Broadband - Voip

Broadband prices have gone down a lot in the last three to four years especially the residential connections have gone a lot cheaper as compared to three years ago. The first time I got my broadband connection I was paying 39 pounds for a 512kbps connection from BT which never really gave me speeds of more then 300-350kbps and now I am paying less then half the price and getting 24mbps speed from bethere isp. Compare this with the broadband prices in India for instance where salaries are considerably low as compared to UK and those guys over there pay much more then us lot in UK and still get speeds of like 256kbps with stupid data transfer limits.

Indian government has relaxed some rules in favor of voip service providers which has resulted into a steep fall in prices we pay for making a call into India from anywhere in the world. The telecoms regulatory authority is planning on making call termination charges at par with USA which will bring down the call charges to less then 1 cent per min which is at present more then 5 cents.

I remember the days when it used to cost more then 25 pence per min to call India which is about Rs20 per min or 50 cents American which was a bit too much to pay.. One would be better off taking a flight to Delhi instead of spending a few hours on the phone.

The demand for learning computer skills in India has risen, it has now become a must to know how t use computers. The majority of youngsters now work full time and part time in call centers and this is where the requirements are needed. Because the call centers works with computers they need people who have the skills to use a computer and have basic knowledge about it. This is something which computer institutes are happy about as it is bringing more and more students to them and in the long run making them profit.

Technology has progressed a lot in the last 100 years and so has transport, with commecrial planes flying at speeds in excess of 1000 kilometres per hour no corner of the earth is too far but now arises a need to cutting the journey times even shorter and hence the need for ways to cut the journey part all together and thats where video conferencing steps in.Be it Distance Learning or a high profile meeting of CEO’s of companies video conferencing is catching up but there still remains a hurdle and that is the quality of the video which is now solved by equipment from LifeSize.com which boasts of as much as 10 times better quality as compared to other equipment available in the market.LifeSize.com supplied equipment is capable of delivering high defenition video with a resolution of 1280X720 over a 1mbps connection which is excelent when compared to other equipments performance.

Dayanidhi maran has done a lot in the last one year to communications industry in India and has not left any stone unturned in a bid to get the nation connected with the world wide web in a big way.Its Maran’s party leadership who got worried due to Maran’s success as a cabinet minister which led to problems for him.India would have got free broadband access for every one by years 2009 but some bunch of idiots dont want this nation to progress.Well I will still take it positively and say alright let them be poor for ever.. I am from an alright doing family so its a smooth road ahead for me

Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. has announced that they are currently developing a test version of their guide for internet video. They aim to release this test version sometime next month.

This engine would allow web users to keep track of clips and full episodes of TV shows now being posted on the Web.

The final version of such a service is expected to be launched later this year in September. The company has no plans to include homemade videos in such a listing as they plan to concentrate on about 60 Web sites from major networks such as ABC and Fox and other video portals such as AOL and Google. They would list network and original programming produced by major media companies.

Richard Cusick, senior vice president of digital media at Gemstar-TV Guide spoke on this new initiative: “Everybody says, ‘Who’s going to be the TV Guide of online video?’ and we say, why shouldn’t it be us? We’re making a bet, but we think it’s a safe bet and consistent with our mission.”

They plan to make revenues from online advertising and licensing the engine to other companies. Rob Enderle, a technology analyst spoke on this development: “If they don’t want to become obsolete, they have to get into the search business. Today, TV Guide can be better. But fast-forward two years from now, and you wonder if TV Guide has the resources to compete with Google long term.”

Imagine students using computer simulations to design a bridge or an airplane wing using high-performance computing resources on the other side of the state. Without high-speed access to the Internet, these new learning tools and practices are beyond the reach of most schools.

At the request of the N.C. Board of Education and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University is leading the implementation of a $6 million state-funded pilot project to provide high-speed network connectivity to all K-12 schools in North Carolina.

 

State government, educators and businesses are working to build an education network supporting K-12 schools by extending and expanding a statewide, high-speed network backbone developed over the past 20 years to support North Carolina’s public universities. Friday Institute Director of Technology Phil Emer is leading the statewide implementation team to develop pilot projects to demonstrate the opportunities.

SOUTH Australia’s universities, TAFE colleges and major research institutes will be linked through the nation’s first broadband internet network, enabling vast amounts of data to be transferred.

The capital of India is all set for the all new wimax technology and soon I will be able to stay connected no matter where I go in Delhi as wimax is to be rolled out in a few month by a lot of companies, well atleast three of them are confirmed to roll our commercial wimax offerings.

The trials conducted by bsnl and some other companies have been very succesfull so we hope it will be a lot better then the adsl technology.Its expected to be as fast as 70mbps.

Broadand is virtually non existent in India as there is no isp who is reliable enough and can provide a 24/7 on internet connection with good speeds.I am surprised how people put up with their isp’s when you are bound to get disconnected a few times every day and some times disconnected for days with no initiative from the isp’s end.

Sify broadband is a class of its own with their idiotic cable operators who don’t even have the basic knowledge of networking.My local sify cable operator turns his equipment off when its raining for some reason of his own.I am not sure what he thinks will happen if he doesn’t turn his server off.

BSNL has taken another step forward by starting Broadband services using Wimax in 10 cities and towns which include a few rural areas in Haryana aswell.

Bsnl is planning to roll out wimax broadband services in over 5000 villages across the country and furthur strenghten thier position of being the largest isp in India.With the wimax solving the last mile connectivity problem in remote areas broadband is destined to gorw in India and so is the internet penetration.

Some private operators has been lobbying to get bsnl to unbundel thier last mile connectivity but bsnl has denied any plans for doing so in the near future so private operators will have to find thier own way into a customers house.

ITV is going to launch broadband television by  end of March 2007 following an investment of £20 million in the project.

The new service, which will transmit ITV1 live and make the last 30-days programmes available to view online, has attracted heavy investment despite firm convictions that few people will want to watch Television online.

Rather than representing a key media channel in itself, the new broadband TV service is instead being developed as a means to improve ITV’s web presence, the relative absence of which has attracted lots of criticism for the commercial broadcaster.

Annelies van den Belt, managing director of broadband at ITV and formerly director of new media at The Daily Telegraph, was quoted by the Times saying: ‘Until now ITV has just been exploring new media by providing content for mobile phones.

Now it is coming up with a product that sits in  heart of the business and should become part of the commissioning process.

ITV’s online traffic data continues to lag behind the BBC, which attracted 16.4 million visitors in November. This compared with ITV’s 4.3 million visitors during the same time.

ITV.com is expected to focus primarily on mainstream entertainment programmes such as The X-Factor and Coronation Street, rather than programming with more niche appeal such as children’s material.

India’s Bsnl broadband has some similar plans too

However, the commercial broadcaster’s assertion that consumers will be reluctant to pay for most programmes means that most will be available on a streamed basis, although Champions League football matches will be subject to a fee.

Information and technology minister Maran has announced that all pakages of MTNL broadband will be upgraded to 2mbps speed in January which sounds great and is tempting enough for me to switch from sify broadband to MTNL broadband but as of yet they have’nt announced the price structure as to weather the existing prices will previl or would there be a new price structure in view of the increased speeds.

Hopefully if Mr Maran shows some mercy on Delhi netizens he would make it unlimited and keep the same prices and if that happens I would permanently move from UK to Delhi as the only reason I live in UK is high speed internet connection which doesnt go down unannounced. I would really be greatful to Maran if the upload speed is any thing near 512kbps and that will be the end to the misrey I have been going through for the last 4 years.

Online degrees and cources have become a huge scam on the world wide web these days and its hard to find legitmate institutions like the Capella University which was founded in 1993 and after going through the cources they offer online it sounds pretty good and unlike th other no name come and go universities they have been there for more then a decade and that does tells something about the credibility of the institution.

They offer a vast variety of courses ranging from business, information technology, education, human services, and psychology, and bachelor’s degree programs in business and information technology.

After doing a little research even I am tempted to enroll for one of thier courses online and fulfill my long unfulfilled desire of completing my bachelor’s degree in information technology.

Microprocessor Company Intel is likely to launch yet another version of their four-core processor in January.

This would be yet another attempt to stay ahead of the competition (AMD) as they aim to capture the market for next-generation processor family.

Intel is expected to launch the Core 2 Quad chip for high-end desktop PCs during the CES trade show in Las Vegas in January.

This new processor would join the already launched quad-core Xeon 5300 for servers and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers.

The company is likely to target this processor at a broader segment of mainstream users. Thought the chip would be a suitable candidate for processor-intensive, highly threaded programs.

Almost every blog on blogger has been washed away. I have checked atleast 40-50 blogs and they all return an error 500 message. I opened my own blogger account and went into templets and there is a nice little message which says blogger is down and please visit wordpress.org as it is a very good blog hosting site. Looks like some hacker just thought lets screw google and see what happens or may be some one just did it for fun dont know or am i just being stupid and wordpress and blogger are friends and as blogger is down wordpress is being offered as an option by blogger guys?

I have been blogging since 4-5 months now on blogger and i have a lot of stuff which i did a lot of hard work on and i am just hoping that it is backed up and will be restored soon or else i am not returning to blogger again ever in my life
If you have any info on this please share it with us all by replying to this post.

More companies are turning to videoconferencing now, as a way to cut down on rising travel costs. Video over IP is an inexpensive way for small to mid-sized companies to take advantage of videoconferencing, however the low barriers to entry mean many are jumping into virtual meetings without being fully prepared.

In the wake of rising gas prices and broadband’s explosive growth, companies that used to gather far flung employees together for important face-to-face conferences now turn to videoconferencing over IP. Substantial cost savings in both transmission and equipment mean small to mid-sized businesses and schools are also taking advantage of video over IP communication. Voip.com, one of the leading resources for voip and IP communication, offers these pointers for successful video over IP.

One of the first questions people have is, “What equipment do I need?” Since a virtual videoconference is transmitted over the internet, like voip internet phone calls, a high-speed broadband connection of at least 300-400 kbps is needed. Monitors can be as small as the screen on a laptop, but organizers should keep in mind they must also be large enough for everyone on your end of the meeting to see. 20″-35″ is a common choice for small to mid-sized groups. Software, like Microsoft’s NetMeeting is frequently used to encode the video signal for transmission and decode it when it reaches its destination, instead of more expensive hardware options. Although more costly cameras are available, inexpensive internet cameras may be used with generally positive results. Speakers and microphones are the last piece of the audio-visual equipment puzzle and come as either stand-alone sets or part of an integrated headset. If headsets are not used, some type of microphone, whether voice-activated or manual, has to be provided.

Once the equipment is in place, be sure to perform a dry run of the system before your critical videoconference. You can shake the bugs out of your system and ensure that the broadcasting environment is configured for successful videoconferencing. Some often overlooked failure points are inadequate lighting, poorly arranged seating, and background noise pollution.

After you’ve finished setting the stage for your next videoconference, it might be a good idea to do hold a practice session, allowing participants to let go of any performance anxiety they may have and get comfortable with being on-camera. This also gives you an opportunity to check camera angles and audio quality.

Video conferencing over IP is a valuable asset in any company’s communication toolkit. Effective presentations save time, money, and increase productivity. For more information about video over IP, check out voip.com’s recent piece on videoconference etiquette.

Ok, by now it’s more or less an open secret that Microsoft is going to shift away from its current model and go straight after the iPod with a portable media player of its own, but we’ve landed some exclusive details about the new player courtesy of a trusted insider who is party to some of the discussions Microsoft is having with potential content partners.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

Microsoft’s new portable audio and video player will have a screen that’s “bigger than that of the iPod video” (which isn’t really saying much) and built-in WiFi so you can not only download content directly to the player (sort of like with the MusicGremlin), but actually participate in an Xbox Live-like social network that will help you connect with other people with similar taste and interests. Whether that’s going to be the Live Anywhere service they introduced at E3 we don’t yet know. But we do know the tag line they’re pitching for the device combined with this new network is “Connected Entertainment.”

But it gets better. To attract current iPod users Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you’ve already bought from the iTunes Music Store. They’ll actually scan iTunes for purchased tracks and then automatically add those to your account. Microsoft will still have to pay the rights-holders for the songs, but they believe it’ll be worth it to acquire converts to their new player.

Right now the new player is schedule to launch in November, but our source also tells us that Microsoft isn’t stopping with a WiFi-enabled PMP, they’re actually going to launch an MVNO next year using all Windows Mobile-powered HTC handsets. These handsets will let users connect to the same social network you’ll be able to access over WiFi using the portable media player.

Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL are the four major players in the online services market. Each of these is working hard on improving upon their services to lure in more and more customers as they aim to increase revenues from online advertisement market.

The latest survey results are out and there is no prize of guessing the winner in the search engine market. Google owns the search department as it accounts for nearly half the searches conducted online in the USA.

However, Yahoo! dominates when it comes to other segments of interest from the online arena, in services such as Mail, News and Finance. Yahoo Mail accounted for up to 42.4 percent of email visits. MSN Hotmail was second with 22.9 percent share. Google Gmail might be very popular amongst the geeks on the internet but it just accounts for 2.54 percent share.

Yahoo! also dominated the news market, as it has been the most popular news service getting more clicks than Weather Channel, MSNBC, and CNN. Google News just came at the fifth position.

Entertainment industry giants Disney have said that the web users have watched ABC television shows available online about 3 million times since the initiative was started a couple of weeks ago.

This is just a proof of the fact that video content online has a huge potential for the movie and television studios in the United States. They just have to find a good way to monetize this initiative.

ABC began their experiment by offering two-month Internet trial earlier this month. This allowed the web users to watch four of its programs along with commercials. These shows include two of their current blockbusters “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost”.

Disney CEO Bob Iger added on the success of this concept: “We’re going to experiment with different business models.” The company is already selling ad-free versions of their television shows on the popular Apple iTunes digital content store.