Money order via mobile launching in Andhra soon

The service allows a person to deposit money in a post office and receiver will get a SMS which can be shown at local post office to withdraw money.

Department of Post and BSNL have come together to launch mobile money order service in Andhra Pradesh. India Post plans to start this service at nearly 16,000 post offices across the state by the end of June this year.
The service will allow remitter (person sending money) to deposit cash in a nearby post office; the payee (the person receiving money) will have to go to designated post office in his/her area and claim the money after disclosing the personal code sent to him/her via the SMS.

However, the service will be limited to BSNL users only, which is not a really good idea, however it is at least a beginning. According to Times of India report, minimum money order would have to be Rs 1,000. A tariff of Rs 40 would be charged for remittances up to Rs 1,500. Similarly, the remitter would have to pay Rs 70 for deposits from Rs 1,500 to Rs 5,000 and Rs 100 for Rs 5,001 to Rs 10,000. The postal department and BSNL would share the revenue equally.
The idea of the service is very old and the first pilot project was done in June 2011 only from 10 post offices each in Punjab and Bihar.

Aircel to offer free beauty tips for a month

To mark International women's day, Aircel will offer free beauty tips to its existing and new women subscribers for a month.

Aircel has introduced a special offer exclusively for women in Delhi to celebrate 'International Women's Day'. As part of this offer, Aircel's existing and new women customers will be offered Beauty Tips, free of cost for one month. The offer will be available from 8th to 14th March at Aircel stores and service outlets.

Anil Gupta, regional manager, north, Aircel, said, "Aircel is delighted to mark 'International Women's Day', which is a celebration of respect, appreciation, gratitude, compassion and love towards women. We intend to make this day more special for women and have introduced a special offer exclusively for our women customers, who can avail attractive value added service free of cost."
This offer is part of Aircel's recently launched brand campaign 'Joy of Little Extra'. Under this new brand campaign, Aircel will be launching products and services that will offer a little extra in value for its subscribers.

RIL to offer Samsung 4G smartphones for Rs 5,500

RIL is also expected to offer 4G tablets for as low as Rs 3,500.

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL), which has pan India license for 4G network, has joined hands with Samsung to bring LTE devices for as low as Rs 5,500 report Times Of India.
"The entry-level smartphones are likely to be sold with data packages starting at as low as Rs 100," report further added.
RIL is expected to launch the test services in Delhi and Mumbai by middle of this year. However, official launch with services in more circles with be launched on 28th December (Dhirubhai Ambani's birth anniversary).

What is well known is RIL will bulk purchase devices to reduce cost, offer low rates for data services (starting with Rs 100 plans), and also subsidise the devices and offer EMI's to help people buy and use these on their network. Reliance Industries through Reliance Infotel wants to be a volume player making the data services as widely used service.
Earlier, it was said that RIL is looking at tablets, but recently government has allowed it offer voice services also on the network on payment of Rs 1650 crore and that means now they will be looking at smartphones as the primary device that they will focus on.
According to an earlier report, Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Infotel , which is the only company with pan India BWA (4G/Broadband wireless access) spectrum, will offer LTE tablets for as low as Rs 3,500 too .
Way back in December 2010, 'The Mobile Indian' had reported about the cheap LTE tablets that Reliance planning to launch. As reported by us earlier, there would be bundled plans accompanied by these low cost subsidised tablets for as low as Rs 10 for 1 GB of data.
Now with voice services permitted on 4G network, the entire operator business will change and recent spurt in tariffs may be reversed with competition heating up like never before.
Earlier there was intense competition thanks to many new operators entering the market in 2008 but in January last year, the Supreme Court of India cancelled the licenses of these new players and most of them left the market and few like Telenor, Videocon and MTS remain limited to few circles. This meant less competition to fend resulting in hike in tariffs.
But Mukesh Ambani's entry to the scene is expected to change the scenario. RIL is backed by 20 MHz of spectrum with permission to offer high speed data (100 Mbps) and voice service for which it paid less than half the amount as compared to 3G operators who got only 5MHz spectrum. For instance, RIL paid Rs 13,000 crore for 20 MHz spectrum in all 22 circles while for just 5 MHz Bharti Airtel paid Rs 12,295 crore for spectrum in just 13 circles.
Which means that RIL will be able to offer data services at low cost without the worry of a congested network and will also because the investment is lower and can also offer voice services which contributes to about 85 percent of the revenue of existing operators. And with devices available at lower price and zero percent interest loans it won't be surprising if RIL manages to cannibalise the market.

MTS launches special plans on Women's day

Women buying a new MTS prepaid connection will get free pepper spray.

As part of its Women's Day celebration, MTS is offering pepper spray for free with each new connection to females. It has also announced a new offer, called MTS Women MPowered, with which they will get special calling and SMS rates, calling at negative balance, safety tips and a lot more. This plan can be availed with first recharge of Rs 102 and existing subscribers can enjoy this plan by recharging with Rs 76.

MTS has put in place a special vigilance team to provide free self-defense classes to its women customers. Company has also set up a special service to make its women customers aware about safety tips and their rights. The initiative has been launched in Delhi-NCR and will be subsequently rolled out in other circles of MTS.
Leonid Musatov, chief marketing and sales officer, MTS India said, "With the incidents of crime on the rise especially against women; the challenge is to come up with innovations to create a safer environment. This Women's Day, we are doing our bit by launching MTS Women MPowered. It includes a range of special initiatives aimed at empowering our women customers. Starting with Delhi, the plan is to roll out this initiative in other circles over the next few months."
To enroll for these self defence classes and also to get women rights and safety tips, woman customers can register by dialing 678 from their MTS mobile phones.

Airtel announces free roaming for Delhi prepaid subscribers

The Airtel Delhi prepaid users will get 30 days of free incoming calls while roaming in certain circles.

Bharti Airtel has announced free roaming for its prepaid users in Delhi. Under the new scheme, Airtel's prepaid users in Delhi can enjoy free incoming calls in as many as five states - Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand and West Bengal (except Kolkata).
The Airtel Delhi prepaid users will get 30 days of free incoming calls while roaming in those circles. Earlier, they have to shell out Rs 1 for incoming calls, Rs 1 for local outgoing calls and Rs 1.5 for STD when on roaming.

The government of India has been mulling to abolish roaming charges for a long time. Earlier, roaming charges were to be abolished from March but has now been postponed to October this year. Operators have been though vehemently opposing the same citing loss of revenues. Sometime back Aircel has announced a new pack called 'One Nation, One Rate'. The plan offers one rate for voice, SMS and data in home circle and on roaming on Aircel network which virtually means free roaming.
More operators are thus expected to revise their tariff rates or may also announce such alternative free roaming schemes soon, following Aircel and Airtel's recent announcements.

Facebook to provide free messaging to mobile users

Both Airtel and Reliance Communication users would be able to get these benefits.

Facebook has tied up with select telecom service providers in India to offer free or heavily discounted data access to its users. With this Facebook users, on Airtel and RCom network, would be able to get the benefits of this tie up while using the Facebook Messenger application.
This offer would be valid for Android and iOS devices along with other devices as well which are optimised for access of Facebook chat.

Messaging on Facebook lets people connect with friends and contacts on the go, regardless of what device they are using. Facebook messaging and chat can be accessed from more than 6,000 mobile phones via Facebook Messenger, Facebook for iOS and Android, Facebook for Every Phone, m.facebook.com and across other devices with Facebook integration.
Service providers have themselves been trying to promote Facebook usage. For instance, Airtel allowed its prepaid users to access Facebook through the official application for up to 500 MB data free of cost while Reliance is offering unlimited Facebook access for Rs 16 per month.

Wireless standards and what they mean for you

 

GSM, CDMA, LTE, Bluetooth, WiFi, DLNA, and the list goes on and on. But what do they mean to you? How do they affect your digital world? Here is a short overview.

We live in a wireless or increasingly wireless world, though there's not one wireless technology that rules the world, and there are so many of them that understanding what they mean; what works with what; and which is the best of them is bit of a task. So here is our attempt to simplify it for you.

GSM
This is the most used wireless technology for mobile communication. In India most service providers like Airtel, Aircel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone use this technology to deliver their service. It's a second generation (2G) technology and offers voice as well as data services but data on this platform is slow and delivers maximum 54 Kbps speed.
Tata Docomo and Reliance too offer services using this technology, though they also use CDMA, which is a rival technology. MTS in India uses only CDMA.
CDMA
CDMA is a rival to GSM technology and the phones that support CDMA can't support GSM with the same SIM slot. However, in case you have dual SIM with a slot for CDMA then you can use it for accessing CDMA. CDMA is considered to be a better technology but late entry to the market and lack of open market devices mean that this technology will never become very successful in India and most other markets. It is, however, used on a wider scale in the USA and some other markets. CDMA offers better data connectivity even with its second-generation (2G) technology with speeds of up to 128 Kbps and even higher by clubbing two channels at the operator end. Most dongles sold in India are still based on this technology.
Edge
Edge is categorised as the 2.75G of GSM technology and delivers faster data speeds of up to 256 Kbps. Most 2G GSM phones and all 3G GSM phones support this standard.
GPRS
GPRS is categorised as a 2G data connection and is available in all 2G phones that support data connectivity. You will normally get 54 Kbps speeds and this is the slowest data service offered in the country currently.
EVDO
EVDO is the 3G service offered by CDMA service providers. The speeds on offer are up to 3.1 Mbps and though speeds higher than that are possible by implementing Rev A and B in India, 3.1 Mbps is the speed offered by all three CDMA operators.
HSPA+">HSPA/HSPA+
HSPA+ is the 3.5G technology of GSM, and offers very high speeds of up to 21 Mbps in India, though even faster is possible with this technology. Most service providers in India offer 7.2 Mbps speeds, which is possible with HSPA.
WCDMA
This is a 3G technology, and most operators offer HSPA technology, though some low cost handsets only support WCDMA, which is not of much use since speeds are up to 384 Kbps only. Therefore, if a 3G phone only supports WCDMA technology then you should not expect much in terms of speed. However, WCDMA and HSPA are compatible with each other, so you will get 3G access.
LTE
LTE is the fourth generation mobile communication technology popularly referred to as 4G. The speeds on offer with this technology go up to 150 Mbps, though most deployments including Airtel's network in India support up to 100 Mbps only. There are two branches of LTE, the more popular one is FD LTE, which is being used in USA and Europe (Videocon will setup a network using this version in India). In India TD LTE is being deployed, which is also the case in China. Unfortunately, these two versions are not compatible with each other as of now. So in case you see an LTE handset launched in Europe and you happen to get it here in India, don't expect it to work on LTE, though it will connect with 3G networks here.
WiFi
WiFi is a wireless technology for a small area; almost all of us know that. However, there are various standards in that as well, popularly referred to as b, g and n, written as 802.11 b/g/n. So, in case you are wondering what it is that is written here. It simply refers to the version that a particular device supports. b/g/n supports the latest version and will support speeds of up to 150 Mbps, although b/g only supports 54 Mbps and if its just b then you will only get support for 11 Mbps. These standards also affect the range with a maximum range of 230 meters (outdoors) with n; and only 66 meters with b. Newer standards are under development and will support speeds up to 1 Gbps and will have a much wider range. There are permutations and combinations within the existing WiFi standards that deliver more speed and range, although it is the IT departments of companies which deal with that. You can only look at routers and other devices that support dual channel, or dual antennas in case you need better speed and coverage at home. If your device supports the n standard it will support every standard before that, which means in case your router supports only g, and phone supports n, both can work together.
WiFi Direct
This is a new technology, which is WiFi-only but there are changes in the way setup is done. Two devices with WiFI Direct can be paired easily to enable file sharing with speeds of up to 250 Mbps just like Bluetooth (which is slower). While such a thing is possible with the non WiFi Direct version of WiFi as well, the setup is difficult.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is meant to connect nearby devices like two phones for file sharing. It's also used for streaming videos or voice. In the case of headsets this tech is also used to connect control devices like keyboards and mouse. Like other wireless technology this one too has versions and fortunately all are backwards compatible, which means the latest version works with older technology too. Bluetooth 4.0 is the latest. It reduces power requirement and has a very easy setup. It also supports the same speeds as Bluetooth 3.0, although Bluetooth 4.0 based small devices mostly will not support older Bluetooth versions, but phones and larger devices will have no such issue.
Bluetooth 4.0 is not being used in many phones and tablets so far. Bluetooth 3.0 is very common in new devices and supports speeds of up to 26 Mbps. Bluetooth 2.1, which is by far most common in low budget devices, supports up to 2 Mbps. Version 1 is even slower and is not available in most devices now. A2DP is another Bluetooth terminology, which means support for stereo sound in headsets.
DLNA
DLNA is another standard that is not exactly a wireless technology but ensures that two devices with WiFi or even in a wired mode can talk to each other and are able to share content and even stream it. This is one standard you should look at as increasingly there are several devices in the home used for entertainment like on devices such as TVs, tablets, phones and laptops and easy content sharing amongst them is so very important.
NFC
Near field communication basically allows easy connectivity between two devices when they are brought near each other. No setup is required. However, it is a slow speed connection and is useful in sharing limited information like the identity of a device or product and is generally used in conjunction with WiFi and Bluetooth, which gets activated by NFC tags and can be used for file transfer. The use case of NFC includes contactless payment, and access and sharing of content. The technology has a lot of potential and is being used in all the high end phones these days, even though usage of this technology is still evolving.