(via CNBCi) Reliance WLL launch timings: Press Conference at 1.30pm, inauguration in Thane at 4.30pm.

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Reliance to offer broadband via CDMA, CorDECT: Reliance Infocom (as well as Tata Indicom) has chosen Qualcomm’s CDMA 2000 1x, which is capable of providing data speeds of close to 144 kbps for urban areas (the slower corDECT from IIT Madras will power rural deployments as it costs less to deploy - even corDECT can do 35/70kbps).

This will be worth watching, because dialup available to Indian consumers today typically maxes out at 33kbps on a good day, and `broadband’, while theoretically easy to get in metros, is hobbled for individual subscribers because of pathetic service or nonsensical 300M/month bandwidth-caps. A dial-up line that can do an effective 64k will be manna from heaven for Indian consumers.

The problem until now, of course, was that India was at a distinct disadvantage in terms of international — and even domestic — bandwidth available to it. The domestic bandwidth scene is now looking good, and international bandwidth, while far away from the 100Gbps talked about here, has come a long way from 350Mbps in 2000 to something like 3Gbps in Sep 2002 (over an estimated capacity of 900G - go figure)

All this means that the Indian home user has finally a fighting chance at broadband. At reasonable (by Indian standards) prices. And that is something to cheer about.

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Excellent article on what’s up with India’s WLL rollouts:

So why have cellular operators been crying foul? … Because of the different government rules for the two services, which suddenly seem to be sharing the same playing field. The cellular companies paid as much as Rs 3,000 crore each to offer services in just one metro. Against this, fixed line WLL licences came for a measly Rs 495 crore. For the whole country. Cellular operators also pay — which means the customer pays — something called access charges to connect to a fixed phone network like BSNL’s or MTNL’s. … But a WLL operator does not need to pay any access charges.

I think the WLL operators have clearly demonstrated that the possibility of great consumer benefit exists (especially in a market as hyper-price-sensitive as India), if only because the government turned a blind eye to WLL technology in the 1999 Telecom Policy. It is significant that the WLL rollouts have not been stopped, because it will be difficult for the COAI to get courts or governments to get the paying public to abandon their WLL mobiles after widespread deployment.

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Here’s one launch worth watching: Reliance Infocomm’s WLL offering could shake up the market if they play their cards right. Also, for the last eight months, Reliance has been investing significantly in laying fiber in urban centres across the country. Couple cheap WLL and ubiquitous fiber and you have a winning combination for all sorts of innovative apps. Watch this space for more.

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Gujarat state election results roll in. Pol Pot Redux leads his party to a landslide. Some worry about more violence in Gujarat, but I think that is unlikely — until it’s time for the next elections. Meanwhile, intimidation of minorities will continue apace as the architects of this election campaign get their pound of flesh from Modi, but of course, the (now) vigilant police will never allow it to escalate to levels that hit national headlines.

People who try to extrapolate this to the rest of India will be disappointed, though. What works in Gujarat really doesn’t work across India. The BJP had to water down its agenda to form the NDA, and while a hawkish agenda may get it a slim majority, it will almost certainly alienate a lot of people and lead to gridlock in parliament. In particular, it’s difficult to see a hawkish campaign working in Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and most of the North-East, and to a lesser extent in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Of course, what the BJP (a strategy-driven party, something unusual in India’s kneejerk-reaction-driven political circus) is probably betting on is that it will grab the electorally important states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP (including Uttaranchal), and gain numbers from Bihar (it is already strong in Jharkhand) and Madhya Pradesh. This will ensure that it can enforce it’s own undiluted agenda if it wins the next general elections.

“In a democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve.” –Adlai Stevenson.

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Can’t believe I haven’t added Root Node to my links page yet. Great source of links. On another note, sathanurdam no longer seems to connect :-(.

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David Warren. A must read.

The moral order of Islam, while it overlaps with Judaism, Christianity, and all of the world’s “great religions” in many crucial respects, is nevertheless unique in its emphases. Building upon such essentially tribal values as trust, honour, manliness, loyalty, the duty of hospitality, it builds a moral order in which, I will dare to say, justice is the pre-eminent value. And it is justice, beyond all other values, that is demanded in the confrontation between the Muslim and the world, between the insiders of the Islamic family and the outsiders — the people who still live beyond the Islamic “realm of peace”.

How radically different from the Christian worldview, itself deriving from the Jewish, in which, from its own Gospel beginnings, the worldly virtues are presented as written into the natural order, accessible to all whether Christian or not, so that it is quite possible for a non-Christian to be a good and worthy man. Or, turning this over, in its full universal implications, Christ proclaims that there can be no justice in this world — only in heaven. Every single one of Christ’s parables hinges not on justice but on truth, and at the center of the Christian revelation is this uncanny statement, “That you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”

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The Rainmaker?

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TheNewspaperToday closes its doors. When they turned pay-only one year ago, I asked: Is the India Today brandname worth paying the (admittedly affordable) Rs500/$10.50 per year? I guess the answer was no. Existing TNT subscribers can use their subscriptions to access India Today’s web edition (normally available only to India Today subscribers). The end of free is more complicated than it appears to be, because it is not clear that all the content on the ‘Net — even the ones I read regularly — is worth paying for. It may also just be worth living without. Hey, back in the days when I didn’t have a IP connection bolted to my cranium, my favorite source of instant news was a pocket radio tuned to BBC World Service Radio.

In other news, Time-Warner content, such as CNN and Time, may soon only be available over AOL (or for pay over the Netscape Network). Let’s see how that does. At least, given the current web ad market, it can’t cause them to lose any (more) money.

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Joshua Allen:

Considering that people like Safire focus on IAO, Congress is more interested in serving RIAA, and the Washington Post considers the arrest of three poor people to be a “success” in the war on identity fraud, it is clear that the sheer magnitude of the systemic identity leakage is not a problem that anyone is willing to acknowledge. And since acknowledgement is only the first step toward fixing a problem, it is safe to assume that this one will get much, much worse before it gets better.

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