Tata Docomo, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices, started rolling out 3G early last month and is the first private operator in the country to do so.
The circles in which it offers 3G services include Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh-Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra.
Here is a look at the 3G services that Tata Docomo currently offers:
Mobile TV – It is live TV on mobile screen that can be recorded and paused. Video from here can also be posted to social networks, and it’s possible to browse the program guide and set reminders.
Let’s Play – A portal for online and downloadable, single and multiplayer games. It’s like a social network for gamers so users can share their scores with their friends.
Catch Up– One interface for accessing multiple email accounts, social networks and instant messengers.
Video Calling – This service allows subscribers to do video conferencing while making voice calls.
Video SMS and mail – Allows users to add 30 second videos to text SMSs, and send video emails.
The picture or video SMS is delivered instantly, unlike traditional MMS messages; while video mail is like voice messaging, but with video instead of voice.
On Demand Services – This service lets users watch and download videos on the phone along with news, weather and mobile premiers and movies made exclusively for mobiles. It also has music for download.
Market – an App store that contains thousands of applications across categories such as music, books, movies, travel and business.
Docomics – a comic viewer application that has popular comics such as Spiderman, X-Men, Japanese Manga etc.
Prayer – Live darshan videos from famous shrines. One can also watch live aarti and sing along with karaoke aartis.
Fortune – This lets subscribers get live advice from astrologers on the basis of sun sign.
Tata Docomo 3G users can also watch 10 hours of live cricket during the India-New Zealand one-day series free of cost. To continue viewing matches after the ten free hours are up, or on December 11 (whichever is earlier), users will have to be subscribe to a weekly plan for Rs 30.
This offer can be availed on any one-day game on December 1, 4, 7 and 10. It is invalid after December 10.
Tata Docomo 3G Life
Navteq launches MobileNavigator for India
Navteq and Navigon have extended their services into India by incorporating the Navteq map of India into Navigon’s MobileNavigator India App for the iPhone.
Navteq is a leading global provider of maps, traffic and location data, and enables navigation, location-based services and mobile advertising. Navigon, on the other hand, is a leading provider of premium navigation technology.
The MobileNavigator India app is a service that gives turn-by-turn directions. Also, since the map it uses is stored in the device, after MobileNavigator is downloaded it needs only a GPS satellite signal; there are no monthly fees or hidden data Roaming charges attached to this service. Users need to buy the app from Apple’s App Store for $70, or about Rs 3,200 and then get future updates free of charge.
MobileNavigator comes with a host of functionality including the ability to remember the driver’s habits to provide customised route recommendations and up to two route alternatives clearly displayed within the map along with the estimated time of arrival (ETA), distance, and driving times for each. The map can also be integrated with social networks, and it is possible to get live weather updates, best available parking options, as well as route planning and location sharing services.
Angry Birds Seasons launched for iOS and Android
Angry Birds is one of the most popular games on the Apple App Store and Android Market. Rovio
Mobile Ltd, the developer and publisher of the game, today announced a special edition of the game named Angry Birds Seasons.
Rovio announced, “Today, we bring you Angry Birds Seasons, a special edition spin-off of Angry Birds.”.
The company further explained, “Season’s Greedings consists of 25 daily surprises for fans of Angry Birds to enjoy while counting down the days until Christmas”.
Interestingly, Android users also get to try the 45 levels of Halloween special edition. These levels have been packaged as a separate episode called Trick or Treat.
Earlier the Halloween special edition was available only for iOS.
Game Review: Angry Birds Seasons
If you like playing games on your mobile, chances are you have already played the popular Angry Birds game.
Angry Birds Seasons, the latest edition of the game, is similar. However, it has been tweaked a bit keeping in mind the upcoming Christmas season.
The changes are limited to the graphics and the background while the game play remains the same.
In case you have missed out on the game up till now, we bring you a synopsis of what you need to do.
Each level has a certain number of evil piggies which you need to destroy. These pigs are usually placed in a structure at which you need to slingshot birds. There are several breeds of birds with different abilities which includes blowing itself up, dropping exploding egg etc.
You can either crash birds into them or cause structure of the building to crash on to them. You have limited number of birds per level to experiment your moves with.
The twist that Rovio has added is in the way the game is delivered. Even when you clear a Christmas level, next level, although unlocked now, will not be available to you for play. When you do try to open it, you will be greeted by a timer message displaying time remaining for the level to be available for play. In all there are 25 levels and it seems Rovio wants you to enjoy a level a day till Christmas.
The graphics of the game are very refreshing. You have a snow filled winter landscapes with birds wearing Santa caps. The game is available on both Apple App store as well as the Android Market.
Motorola launches Charm in India
Motorola has announced the launch of its Charm smartphone in India. The device is powered by Android 2.1 and has a 2.8 inch TFT touchscreen along with a Qwerty keypad.
“Motorola strives to excite the Indian consumer with three way navigation capability – touch screen, Qwerty keyboard and the backtrack, which make messaging, browsing and social networking fast and easy,” said Faisal Siddiqui, country head of India, Motorola Mobility.
The backtrack navigation pad, located directly behind the home screen on the smartphone’s back is similar to a laptop touch panel and enables an unobstructed view of the screen by allowing the device to be controlled from the back of the phone.
Other features of the Motorola Charm include a 3 Megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, FM radio etc.
The device is bundled with an Aircel SIM card. It comes with a 2 GB microSD card at a best buy price of nearly Rs 14,000.
Aircel pre paid users also get up to 9 GB worth of downloads over 3 months, along with 150 Aircel to Aircel local call minutes. To activate the offer, they are required to SMS ‘SMART PI’ to 54343 from their Aircel number.
On the other hand, Aircel post paid users can get up to 1 GB of data usage free every month for six months. Post paid users need to visit the Aircel store for activation.
Tata Docomo expects MNP to boost its 3G subscriber base
Tata Docomo, which had launched 3G services in nine circles earlier this month, says that the consumer response has been positive. The circles where the operator offers 3G services include Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh-Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Lloyd Mathias, president of the corporate monitoring group of TTSL, said, “We have received good response on 3G from our subscribers. As of now, the video SMS service is doing good. Also, people are watching Live Aarti on mobiles, as this service is not very popular on TV.”
Since Tata Docomo is the only private operator offering 3G services in Haryana, and since mobile number portability or MNP has been implemented there, Mathias believes that the company will witness an influx of subscribers who will migrate from other operators’ networks in search of 3G services.
Tata Docomo’s HSPA+ 3G network, set up with the assistance of NTT Docomo, supports high-speed internet access with speeds of up to 21.1 Mbps. The network also supports high definition voice for superior quality voice calls.
The operator had invested around $500 million (Rs 2,277 crore) on 3G services, and is offering services such as video SMS, video streaming, mobile TV, ultra high speed data transfers, route finder, Live Aarti etc.
Nokia’s treat for Indian Michael Jackson fans
Michael Jackson fans in India have something to cheer about. They can download his song Hold My Hand which also features Akon free of cost from the Nokia Ovi Music Store. The Store is accessible to internet enabled Nokia devices and the song will be available till November 30.
This is the first Michael Jackson song to be released in the past nine years. Hold My Hand, a duet with R&B singer Akon, was recorded in 2007.
A handwritten note by Michael Jackson indicates that he desired this song to be the first single in his subsequent project, but the song leaked out, still unfinished in 2008. Akon recently completed the production of Hold My Hand and that version of the song is now available on Ovi Music Store.
While it can be downloaded exclusively from Ovi Store, Hold My Hand will also be released by Sony Music as part of an album called Michael.
The managing director of Sony Music India, Shridhar Subramaniam, said, “Through this offer, fans of Michael can legitimately download his music from the Ovi store in India well in advance of the CD release.”
Sony Music, in conjunction with the Estate of Michael Jackson, will release the much anticipated new album On December 14.
MNP is finally here
Mobile number portability (MNP) has long been awaited in India. Its implementation was postponed several times due to technical and bureaucratic glitches.
The service was originally scheduled for launch in December 2009, but the launch date was postponed to March 31 this year. Then it was again postponed to June 30, and thereafter to October 30.
The government clarified that it had taken the decision to delay MNP to October after evaluating whether access providers and long distance service providers were ready to implement the service, and in consideration of the complexity and enormity of testing involved before MNP is implemented.
MNP makes it possible for people to switch operators while maintaining their mobile number. For fear of losing their number, people often continued subscribing to a certain operator’s services despite being dissatisfied with service.
MNP finally!
The delay was caused by a variety of factors including policies and stakeholder preparation. Finally, though, MNP will now be available in Haryana starting today.
The countrywide launch of MNP will start from Rohtak district in Haryana. The service will be implemented across the country in a phased manner.
A subscriber who wants his mobile number ported (change service provider) will have to send an SMS to 1900 to obtain a ‘unique Porting code’. After getting the porting code, he will have to submit a duly filled porting form along with a customer acquisition form and a proof of identity to the service provider he wishes to shift. There will be a porting charge of Rs 19.
Upon completing the formalities, the customer will get the new operator’s SIM card, and the new operator will inform him of when he can start using it, which should be within seven working days.
The subscriber can then start using his new SIM at the specified time.
A mobile number porting request can be withdrawn within 24 hours of having been made.
Conditions
For now, mobile number portability is limited to the Haryana circle.
Also, subscribers can switch their service provider only after 90 days either from the day when their existing number was activated, or from the time when they last ported their mobile number.
Before porting, all dues will have to be cleared if it is a post paid number. If it is a pre paid connection, any Talk time that remains in it will lapse.
Intex unveils India’s first projector phone
A mobile phone with built in projector, called V Show, has been launched by Intex Technologies, a domestic mobile handset company.
V Show costs Rs 12,000 and will be available starting December 1 in Intex and other multi brand retail outlets.
Ramesh A Vaswani, executive vice chairman of Intex Technologies, said, “I am confident that Intex V Show can change the way people watch movies, videos, picture galleries and even read e books on their mobile phones.”
He added, “We expect to sell about 75,000 units of this handset by March 2011 and aim to capture five to ten per cent of the Indian handset market by the end of the current financial year.”
Sharing the company’s strategy, Vinayak Kumar Lal, the general manager of marketing at Intex Technologies, said, “The launch of V Show is one more attempt to consciously demonstrate that our mobiles can do more than just voice and message.”
The handset enables the user to project movies and still images which are either stored in the phone’s memory, or are streamed from the internet.
However, the mobile phone can’t project images from a computer’s memory. This means that content that is in a computer’s memory will have to first be transferred to the phone’s memory before it can be projected. The phone’s screen remains active even while it is projecting images, and it has a clarity modifier to adjust the quality of projected images.
This handset is capable of projecting a 61 inch image from a maximum distance of 12 feet with 10 lumens of brightness and at QWVGA resolution. The contrast ratio that the projector offers is fine if the room in which projections are being made is dark; images projected in a well lit room aren’t very clear. The phone comes bundled with a tripod so that it doesn’t have to be held up while it is being used as a projector.
The phone has two cameras – a high Resolution camera at the back for taking good quality pictures and a low resolution camera on the front for video conferencing. V Show has a touchscreen and uses two SIM cards. It has two Memory card slots using which its Internal Memory of 64 MB can be expanded to 16 GB. The phone uses a battery that supports three hours of image projection.
V Show can access push mail. It has an LED flash light and can record video at 25 frames per second.
The company claims that the lamp of the projector lasts for more than 20,000 hours of projecting time. This is far longer than the life of a standard projecting bulb at a comparable price. Debu K Dasgupta, head of the centre for design and development at Intex Technologies, said, “The lamp is based on LED technology. This improves the lamp’s life.” He added that LED is a more energy efficient alternative to traditional technologies.
The phone uses Bolt web browser, which enables faster browsing speeds, tabbed browsing and has built in apps for Facebook and Twitter.
T-Series to roll out 12 handsets by March
Music industry giant T-Series is gearing up to join the Indian handset market. It plans to roll out 10-12 handsets by March next year.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Neeraj Kalyan, who is vice president of the international publishing and digital content business at T-Series, said, “We are going to launch 10-12 mobile phone models by March in the price range of Rs 1,200 to Rs 12,000.”
T-Series, a brand of Super Cassettes Industries already has a strong foothold in the content software market and is going to capitalise on its strengths to help its mobile phone business.
The company founded by Gulshan Kumar is targeting to control five per cent of the Indian mobile handset market within 18-24 months. Kalyan also said that the company will launch Android and 3G phones in the first phase.
T-Series has budgeted around Rs 100 crore for promoting its handsets next year, and has engaged Mumbai-based communication firm Everest Brand Solutions to spearhead the campaign, which kicks off next month.
The Indian handset market is currently worth more than Rs 30,000 crore, with the presence of over 50 brands.