India and Pakistan: No rivalry please, we’re IT buddies
February 11, 2010
Source: ET Bureau

MUMBAI: Cricket may no longer be as sporting as it once was when it comes to India-Pakistan ties but software is still going strong. Barring 2008, when Mumbai was the victim of a terror attack, the apex software industry body of Pakistan, Pasha (Pakistan Software Houses Association), has been a regular at the annual Nasscom Leadership meet since the past five years. In 2005, the country’s top exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) nearly formed a joint venture with a Pakistan software firm but eventually, dropped the plan. But that has not deterred Jehan Ara, president, Pasha, from coming here for dialogue and network at what she says is now increasingly a global conference.

“It has been useful to keep the discussion going. We should keep the relationship (between Nasscom and Pasha),” said Ms Ara, about coming to India for the Nasscom event even if there are no immediate business benefits on the horizon. Diplomatic relations between Indian and Pakistan have touched a new low in February with IPL’s snubbing of Pakistani cricketers. For Ms Ara and the delegation of four accompanying her, it is still an opportunity to network and listen to experts and also get updated about the latest in the IT world.

Nasscom and Pasha have been on friendly terms since 2005 when Ms Ara first attended the Nasscom Leadership Summit. It was also the year when TCS almost formed a joint venture with another Pakistani company, Techlogix. But the JV eventually did not materialise because of the inability to transfer funds between banks in the two countries, said Ms Ara.

“There was a perception that the Pakistani software industry would be threatened by the entry of Indian companies but that was never the case. The companies on both sides were always very excited,” she said, recommending business and politics should be kept separate. There were many Pakistani business groups with interests in textile and other areas, which were considering starting BPO operations and were keen on learning from India, she added.

Like culture, business also seems to have the potential to overcome political barriers. Systems, the largest outsourcing firm in Pakistan employing 1,200 people, has about 120 employees in Bangalore though through its US arm.

There are others, such as IT firm, Netsol Technologies, that are actively looking to set up an office in Bangalore. “I don’t know if they already have. Companies are always afraid of publicising such information because of the adverse reactions it may invite,” she said. The Pakistan software industry is only a fraction of the revenue of a large Indian software firm at around $2.5 billion. Its population at around 160 million is also a small fraction of India’s billion plus people and Ms Ara said the Pakistan software industry learnt early that they could not become a software services hub like India because of this.

But Ms Ara, who finally obtained a single entry visa after getting clearances from the ministry of external affairs, ministry of home affairs and Maharashtra government, she said.

There are many similarities between the two countries and learnings for the Pakistan software industry. Like India, Pakistan also suffers from infrastructure bottlenecks and like India, it has a booming mobile subscriber base. Of its 160 million population, 100 million have a mobile phone. “You learn to be patient and not get disheartened. You have to keep at it,” said Ms Ara.

Google to build ultra-fast broadband networks
February 11, 2010
Source: ET AGENCIES

WASHINGTON: Google Inc plans to build a handful of experimental, ultra-fast broadband networks around the US to connect consumers to the Internet and ensure that tomorrow's systems can keep up with online video and other advanced applications that the search company will want to deliver.

The Google project, announced Wednesday, is also intended to provide a platform for outside developers to create and try out all sorts of cutting-edge applications that will require far more bandwidth than today's networks offer.

The company said its testbed fiber-optic networks will deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second to as many as 500,000 Americans. That would be roughly 50 to 300 times faster than the DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most US homes to the Internet today, at speeds typically ranging from 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second.

Google envisions systems that will enable consumers to download a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes; allow rural health clinics to send 3-D medical images over the Internet; and let students collaborate with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture.

``Our goal is to trial new technologies and figure out what kinds of applications you can send over these big pipes,'' said Richard Whitt, Google's Washington-based counsel for telecommunications and media. ``There may be next-generation applications that are being held back right now.''

Whitt said Google isn't looking to compete head-to-head with the phone and cable TV companies that dominate the US broadband business. Rather, he said, Google hopes its project will help create advanced broadband applications and network technology and identify ways to bring fiber-optic connections to more Americans at a lower cost.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski praised the project, saying that ``big broadband creates big opportunities.'' Next month, the FCC is set to unveil its recommendations on how to bring affordable high-speed Internet access to all Americans.

In comments that Google filed with the FCC about the national broadband plan, Google suggested that the government create the type of testbed network that it now hopes to build itself.

Google's announcement Wednesday also came as welcome news to public interest groups that have warned that broadband connections in the US are far slower and more expensive than those available in many countries in Europe and Asia. Ultra-fast networks now available in the US, such as the university-backed Internet2 project, aren't available to consumers, as Google's systems would be.

Sascha D. Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, said the Google project underscores just how slow the major US phone and cable companies have been in building advanced networks.

In a statement, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a trade group, said the cable TV industry has invested $161 billion over the past 13 years to build a nationwide broadband infrastructure that is available to 92 percent of US homes.

And Verizon Communications Inc. said the Google network will mark ``another new paragraph in this exciting story'' of broadband growth. Verizon has been building a super-fast fiber-optic network, called FiOS, that offers speeds of up to 50 megabits per second and has run a field test experimenting with speeds of up to 10 gigabits, 10 times faster than what Google is proposing.

Google will seek input from communities that might be interested in getting one of its test networks. The company said it is too soon to say how much the networks will cost to build, but stressed that it does not intend to apply for any of the $7.2 billion in funding for broadband included in last year's economic stimulus bill.

Google said it is prepared to sell access directly to consumers at prices that are competitive with existing broadband services, but would consider letting Internet service providers or local governments sell their own services over the Google network.

Turf war: Google's Buzz to compete with Facebook and Twitter
February 11, 2010
SOURCE: New York Times

Google and Facebook are on a collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services.

On Tuesday, Google introduced a new service called Google Buzz, a way for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. The service will compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are capturing an increasing percentage of the time people spend online.

The links shared on those social networks are also sending a growing amount of traffic to sites across the Web, potentially weakening Google’s position as the prime navigation tool on the Internet.

Separately, AOL said on Wednesday that users will be able to integrate Facebook chat with its popular AIM instant messaging program, which is among the most popular in the US. Facebook is expected to soon announce its adoption of the Jabber technical standard, which will enable other popular instant messaging services also to integrate with Facebook.

Buzz is Google’s boldest attempt to build a social network that can compete with Facebook and Twitter. The service is built into Gmail, which already has 176 million users, according to comScore, a market research company. And Buzz comes with a built-in circle of friends, a group that is automatically selected by Google based on the people that a user communicates with most frequently in Gmail and on Google’s chat service.

Like other social services, Buzz allows users to post status updates that include text; photos from services like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr; videos from YouTube; and messages from Twitter. Analysts say many of its features mimic those of Facebook.

“It is a direct challenge to Facebook, in particular,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a social media analyst with the Altimeter Group.

Still, Buzz faces a struggle against Facebook, which recently announced, on the occasion of its sixth birthday, that it had 400 million users. Buzz also risks further overwhelming people who are struggling with Web services that generate ever-increasing amounts of information.

But Google executives said that, on the contrary, Buzz would help tackle the problem of information overload, as Google would apply its algorithms to help people find the information most relevant to them. “The stream of messages has become a torrent,” Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product development at Google, said in an interview. “We think this has become a Google-scale problem.”

Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, said that by offering social communications, which have primarily been used for entertainment purposes, Buzz would bridge the gap between work and leisure. “Bridging those two worlds is very powerful,” Mr. Brin said at a press conference.

Google has also woven Buzz into mobile phones, through a mobile Web site and a Google mapping application. Users will be able to see updates that friends have posted from particular spots.

Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have also allowed their members to use e-mail services to tap into updates from social networks.

Facebook reacted cautiously to the new service. “We haven’t yet had the opportunity to use Google Buzz,” Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesman, said in an e-mail message. “Generally, we’re supportive of technologies that help make the Web more social and the world more open, and are interested to see how Google Buzz progresses over time.”

At the same time, Facebook is staging its own incursion into the messaging business, where Google is more strongly positioned. Facebook plans to announce that it has embraced Jabber, a technical specification for real-time chats, allowing other makers of instant-messaging software to combine Facebook’s increasingly popular chat service with their own.

AOL plans to immediately incorporate Facebook chat into its popular AIM service, used by 17 million people a month. AIM users will be able to log into Facebook from AIM and see which Facebook friends are online and available to chat.

“We don’t aspire to be just a Web site where people connect and share with friends,” said Ethan Beard, director of the Facebook developer network and a former Google executive. “We want to be the underlying technology people use to connect with friends wherever they are on the Web.”