourcing their jobs/work. Sill Jason Pontin maintains a view that its still a job creating venture.

Wired : Micro-multinationals turn inside out an organizational fad of the 1990s: the incubator. But whereas incubated startups divest some business functions to their investors, micro-multinationals purchase these functions from subcontractors. Incubators allow startups to concentrate on what economists call a “comparative advantage” – the thing that any economic entity does best and most cheaply. Alas, incubated startups were also at the mercy of their patrons’ whims. Micro-multinationals, by contrast, control their own fortunes.

The wisdom of outsourcing applies to businesses great and small. When companies have some of their operations performed elsewhere, they reduce costs and allocate capital and labor instead to those activities that cannot, or should not, be subcontracted. When businesses use capital and labor efficiently, they can better explore expanding markets. And faster growth creates a need for new workers. The result is almost always a net gain in employment.

Via Emergic ] Joe Kraus one of the founders of Excite, has started a blog on entrepreneurship and writes :

I’ve been reflecting on how different it is to start a company in 2004 vs. 1993. While I still break out like a nervous teenager, which looks awfully strange with graying hair, at a professional level, there are three substantial cost differences that make it much easier to start a business on much less capital. I think this is a great trend for entrepreneurs and has a not-so-clear impact on the venture business.

Cost Difference #1. The tools to develop software cost nothing now.

Cost Difference #2. Hardware costs are approaching 0.

Cost Difference #3. Start-ups have access to global labor.

with today’s ability to work with people all across the world comes the the great responsibility of needing to manage them to get what you want. It’s going to change the required skills for successful entrepreneurs. Successful management ability early on, not just great drive and persistence, is going to become an absolute must.

Internet Service Providers (ISP) : India

- Mantraonline

- Powersurfer.net

- Pacenet

- Asianet Dataline

- Kerala Online

- CJ Net 4 U

- ComSatMax

- NOW ISP

- Del DSL

- Dishnet DSL

- Estel

- Exatt

- GNFC Online

- Guj Info Petro Limited (GIPL)

- GTL

- HATHWAY CABLE INTERNET

- HCL Infinet

- DIRECWAY

- i2i

- L & T Netcom Ltd

- Netmagic Solutions

- n-Logue

- Pacific Internet

- IndianSPider.com

- Primus Direct/UniLynk

- Only Smart

- RoltaNet

- Reach

- RAILTEL

- Satyam Online

- Spectranet

- Software Technology Parks of India

- Zeenext.com / ZeeAccess.com

- Tatanova

- net4india

- VasNet

Organizations

- Internet Service Provider Association of India

- Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

- Department of Telecommunications

- Broadband India User Group

TELECOM ORGANIZATIONS : INDIA

The New Business Destination For Telecommunications and Business Process Outsourcing

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

Mobile First Alliance

Cellular Operators Association of India

GSM India

TELECOM NEWS : INDIA

India Telecom Infrastructure Sector News: from India Telecom News Weekly

Telecom News – Economic Times

India Telecom News

Telecom News – BSNL

TELECOM OPERATORS : INDIA (As per the brand name)

Spice Telecom

Hutch

Aircel Limited

Essar Cellphone

AirTel

BPL Mobile

Escotel Mobile

Oasis Cellular

Orange

Idea

Dolphin

Reliance Mobile

RPG Cellular

Cell One

Tata Indicom

Ericsson has announced to set up base stations manufacturing unit for cell sites used in Mobile communication near Jaipur in Rajashtan, India. It would be the first BTS manufacturer in India, with a investement of around 50$ M over the next years. Ericsson is a leading supplier of mobile networks & has large telecom customers like like Bharti, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Reliance in India.

The US Startups are learning the new tricks of the trade and turning in to ‘micro multinationals’ by moving cutting-edge product development to Indian Silicon Valley – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and beyond with their top managers and sales teams in the United States, but design products in India at one third of the cost. The new jargons of the trade now are – ‘right-shoring’, ‘any-shoring’ and ‘smart-sourcing’. Reuter has a detailed report : New Start-Up Breed: Born in the USA, Made in India

Some ‘Micro Mulinationals” mentioned in the article are Infinera, InSilica, CollabNet & NetScaler.