The Internet has become an essential part of life in today’s day and age. It is really difficult to imagine what our lives would have been like if the invention of the internet didn’t happen. But if one stops and thinks how much of our life is shared through the medium; or how much of the data shared can be traced back to the user by someone with malicious intents, a feeling of trepidation is natural. To ensure that the data shared over the internet is secure and private, many people use a VPN. But what is it and should everyone get one?
What is a VPN?Virtual Private Networks or VPNs for short is used to connect to another computer, usually called server [...]
The entire song and dance around Facebook’s Free Basics has finally come to an end as the company officially announced its end in India today.
“Free Basics is no longer available to people in India,” explicitly states the emailed statement.
The entire issue has attracted immense attention the last couple of weeks, both from media and the average user alike. While people ‘voiced their opinion’ on Facebook, rest of social media went crazy trying to attention to the fact that the campaign was in direct contradiction of net neutrality. It was finally on the 8th of February that TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) announced its final [...]Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has spelled doom for Facebook’s Free Basics campaign by banning it from India. So much for all the voiced opinions in the last couple of weeks.
Though this is big setback for Internet.org, Mark Zuckerberg refuses to let it douse his spirits. In a post he put up earlier today, he says,
“Our work with Internet.org around the world has already improved many people’s lives. More than 19 million people in 38 countries have been connected through our different programs. Connecting India is an important goal we won’t give up on, because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the [...]
The Telecom Regulatory Athority of India (TRAI), today has announced final guidelines on differential pricing. Ruling heavily in favour of Net Neutrality, TRAI has said, ” No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content”
The telecom sector regulator with this ruling has barred differential pricing of data products, which effectively will mean that controversial zero-rating ideas such as Facebook’s Free Basics won’t be allowed to kick-off in the country.
TRAI also looks increasingly likely to disallow subsidised data packages already on offer which allow services, such as Whatsapp or [...]
In what will come as welcome news to millions of netizens across the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) in its latest communication to Facebook, has in rather stern words intimated to the company that it does not approve of the manner in which Facebook is misrepresenting the results of its ‘support Free Basics’ campaign, and what it seems to be suggesting is a subtle attempt at nudging the voice of the people out of the decision-making equation.
This letter from the desk of TRAI’s joint advisor K.V Sebastian, pulls up Facebook for the way it has conducted itself through the campaign to save Free Basics from being shut down. TRAI has [...]
Last year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) raised the issue of net neutrality and, needless to say, it sparked off a major debate. This eventually led TRAI to invite public comments on the differential pricing of net services and the last date to submit counter-comments was 14th January.
Of the total 24 million applications submitted over TRAI’s paper on the differential pricing of data, a significant aspect of net neutrality, there were only 21 counter-comments submitted by individuals or organisations.
List of telecom operators that countered the proposal of keeping net services neutral of discriminatory pricing include Airtel, Vodafone, Idea [...]
Internet.org was announced globally in August, 2013 and it arrived in India in February 2015. The initiative aims to provide free internet services on the Reliance network in the states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Telangana. The users would have free data access to more than three dozen services.
The idea of thousands and millions being included within the ambit of the virtual world sounds brilliant and one everyone is up for. But before that, those endorsing this initiative need to understand all that it entails.
Internet.org:
Internet.org refers to a collaboration between Facebook and six other companies, namely, Samsung, [...]
Update: Within 12 hours of issuing it, the ban has been revoked. WhatsApp is working again in Brazil, for now.
Looks like it’s time to shove that smartphone aside for two days and look up from the phone screen if you’re in Brazil. The country has closed WhatsApp for 48 hours. Reasons for this have not been disclosed.
In the past, there has been much ado by Brazil’s telecommunication companies to curb interaction on WhatsApp. They claim that the free calling feature of the app is illegal and requires stricter regulations.In an attempt to distinguish itself from countries like the US, especially post the entire NSA spying scandal, Brazil had passed net [...]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in Delhi today and hosted a Townhall Q&A at the Indian Institute of Technology to a crowd of around 900 students. The visit was posted by Zuckerberg early this month on his Facebook page.
Zuckerberg had posted that he was eager to meet and hear directly from one of Facebook’s “most active and engaged communities.” India has the second largest user base of Facebook with over 130 million active users.
The Townhall Q&A started at 12 pm. Zuckerberg took the stage amidst a round of applause by the crowd. He expressed the importance of the Townhall Q&A in helping the social media site work better for every [...]
Mark Zuckerberg recently changed his Facebook display picture to one which has an over-lay of the Indian flag. This was done following his Town Hall meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Silicon Valley this week. Zuckerberg unequivocally expressed his support for the Digital India campaign of the country.
Prime Minister Modi soon followed league and changed his display picture on Facebook as well. Facebook also introduced a feature which allowed users everywhere to make the tri-colour part of their display pictures. Post this, people, as we know them to be, switched their profile pictures left and right and centre. All of a sudden, we woke up to find unanimous, [...]
We can’t say we’re surprised to hear that according to a report by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, India has fallen in ranking in broadband penetration. The nation has spiraled down to 131 in 2014 from 125 in 2013. A total of 189 countries were part of the survey conducted by the UN.
This news comes just days before the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit in New York and the meeting of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development on the 26th of this month.
There has been a 2.3 percent fall from a 15.3% in 2013 to a 13% in 2014 in broadband [...]
According to various news reports, Google could be lobbying against net neutrality in India, as it has been asking the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to support zero rating plans.
The zero rating plans allow people to use certain web services for free, this basically also allows telecom operators to selectively offer its users access to certain applications/websites without incurring any data charges. Therefore, any telecom company that signs up for this plan would have to pay the telecom provider a large sum of money in order to make their apps and services free for users.
Early this year, Airtel had decided to offer its own Airtel Zero plan [...]
Truecaller is one of the most popular apps used around the world, with 80 million users in India alone. The app, which is basically a user-generated phonebook, can identify calls made from unknown numbers and label it as spam. Now you can do the same thing with your messages. The company has released a companion app, Truemessenger, which performs the same function as Truecaller – filter texts from unknown numbers and spams.
According to the developers, Truemessenger will identify the person who has sent a text from an unknown number. Like Truecaller, it screens the messages and identifies the sender using the [...]
Facebook’s latest endeavour, Internet.org has received a lot of flak for violating the rules of net neutrality. Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s initiative many times, as he insists that the initiative’s sole purpose is to provide affordable Internet access to developing nations. It seems that Facebook has taken another step in this direction, as the company is working on lasers to improve Internet connectivity around the world.
Today, Zuckerberg has posted a few photos from the Connectivity Lab, Facebook’s ambitious project to connect the world to the internet through [...]
