India’s dream to give a positive boost to education via electronic medium of Tablets seems on its way to fruition. Datawind, the company assigned with the duty of manufacturing 1 Lakh units of ultra-affordable Aakash II has just announced completion of delivery of the entire first batch. What does the final dispatched version have? Datawind has managed to include a lot of mainstream features within...

Datawind, the manufacturer entrusted with the responsibility of supplying the world’s lowest cost education-centric Aakash Tablets, is now positive of fulfilling Indian Government’s pending orders by this month end. Of the total 1 Lakh tablets ordered, Datawind delivered only 17,000. It had further claimed to have dispatched about 30,000 units. While the lot has still not been confirmed to be...

The ‘National IPv6 Depolyment Roadmap Version II,’ a document containing policy guidelines for transition towards IPv6 addresses has been released by the Union Minister for IT and Communications, Kapil Sibal. The document has been prepared by the NT Cell of the government’s Department of Telecom (DOT). Elaborating on the importance of Internet in today’s digital age, Sibal...

The ambitious ultra-low cost tablet, meant to revolutionalize education in a vast country like India, may be very short-lived. The Human Resource Department, once headed by the project’s founder Kapil Sibal has received reports about repeated poor performance & faulty hardware. Accordingly, the HRD, now led by Pallam Raju appears set to not only cancelling the order, but scrapping the entire...

To abolish different numbers for different emergency situations, the Government of India will soon provide a single number for all kinds of emergencies. The new emergency communication system will be based on the lines of that in countries like US, which follow the 911 code. At present, there are different numbers for different types of emergencies, like 100 for police, 101 for fire and so on. Releasing...

The government’s IT Ministry Division has officially launched the National Internet Registry (NIR) at Vigyan Bhawan yesterday. The NIR has been launched under the National Internet Exchange (NIXI) and will facilitate allocation of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in India. It will be called ‘Indian registry for internet names and numbers’ (IRINN) in India. The basic aim of this division...

The national free roaming service which Kapil Sibal promised Indians last year during the release of the National Telecom Policy has been postponed again. It was supposed to be implemented by March this year but will now be put into action in the month of October, according to reports. This free roaming thing has been a subject of much debate between the Government and cellular network operators as...

Kapil Sibal seems to have come a long way. From accusing kids of watching only porn online and making half-baked statements that ask internet users to be ‘accountable’ for their online behavior, Mr. Sibal has finally found it in him to talk about policy. Given that policy formulation and implementation is his job I am glad he has finally gotten around to it. The Minister for Communications and...

Kapil Sibal’s pet project, the education centric ultra-affordable tablet Aakash could land in people’s hands for a paltry sum of Rs. 1500 stated the Union Telecom and IT minister. Undergoing multiple changes in the design & hardware, the 7 Inch tablet will soon have its third iteration ready for mass-distribution. And the Government is keen to resell it at a final price of just Rs. 1500 (US$...

Supporting the cause for free and open internet, Twitter has recently released its second transparency report, detailing statistics and figures indicating the rise of government intervention in users and user data. This biannual report touches upon government requests for user information, requests for content removal and copyright notices. It also highlights how Twitter deals with these requests. According...