Telecom Commission approves 100% FDI in telecom sector

Government of India is carrying out a massive drive to allow as much FDI as possible to get over the economic crisis caused by increasing Current Account Deficit. Consequently there is a talk of increasing the FDI caps in some industries.The Telecom Commission , the highest decision making body of Department of Telecom(DoT), on 02 July approved 100% foreign  direct investment in the telecom sector. Once ratified, the new policy will allow foreign telecom operators to buy out existing Indian partners, as they will no longer need to have a minority shareholder in the country.

Apple said to near Time Warner cable deal for TV programming

San Francisco: Apple Inc. is nearing a deal with Time Warner Cable Inc. to give subscribers of the cable television service access to channels via Apple TV, people with knowledge of the negotiations told Bloomberg. 

“The companies plan to announce an agreement within a few months,” said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. “The iPhone maker is also hiring Pete Distad from online-video service Hulu LLC, where he was senior vice-president in charge of marketing and distribution, to help Apple executives in negotiations with media and cable companies,” two people with familiar with the matter said.

Intel cools on TV?

Brian Krzanich, a 30 year company veteran and new CEO at Intel, is cautious about its foray into TV. Under previous CEO Paul Otellini, Intel embarked on a plan to launch an Internet television service with live and on-demand content, entering a hotly competitive race outside its core chip business.

While Intel has said it expects to launch its service later this year, so far it has not yet finalised programming deals with major content companies.

Russian rocket setback for Europe

A Russian rocket carrying 3 GPS-type navigation satellites failed just moments after launch. The satellites were for the Russian Glonass global positioning scheme.

However, the failure will have an immediate knock-on effect for the many European satellite operators which were queuing up to use the Proton rocket plus its Briz-M upper stage. There will have to be a delay to determine precisely what went wrong at the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan.

Alcatel-Lucent, Telekom Austria demonstrate 1 Gbps over copper in G.fast trial

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and A1, a Telekom Austria Group subsidiary, held a trial of the emerging G.fast vectoring standard where they delivered 1 Gbps-plus speeds over short distances on existing copper network connections to homes and businesses.

Combining a number of technologies, including pair-bonding, vectoring and phantom mode, G.fast can theoretically provide upstream and downstream capacity of up to 1 Gbps over distances of up to 500 meters on copper. As a hybrid copper/fiber network implementation, a service provider would bring fiber to a distribution point that's located close to the customer premise.

Comcast launches Home Pass auto-login for TV Everywhere content

Nearly one year after Comcast teamed with Adobe to let subscribers watch authenticated programming from the London Summer Olympics without using a login, the MSO said its entire TV Everywhere lineup can be accessed automatically through a new Home Pass feature.

Comcast's automatic in-home authentication product is based on the Adobe Pass authentication platform, and only works when subscribers use its Xfinity.com/TV portal from Web browsers on devices within their own homes.

Government extends date for Electronics and IT goods registration for goods under testing in Labs

In partial modification of the Notification DietY No.8(14)/ 2006-IPHW Vol IV dated 20.03.2013, the government has notified on 02nd July that Manufacturing Units which have submitted the products for testing to the BIS recognized labs and were required to comply to the” Electronics and IT Goods(Requirement of Compulsory Registration) Order, 2012”, before July 3 2013, but test reports are not available, be granted an extension without any fee for 3 months wef 04.07.2013.