Bank of India Attack – Arrogant Cybercrime Police and Web Host
You have probably read on Sunbeltblog by now that Bank Of India website has been infected to install Trojans. I am checking from my Linux terminal the website at 1:15 PM IST and the malicious code still exists. See Below. Please do not visit the BOI website, yet.
I called Chic Infotech the company maintaing the BOI website and their arrogant response was its working just fine. Alerted her about the malicious code in the iframe and she told she will look into it and hung up. They could have taken the site offline by viewing the code on the webserver.
Bangalore’s Cybercrime Police doesn’t deserve the credit it should. First, the numbers listed on their website don’t work, you have to prefix 2 to the numbers listed. The cop refused to register a complaint saying that only BoI can register it. So this is the shameful democracy we Indians live in, a crime is being committed and our Cybercrime Police doesn’t even want to look into it and prefer to ignore.
Update:
Nikhil Pahwa alerted that e-mails of Indian missions in US and China; NDA DRDO are all open to cyber criminals. DeRangedSecurity.Com has the list 
Analysis of TRAI Recommendations on Wireless Spectrum and Mergers-Acquisitions
TRAI came out with its recommendations on wireless spectrum allocation and mergers and acquisition in the Indian telecom market. My comments appear in Italics. TRAI suggested,
- No cap on the number of service providers operating in any circle [HFCL, Spice, By Cell, Parsvnath, etc may all get to enter the Indian Telecom space]
- Constitution of an expert level committee comprising of Scientists and Technologists from National scientific institutes who will provide recommendations on wireless spectruum [Excellent Move]
- Current spectrum allocation policy changed, so that spectrum allocation is not stalled. Any licensee wishing to get more than 10MHz of spectrum in any circle has to shed extra bucks. [W.R.T this Live Mint article, Vodafone-Hutch-Essar has reached the limit in Delhi, Kolkatta and Mumbai circles. Bharti Airtel in Mumbai and Delhi + Karnataka with latest allocation. BPL in Mumbai. So Vodafone-Hutch-Essar is the biggest loser. However, if you recall, GSM subscribers get twice the spectrum than that of CDMA - apply this rule for argument, then Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications is the biggest loser as it has exhausted 5Mhz limit in all the metro circles]
- Spectrum other than 800, 900 and 1800 bands will be auctioned in future to ensure efficient usage. [This will increase the Capital Expenditure of Telcos]
- Spectrum usage charges linked to the service providers revenue stands revised upwards or left unchanged.
On Mergers and Acquistions:
- No M&A to be allowed if the number of operators were to fall below 4 in any service area. [TRAI wants to encourage competition by having atleast 4 choices for the consumer]
- In case of M&A the marketshare of merged entity in the relevant service area shall not exceed 40% in terms of subscriber base or in terms of revenues. [ So put all the rumors of Reliance Communications buying out Aircell or Idea Cellular to rest. Rcom CDMA already has more than 20% in each circle and hence it is now impossible for RCom to takeover any other operator - TRAI doesn't state GSM or CDMA in specific, so Ambani can use that card and say the acquisition is in GSM where his market share is very less or Nil in most lucrative circles]
- Spectrum of merged entity will be the sum of individual entities and hence prescribed charges will be levied on the same [Government makes money here]
- One operator can hold upto 10% equity in another without any approval and anything beyond that and upto 20% needs TRAI’s permission.
- Wireless and Wirelines will be treated as different verticals for M&A. Wireless will include Fixed Wireless Phones.
These recommendations will increase competition, spectrum charges and capex of telcos. The bottomline impact on Bharti Airtel is expected to be ~ 1% on EPS. On M&A, TRAI makes it clear that it encourages competition. If larger players like Reliance want a slice of both GSM and CDMA, it should be forced to Build rather than Buy, paving way to create more jobs and vibrant local economy. Questions and Comments are welcome
Tags: Telecom, Wireless India, Mobile India, GSM CDMA
Parsvnath Developers plans Telecom diversification
Parsvnath Developers, a realty company announced that it plans to diversify into Telecom services and has applied for an Unified Access Services license in 22 telecom circles across the country.The licence for Unified Access Services would entail a 2G licence for GSM and a triple play of various services like IPTV, Wi-Max, internet, broadband and any other services relating to the signal.
Mr. Pradeep Jain, Chairman. Parsvnath Developer said,
This is a great opportunity for the Company to diversify into a new business area, which is continuously growing. Despite increasing number of subscribers, the penetration of mobile telephony in India is still low as compared to developed countries. As and when number portability is introduced, it would offer immense business opportunity to new entrants.
You can see how the stock jumped 4% immediately after the announcement. Parsvnath had recently diversified into SEZs apart from Residential and Commercial Real Estate play. Last November, the company had completed its IPO which led way for dozen other Realty IPOs. Parsvnath is likely to enter the telecom sector in association with a leading foreign Telco.
There is already a backlog for licenses from companies such as HFCL, Aircel, By Cell, Spice etc. Apart from the licensing backlog, there is a severe demand for spectrum which has stopped companies like Idea Cellular from operating in lucrative metro circles. The DoT and TRAI must really clean up the house, make the spectrum allocation transparent [Auction] and lay down severe quality of service norms. Telecom is a capital intensive business and I really doubt the ability of Parsvnath to build and operate a business of this scale. We really need to address the Broadband and Internet mess, Spectrum Mess and 3G issues on war footing to keep India as the fastest growing Telecom market in the world.
Tags: Telecom India, Broadband India, 3G India, GSM CDMA India
Yahoo Services Outage – FEATURE_ERROR_USER_ OPEN_NO_ACCESS
Their seems to be a problem with Yahoo! authentication services. I am unable to login to my Yahoo! mail / messenger and when I tried retrieving my password through the forgot password interface it throws this error FEATURE_ERROR_USER_OPEN_NO_ACCESS. A Google search on the same revealed many across the world are facing this issue and they are posting through alternate Yahoo! ids. Here is my screen shot.
I have been using Yahoo! mail since 1999 and haven’t had any serious issue till now, hopefully they will resolve it soon.
Tags: Yahoo, Yahoo Outage, Web, Authentication Failure
Facebook – e-Commerce Platform Up and Kicking
This May, the arrogant Facebook team announced the launch of Facebook platform / social OS. Two of the kick-ass apps that got ported to Facebook and need mention are eBay and LendingClub.
eBay’s application is all about selling / buying merchandise within one’s network. Their are no takers for this on FB, if he is a professional ebayer who makes his living out of it. But for others this maybe an interesting option to explore. LendingClub is a P2P lending network and is also ported to FaceBook. You essentially lend to friends in your network with assistance from LendingClub at interest rates which benefit both the borrower and the lender.
So this marks the beginning of a new Web Platform which is not solely dependent on advertising networks to make money. So if you have any innovative idea such as Facebook, you can jump to start your own social network with least investment. But make sure if it is targeted to at Indians, then their are already more than a dozen aspirants in this space.
Yahoo + Google embracing Indian Diversified Vernacluar
Having lost majority of the market in China to rival, Baidu, the big 3 are embracing the Indian internet market developing tools and content for the regional diversity. Yahoo! India has launched 7 regional language portals – Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu and Tamil. This is a step in the right direction considering the fact that only 9% of India’s newspapers are in English, 42% in Hindi and 49% in other local languages. Google labs has released Indic Transliteration and iGoogle Gadgets. I tried the transliteration tool but it is far from being matured and lacks the usual Google’s Cool and Wow factor. eBay’s Kijiji is trying to launch localized version in Hindi.
With increased penetration of internet in smaller towns and rural areas, demand for local language content will be far higher than it is today. In 2001, non metro internet userbase wast mere 27%, at the end of 2006, it had touched 39%. According to a survey by Juxt Consult, only 41% of the Indians want to surf the web in Engish today down from 59% a year ago.
Guruji, Indian regional language search engine is trying hard to index the content and reports woes such as availablity of numerous proprietary fonts and failure to adopt Unicode standard by Indian vernacilar websites. To address this shortcoming, proprietary technology is being developed to convert many of these non-Unicode fonts to Unicode fonts.
So if you have a consumer oriented or user generated content on your website, then its time to think of going vernacular, atleast in Hindi.
Some Inputs from India Internet Report, CLSA Asia Pacific Research.
Tags: Web India, Localization, Yahoo Google, Internet India
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