2013 Audio Songs
All songs →Trailers
Related News
More news →Would love to work on 'Gangs of Wasseypur 3': G.V. Prakash
Composer-turned-actor G.V. Prakash Kumar, who is basking in the success of his latest acting venture "Trisha Illana Nayanthara", says he'd would love to work on the third installment in the "Gangs of Wasseypur" franchise. "I just read about it last week. Nobody from the team has approached me yet, but I'd love to work on the film, if given an opportunity," Prakash told. Prakash composed the background score of the first two parts. "I hope I get an opportunity to work again," said Prakash, who is currently extremely busy as an actor. With three acting assignments in the offing, Prakash says he still takes out time to compose. "Music has definitely not taken a backseat. As a composer, I still have some interesting projects to work on, including Vijay's upcoming film. I'm trying to strike a perfect balance between acting and composing," he said.
3G spectrum auction kicks off, first round completed
The first-ever auction of the radio frequency spectrum for third generation (3G) telephony that would facilitate high-speed mobile services in India began Friday. As many as nine telecom companies — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel, Etisalat, S Tel and Videocon Telecommunications — are participating in the online auction process which will be held from 9 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. on all days, except Sundays and national holidays. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Tata Teleservices, Idea Cellular and Aircel are bidding for all-India spectrum, while Videocon, S Tel and Etisalat are bidding only for selective circles. It is a simultaneous auction of 22 service areas over a secure website on the Internet. The auction has multiple rounds. During the e-auction, the telecom operators will have to match the base price, set at Rs.3,500 crore for one 3G slot by the government. At each round, the price would be hiked from anywhere between 10-1 percent over the previous round’s price depending on the demand. Till 1.00 p.m., the first round of e-auction had been completed, according to sources. The auction will end when demand is equal to the number of slots available in each service area. According to a senior DoT official, it is difficult to set a time-frame for the 3G bidding. “It may take even a month,” the official said. The bid data will be made public after the auction is completed. The winning firms will have to deposit the money within 10 days after the auction. The successful bidders would be allowed to offer 3G services on a commercial basis from Sep 1. According to the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) issued in February, of the 22 telecom circles, five states – Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir – will have four private players for the auction. Other circles, including the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, will have three private players. The number of slots up for grab exclude those allotted to state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, which were allotted licences last year and have since started offering 3G services in their operating circles. But they will have to match the price paid by the highest bidder in their zones. The 3G telecom services will allow faster connectivity than what is available now and enable applications such as internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange. For broadband services, the auction will begin two days after the process concludes for 3G spectrum. As many as 11 companies — Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Augere Mauritius Limited, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Reliance WiMax, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar — will bid for broadband wireless access (BWA) services. The government has set Rs.1,750 crore as the base price for a BWA slot. The Centre hopes to garner Rs.45,000 crore from these auctions.
Better 3G services: the wait could be longer
The promise of high-end phone services by mobile firms through the much-hyped third generation (3G) telecom technology seems to have hit a roadblock as customers complain of frequent call drops and inconsistent internet speeds. Experts say it could take between six and nine months for the service to stabilise. Anuj Kumar, a Delhi-based banker, preferred switching back to the 2G network after he got exasperated by deficient service and inconsistent network coverage. “Problems of call drops increased once I switched to 3G network. The voice quality also became very poor. I was left with no option but to switch back to the basic network. In my line of job uninterrupted calls are a must,” Kumar said. Pratibha Srivastava, a sales manager with a leading private bank, had similar grievance. “The connectivity on the 3G network is very, very poor, especially when a person is on the move. While the network disconnects frequently, the voice quality is also not good at all,” said Srivastava. Among the nine-million odd people who are estimated to have opted for 3G services in the country, there are many others like Kumar and Srivastava who are facing similar problems with their services across the country. The private telecom operators who shelled out billions for buying spectrum claim that every new technology needed some time for maturing and becoming consistent. According to them it was a matter of time for consumers to experience the promised quality of 3G. But Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman J.S. Sarma does not agree with the claims of operators. “It is high time customers start getting quality services for the money they are paying. You cannot go on saying that the problems are caused due to initial phase launch for so long. Such excuses can be accepted for a week or so,” Sarma said. “We also need to look into what kind of investments these people are making,” Sarma said and added that the telecom watchdog was looking into the matter and would come out with a quality check very soon. Mahesh Uppal, a telecom analyst and director of consultancy ComFirst India, maintains the networks are having problems because they were moving customers from 2G to 3G. “Even I am having problems with the 3G network. I feel that this is because the networks are in a transition phase. Therefore some hiccups are probably expected. These companies are moving into 3G in an incremental way,” Uppal said. On the other hand the telecom operators say that every new technology takes time to find its feet and so it is with 3G. “You have to realise integrating new technology with an older one takes time — 3G is like going back to square one. Operators almost have to build an entire network,” said Rajan Matthews, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). “The operators will take almost 6-9 months to straighten out things.” Though the telecom watchdog does not have a record on the specific number of customers who have switched from 2G to 3G so far, some telecom operators have revealed their data individually. While the dominant player Airtel currently has over two million 3G subscribers, Idea Cellular has one million across the country. On the whole, there are 811 million mobile phone subscribers in the country. Jaideep Ghosh, director, KPMG advisory services, too, agrees with operators. Since the technology was new to India and companies were still in the implementation phase, some technical glitches were bound to come up, he said. “Some operators launched it six months back and some are still in the process across all the circles. So it will be too early to a conclude that the services are good or bad,” Ghosh said. “We should wait till all operators launch full-fledged services.” A few operators also blame scarcity of spectrum to be a hitch for the service providers not being able to perform efficiently. “The larger problem is not 2G or 3G but spectrum allocation. If you do not have enough spectrum, how would you be able to provide better services?” queried a senior official with a leading telecom operator. Tata DoCoMo was the first private player to launch the 3G services in the country — in November 2010. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular are among the other operators who have launched their 3G services across the country. Third generation telephony services are supposed to allow faster connectivity with some new applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.
Telecom firms ask government not to stop 3G phone services
Telecom operators Tuesday asked the government not to stop the roll-out of third generation (3G) phone services, saying they will soon come up with a method to intercept the calls for security purposes. “We are working with the government and have asked them not to stop the roll-out of 3G,” said Rajan S. Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). According to Mathews, he expects new technology within three-four months which would allow the government legal wiretaps to address security concerns. “We will work with the government and in the next three-four months we will come up with technology that allows legal interception in these kind of activities,” Mathews said. According to reports, some companies were asked to provide a compliance report on security aspects of 3G services to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Recently Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices had launched their 3G services, while Bharti Airtel said it will introduce its service by the year-end. 3G services offer features such as video-calling, mobile TV, video streaming and applications access at super fast internet connections on a wide variety of both mobile phone and personal computing devices.
Aircel targets 2G client base for 3G service
Mobile telephony provider Aircel, which plans to roll out its 3G services across 13 circles by March, expects a sizeable chunk of its existing client base to opt for the new service, a top company official said. Launching the service here Tuesday, Chief Operating Officer Gurdeep Singh told reporters: “The company is targeting the youth segment for its new service. The aim is to bring high speed internet and video calls within the common man’s reach.” Aircel – a 74:26 joint venture between Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Apollo Hospitals group – said it would cumulatively invest Rs.45,000 crore to beef up its presence across the 13 circles in the country. Speaking about the prospects for the company’s 3G service, Singh hoped nearly 35 percent of its 2G – voice calls – subscribers to migrate to the 3G service that offers video calls and other add-ons. Aircel’s subscriber base crossed 50 million last year. The company won the 3G spectrum in 13 cricles for around Rs.6,499 crore.
China’s G’Five to launch 3G tablets at Rs.10,000 by June-end
Chinese mobile handset maker G’Five Mobiles Tuesday said it will launch its range of third generation (3G) enabled Android and Windows based tablet computing device in India for less than Rs.10,000 by June-end. “G’Five plans to launch its range of tablet computing devices in Indian market by the end of this business quarter which is end of Jun, 2011. Our business philosophy is to make technology affordable to the common people,” Arshit Pathak, managing director of Kingtech Electronics India Private Ltd, a group company of G’Five International, said. “Both the Android and Windows-based tablet computing devices shall be launched in India. The two android models shall be introduced in sizes of 7 inches and 10 inches. The Windows model shall be 10 inches in size. These shall be WiFi and 3G powered and the price range will be below Rs.10,000, shattering the price barrier once again,” he added. Today, the company has presence in 45,000 retail outlets across the country along with over 500 direct service centres across the country. “G’Five has ambitious plans for launching other consumer electronic products in 2011 as well including tablet computing devices, net books, laptops, music boxes, digital photo frames etc,” the company said in a statement. It is also seeking more channel partners across the country including tier II and tier III cities part from tying up with retail operators especially large format retail who have chain of stores across the country. In the recent International Data Corporation (IDC) report – IDC’s India Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker, 3Q, 2010, the company was ranked as the second largest selling mobile phone brand in India afer Nokia, replacing Samsung at the second spot. PC maker Apple recently launched Apple iPad 2 with wi-fi at a starting range of Rs.29,500 for 16 GB model while a wi-fi and 3G enabled one for Rs.36,900 for 16 GB model.