Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has announced more than a dozen sops in the past one year with an eye on the Assembly elections. He's announced everything from laptops, shoes and umbrellas to free mobile phones for over 15,000 farmers.
With laptops, mobiles, shoes, umbrellas, blankets, cycles and Re 1 per kg of rice, Patnaik is on a distribution spree in Odisha. Since the aborted coup by his former political advisor Pyari Mohan Mahapatra, a paranoid Patnaik is leaving nothing to chance. To attract voters, he has announced sops for almost every section of the society. On Tuesday, 20,000 farmers were given free mobile phones.
75-year-old Sudhir Majhi is one such beneficiary. The tribal farmer came all the way from the Mayurbhanj district to collect his free mobile. He said he already has one mobile, this one, he said will go to his grandchildren. "Since the government is providing free, I have come to take the mobile. But this will not influence my vote."
In the past 6 months, the Naveen Patnaik government has given the following sops: ...
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09:30 AM, Jun 19, 2013
Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday distributed 5,000 mobile phone sets among farmers while launching the scheme. "The farmers can access the market information related to agriculture through the mobile phones," Patnaik said, adding that they would get voice calls and SMS in Odia language. Inaugurating the Digital Bazaar programme at Exhibition ground in Bhubaneswar, Patnaik said about 15,000 beneficiaries will get the free phones in the first...
01:41 AM, Jun 19, 2013
New Delhi: India now has the second largest telephone network in the world, next to China. Telephony in India has witnessed phenomenal growth in the last decade. According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, teledensity has risen from 7.04 percent to 73.07 per cent and average call rates dropped to 47 paise from Rs 2.89 in less than a decade and these figures...
12:27 PM, May 29, 2013
New Delhi: The average cost of mobile phone call has declined by a sharp 83 per cent to 47 paise in the last nine years, the government claimed today. Wireless subscriber base on the other hand has expanded about 25-fold to over 86 crore, it said. "The average tariff for each outgoing call per minute for GSM services dropped from Rs 2.89 in March 2004 to 47 paise in December...
11:06 AM, May 29, 2013
New York: "Jenny from the Block" wants the block to buy Verizon phones from her. Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez on Wednesday announced she's opening a chain of 15 cellphone stores and a website under the Viva Movil brand. The aim is to sell Verizon phones and services to Latinos. The first store will open in New York on June 15, with others following in Los Angeles and Miami. The...
08:50 AM, May 23, 2013
London: The number of mobile phone subscriptions are set to outnumber the world's population by the end of 2014, a United Nations agency report has said. According to the International Telecoms Union's (ITU) prediction, mobile phone subscriptions will pass a whopping seven billion early in 2014. Currently, there are 6.8 billion mobile phone subscriptions while the world's population is 7.1 billion. More than a third of the global population are...
08:03 PM, May 12, 2013
San Francisco: Disturbed by the nationwide epidemic of cellphone robberies and thefts, law enforcement officials across the country are looking to the wireless industry to help find a cure. In San Francisco, where half the robberies were phone-related last year, District Attorney George Gascon is calling on major companies in nearby Silicon Valley to create new technology such as a "kill switch" to permanently and quickly disable stolen smart phones,...
10:38 AM, May 05, 2013
New York: Americans are saying CUL8TR to text messaging, a wireless industry group says, as Internet-based applications such as Apple's Messages are starting to take over from what was once a cash cow for phone companies. CTIA - The Wireless Association said Thursday that Americans sent 2.2 trillion text messages last year, down 5 per cent from 2011. That's still 19 text messages per person per day. Text messages vaulted...
12:45 PM, May 03, 2013
Mumbai: India's mobile services market is expected to grow eight per cent to Rs.1.2 trillion in 2013 but will account for only two per cent of the worldwide mobile services revenue as operators are struggling to increase profit margins, research firm Gartner today said. The revenues from mobile services stood at Rs. 1.1 trillion in 2012, Gartner said in a statement. According to Gartner, mobile connections in the country are...
02:14 PM, Apr 22, 2013
Shenzhen: China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's No.2 telecom equipment maker, said on Monday it expects a compound growth rate of 10 per cent in annual sales over the next five years, lifted by cloud computing and smartphone sales. Rotating Chief Executive Officer Guo Ping was speaking at the company's headquarters in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen where he confirmed a 32 per cent rise in Huawei's 2012...
01:33 PM, Apr 08, 2013
Back in 1973 Motorola was very categorical in rejecting the assumption that mobile phones cold replace landlines. ...
04:59 PM, Apr 03, 2013
The Motorola DynaTAC is the world's first mobile phone - that Motorola termed as a portable radio telephone. ...
04:14 PM, Apr 03, 2013
Exactly 40 years ago, on April 3, 1973, Motorola demonstrated the world's first portable cellular telephone and system. ...
03:35 PM, Apr 03, 2013
Sports utility vehicles, imported cars and motorcycles, mobile phones, eating out at air-conditioned restaurants and cigarettes will become costlier with Finance Minister P Chidambaram deciding to impose higher taxes on these items. On the other hand, there is good news for ladies as far as jewellery is concerned as they will be allowed to bring more duty free gold items provided they have stayed out of India for more than...
02:25 PM, Feb 28, 2013
In the 2013 Union Budget presented on Thursday, Finance Mininter P Chidambaram has proposed an increase in excise duty on mobile phones priced above Rs 2,000 from the existing 1 per cent to 6 per cent. ...
01:07 PM, Feb 28, 2013
Those expecting the hottest new phones to make their appearance at the show may be disappointed. ...
03:31 PM, Feb 23, 2013
Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron's book analyses how mobile phones have revolutionised business, politics and ordinary life in India. ...
07:38 PM, Feb 15, 2013
Microsoft Corp has not made much of a dent in Apple Inc's and Google Inc's domination of mobile computing, but a top executive hinted on Wednesday that it will not stop trying and does not have an alternative strategy. ...
01:15 PM, Feb 14, 2013
