After announcing plans to abolish roaming charges for mobile users when traveling within India from next year, the telecom department is likely to ask operators to implement this consumer-friendly move from March. Mobile phone companies have opposed the government's plans to do away with roaming charges, which accounts for about 10% of their revenues, and have warned they would be forced to increase tariffs to offset this loss. By March, the department also wants to expand the mobile number portability (MNP) provision and allow consumers to retain their numbers when they move to a new city or any location in the country without having to pay roaming charges. At present, MNP, the facility that allows customers to retain their number while switching operators, is restricted to a circle. For instance, a Delhi customer can switch to any operator within the metro, as this is considered to be the 'base circle' for that number. The Cellular Operators Association of India, the body representing mobile phone companies on the GSM platform such as Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, has criticised the government's plans to abolish roaming charges, and has maintained that the DoT must first sort out a slew of policy-related issues, including migration to the unified licence, before asking telcos to do away with this charge. Visit as on Omnifuzz or FastFind
Micromax Informatics Limited has expanded its tablet portfolio in the country with the addition of Micromax Funbook InfinityP275. Micromax Funbook Infinity sports a 7-inch display and runs on Google's Android 4.0.4 operating system. The tablet is powered by a 1.2 GHz Cortex A8 processor and is packed with a 4000mAh battery that provides a browsing time of more than 6 hours on a single charge. Funbook Infinity is equipped with a 2MP rear camera and a 0.3MP front-facing camera. The device also features dual speakers for quality sound output. The tablet supports videos in wide range of formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, RMVB, MP4, MOV, VOB, DAT, FLV and 3GP. The new Funbook comes with a USB port to enable users to share and transfer data, images, videos anywhere anytime. Funbook Infinity has Adobe Flashplayer pre-installed. Similar to its predecessors, Funbook Infinity comes with connectivity options such as 3G dongle and Wi-Fi. Funbook Infinity is priced at Rs 6,699. 
Airtel's is likely to launch it in Kolkata circle in the first half of April. Citing unnamed sources, Telecom Talk reports that Airtel may launch LTE-TDD based wireless broadband services in the first half of April, 2012 in Kolkata. It further reports that ZTE will assist Airtel as the equipment partner, while Indus Towers will be providing towers for the 4G services. The site also points out that Airtel may install small cells at different places of the city to provide better coverage. Also, the roll-out of LTE will only be available in select pockets of the city. It may be recalled that Airtel had won spectrum for high-speed wireless broadband service (Broadband Wireless Access spectrum) in four circles namely Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka . Airtel was allocated 20 MHz of BWA spectrum in 2.3 GHz frequency band. In the same auction, Reliance Infotel had won a pan-India BWA spectrum and was given a 20MHz band. RIL has been previously rumoured to launch its 4G services with an ultra low-cost tablet. Meanwhile, Airtel, which has the largest subscribers base in India, is likely to launch its 4G services with new dongles and tablets. 
The news that Android phones are the dominant force in the phone market today comes as no surprise, and this is only going to get better, as Android smartphones are going to dominate the phone market in India, China and Africa. It's a different situation in the U.S. as those service providers who didn't tie up with Apple for their iPhone, chose Android as the alternative. The success of Android in the American market is by the high-end, expensive smartphones. The low-end, more affordable devices are more popular in emerging economies, such as ours. In-Stat claims that by 2015, Android will take up close to 80 percent of the phone market in these countries. Most of these Android devices would be ones running on the slightly older builds - 2.2, 2.3, and so on. They would have a single-core 600MHz processor and the typical price would be $150 or lower - roughly Rs.7,500 or lower. The 'gray market' would be a popular place to buy these phones and manufacturers, such as Huawei, Micromax, Motorola, Samsung, Spice and ZTE are likely to take centrestage. It's not just going to be Android - companies such as Nokia and Samsung will compete for this price bracket as well. The Samsung Bada operating system and Nokia's upcoming Meltemi operating system should replace the outdated Symbian S40 operating system. Phone manufacturers look to gain by selling hardware, whereas Google hopes to gain by making money off advertising. Microsoft also hopes to reduce prices of their Windows Phone platform to try and approach a similar price that can woo prospective customers. Some 340 million low-cost Android smartphones are expected to ship in 2015. These large numbers will force the Android platform as a whole to be scattered even more. The new ICS platform requires more processing power and memory requirements, thus making it difficult to port back to older devices, which means the older 2.2 (FroYo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) Android operating systems will be king for some more time. 
US added more charges against file-sharing website Megaupload and its executives, and also accused them of taking copyrighted content from sites such as YouTube for its own service, according to a new indictment released on Friday. The founder, Kim Dotcom, and six others employed by the site were charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud. They were originally charged with five counts of conspiracy and copyright infringement. Dotcom and four of his co-workers have been arrested and are awaiting extradition proceedings in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Two suspects remain at large. They have been charged in a federal court in Virginia with a making millions of dollars from peddling copyrighted materials, including popular television shows, movies and music to millions of users around the world. The superseding indictment said the Megaupload site had 66.6 million registered users as of January 2012 and just under 10 percent had ever uploaded a single file, suggesting most people used the site only to download infringed material, according to the Justice Department. The indictment also accused the group of taking copyrighted material from sites such as Google's YouTube video service for use on Megaupload websites. The Megaupload service has been shut down. 
