A person familiar with the matter said Google removed content from its search service, YouTube video site and Blogger after receiving an order to do so from Judge Mukesh Kumar of a New Delhi district court.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A member of India’s Parliament said in a public letter this week that the cellphone unit of Tata Group—a $67.4 billion conglomerate led by Mr. Tata—was among several companies given spectrum at discount prices. The spectrum allocation cost Indian taxpayers billions of dollars in lost potential revenue, according to a government auditing agency that has criticized the process as favoring a few companies.
The lawmaker, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of India’s upper house, said Tata Group was among several companies able to jump the queue to obtain spectrum when the selection process was expanded to include the wireless technology those companies use.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The U.S. government next year will begin to dole out billions of dollars to health-care providers who adopt electronic medical records. Doctors also face a federal mandate to upgrade software as the U.S. switches to a new system of insurance billing codes.

For Indian companies with experience in software outsourcing, the flurry of health-related tech spending in the U.S. is “like another Y2K opportunity,” says Pradep Nair, head of the health-care practice at New Delhi’s HCL Technologies Ltd., referring to the turn-of-the-millennium computer glitch that provided work for Indian tech firms.

But cashing in on what Forrester Research expects to be a nearly $50 billion U.S. health-information market in the next two years won’t be straightforward for Indian companies. While they have had success handling outsourced work for pharmaceutical companies and insurers, Indian companies have struggled to win business from U.S. hospitals, which will do the bulk of new health-tech spending.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Android lends functionality to smartphones, including touch-screen capability and a large marketplace of small software “apps.” It has gained market share quickly this year in developed countries such as the U.S., powering several devices that have sold briskly.
Now Google is setting its sights on the masses in developing countries like India, which has 670 million cellphone subscribers and has been adding about 18 million a month recently.

Most of the initial Google-powered phones in India from established handset makers such as Motorola Inc. (MOT) and HTC Corp. cost upward of $400, much too expensive in a market where 42 percent of the population of 1.2 billion people earns less than $1.25 a day.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

We’re pretty sure that was a slip. After all, the term “chop shop” refers to shady places of business where people dismantle stolen cars and sell off their parts. Surely he isn’t comparing the legal outsourcing of America’s jobs to the illegal selling of America’s brake pads and V-8 engines?

It is likely the senator was going for “body shop,” also a derogatory term, but one that describes firms who shuffle low-cost tech engineers around the globe.

Sen. Schumer’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment or clarification on his remarks.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The largest Indian tech firms, including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS.NS), Infosys Technologies Ltd. (INFY) and Wipro Ltd. (WIT), all reported strong financial results in recent weeks, benefiting from a global uptick in spending on technology services by businesses such as banks and insurance companies and renewed interest in outsourcing as a cost-cutting measure.

The turn of events marks a reversal from a year ago, when Indian firms were reeling from a steep drop in orders for software services. But the tech-services sector differs now from the Indian firms’ boom years of 2003 to 2007, and new hurdles have arisen.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

For years, India’s big tech firms positioned themselves as a cheap alternative to U.S. and European competitors for tasks such as software maintenance and database upgrades. They were content to take whatever work companies like Citigroup Inc. (C) and BT Group PLC parceled out to offshore specialists.

But the days of 30 percent annual revenue growth from such work are over, a casualty of the global economic downturn and increasing competition in the tech services industry world-wide. Now, Indian companies such as Infosys Technologies Ltd. (INFY) and Wipro Ltd. (WIT) are racing to broaden the services they offer and compete for higher-level work that usually goes to larger rivals including International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Accenture Ltd. (ACN).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The CDMA iPhone: Some publications have suggested that Verizon is discussing with Apple the possibility of making a version of the iPhone to run on the carrier’s existing CDMA network. USA Today reported this in a story earlier this week, and the New York Times (NYT) echoed it, even as it noted why this idea makes no sense. CDMA is essentially a U.S. technology used by Verizon and Sprint (S). The rest of the world operates on a standard called GSM. That’s partly why Apple (AAPL) chose to work with AT&T (T) (a GSM provider) in the first place.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Among the interesting findings:

• People use free apps an average of 20 times before getting bored and looking for something else.
• The average time they spend using/playing with the apps is 9.6 minutes.
• So-called “tailgate” ads, which are short flash videos or games users interact with before an app launches, are keeping people’s attention for about 22 seconds–a positive development in the fledgling mobile ad space.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

But if President Barack Obama is serious about wiring rural America with high-speed Web access, these efforts, like the central Vermont one we profiled today, will play a key role.

The reason: Commercial operators don’t want to lay cable and erect cell towers in the hinterland.

The $7.2 billion the economic stimulus package provides for broadband funding will give a needed boost to cities that are struggling to float bonds to investors to raise money. Communities that get federal help will have the “headroom to do a project that investors view as risky,” said Jim Baller, a Washington attorney and leading municipal broadband advocate.

Read the rest of this post

In an interview with the Journal’s Amol Sharma, MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist said the company will be building its New York City network–including the five boroughs as well as parts of New Jersey and upstate New York–throughout 2009. MetroPCS ultimately intends to connect that area with Boston and Philadelphia, where it has already begun offering cellphone coverage.

Read the rest of this post

More ubiquitous wireless, pretty please, Craig (or anyone listening)! Now.

Here’s a link to a great front-page Wall Street Journal article on his efforts by Amol Sharma, as well as video below.