UnwireIndia

Leaders in delivering innovative telecom solutions for mobile operators and MVNOs worldwide, XIUS-bcgi, the telecom division of Megasoft Limited has announced the release of its eCogNito solution. This end-to-end transaction platform will be offered as a pilot to Bharti Airtel. The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding.

India’s leading Telecom Company, Bharti Airtel boasts of more than 50 million users. Their ever increasing customer base will improve with eCognNito’s ease of use solutions. The service will enhance accessibility, penetration and adoptions of Bharti Airtel’s m-commerce offerings along with the company’s rural initiatives.
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Tata Communications reported Tuesday that Telsima will provide infrastructure for the WiMax network it’s building to serve more than 110 cities in India. Tata said the deployment will be the largest commercial WiMax network in the world.

Tata said deployment of the wide area, high-speed wireless network is already underway with more than 5,000 enterprise and retail customers in 10 cities using the network.

Telsima, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., has been chosen to deploy 3,000 base stations. “The Indian broadband market, which today serves only 3.1 million customers in a nation with a population of over 1.2 billion, is forecast to grow significantly,” said Shankar Prasad, president of Tata Communications’ Retail Business unit, in a statement.
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The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has embarked on an ambitious public-private partnership project to provide wireless connectivity for the entire twin township.

While the initial plan was to make the 13-km stretch of the Pune-Mumbai highway passing through the township as a wi-fi zone, the municipal corporation changed the scope of work and has now decided to cover the entire area of 171 sq.km.

The target set for completion of the project is 2012, but the corporation hopes to start Internet services in phases from the current year itself. “There has been a good response from companies willing to provide such services… The period for submission of bids has been extended till next month,” Neelkanth Poman, in-charge of the computers department of the municipal corporation, told TOI. Read the rest of this entry »

iPass Inc. announced that iPass customers traveling to or working in India can now benefit from the addition of hundreds of Tata Indicom Wi-Fi hotspots into the iPass Global Broadband Roaming Network. The Tata Indicom brand is offered by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) part of the TATA Group, one of India’s largest and most respected business conglomerates.

With the integration of these hotspots, iPass customers are expected to have reliable high-speed connectivity options across India’s largest 20 cities including major business hubs such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. VSNL’s hotspot locations include major domestic and international airports, leading premium hotels, educational institutions, sports stadiums, hospitals, restaurant and coffee shop chains. Key locations include Taj Hotels Group, Le Méridien, Café Coffee Day, Barista, Manipal University, and Wockhard as well as more innovative locations such as retail stores and railway stations. Read the rest of this entry »

Buffalo Inc. has announced in India the Buffalo Wi-Fi Gamers (WCA-G), a gaming access point that lets users connect to the Internet without a PC and provides a hassle-free platform for online and wireless gaming experiences.

The gaming-centric device supports Nintendo Wii, DS, DS Lite, Sony PSP and PlayStation 3 consoles, and allows users to easily access online games with the push of a button. Buffalo’s AirStation One-Touch Secure System (AOSS) provides an instant connection to the Internet, stores security settings and enables devices to link without a bunch of wires, while making the security tight with minimum user setup. Read the rest of this entry »

The Karnataka government has reportedly given the go-ahead to all the five bidding consortia to roll out of “Unwire Bangalore” in a phased manner. Three of the bidders have started deploying the required infrastructure and services will be rolled out in 2007.

Conceptualised on a build, operate and own model, the “Unwire Bangalore” project aims at creating an infrastructure network that will provide wireless Internet connection to the entire city using world interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) and Wi-Fi technologies. The project is expected to cover 679 Read the rest of this entry »

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has laid out a road map for wireless broadband (WiMax) roll out in the country, which is at variance with the recommendations of the telecom regulator, Trai, but conforms to the frequency preference of the World WiMax Forum.

It has proposed that WiMax launch be initially restricted to only three players who will operate this service in the 2.5 Ghz frequency band. DoT has also proposed that one of the three slots be reserved for state-owned BSNL/MTNL, which would imply that private telecom operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have to compete for just two slots. The proposal now awaits final clearance by telecom minister A Raja.

The DoT committee studying telecom regulator Trai’s recommendations on spectrum allocation and pricing for wireless broadband rollout, in its report, has said the base price for auction for WiMax spectrum be set at Read the rest of this entry »

In order to provide Internet and Cybercafe facilities, RailTel is preparing to install advanced Wi-Fi systems at 500 Railway stations across the country.

“Though we are preparing to install Wi-Fi System at 500 stations across the country, initially we will be doing so at 50 stations,” K K Bajpayee, Managing Director of the RailTel told reporters here. He said one such system would be first provided at Bangalore Railway station, which would be operational within the next two-to-three months followed by Jaipur. Bajpayee said “Airlink”, a Bangalore based company, has signed an agreement with US based Rontog to provide technical know-how for the system.

Once in operation, the system would provide Read the rest of this entry »

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, a part of the Tata group, has launched WiMax services for enterprise customers in Bangalore. The company plans to extend its WiMax network to about 120 cities across India for enterprise customers and in five cities for retail customers by the end of March 2008.

“We are proud to be the first company to launch WiMax-based services in India. This will help VSNL offer very high quality Read the rest of this entry »

Next time you are at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in Mumbai, four easy steps will help you surf the internet free of cost on your Wi-Fi enabled laptop or your smart phone.

Recently, Mumbai International Airport Private (MIAL) - the joint venture between the GVK-SA consortium and Airports Authority of India that is modernising CSIA - went live with an enterprise-class Wi-Fi service throughout the domestic (IA and IB) and international (2A and 2C) terminals, becoming the first international airport in India to launch free wireless network.

At Mumbai, with free access on all Wi-Fi enabled laptops now, CSIA is in the league of other international gateways like Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok Airport, Las Vegas’s McCarran Airport and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Mobile service provider Bharti Airtel is powering the service, with wall-to-wall accessibility throughout the Read the rest of this entry »