New Delhi: India's cable makers face a severe shortage of copper and potential manufacturing delays after the closure of the country's two biggest copper smelters, which has pushed up prices and led to a spike in imports.
India's biggest smelter, owned by Sterlite Industries, was shut on March 30 after local residents complained of emissions that led to breathing difficulties, forcing top copper users to rely on rival Hindalco Industries for almost all their copper needs.
But a routine shutdown at Hindalco's Birla smelter this month has raised fears that firms such as Finolex Cables Ltd, India's largest electrical wire and cable maker, may have to turn to costly imports or slow manufacturing. Hindalco has declined to say how long the Birla smelter will be closed, although industry sources expect a 35-day shutdown.
A fast-track environmental court will resume hearing a case into Sterlite's closure on Wednesday and is expected to hear further arguments. Lawyers in the case say a judgment should come by end-May....
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02:10 PM, May 22, 2013
New Delhi: A consortium of global telecom majors, including Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone, today signed an agreement for constructing the Bay of Bengal Gateway submarine cable system that will link Malaysia and Singapore to the Middle East with connections in India and Sri Lanka. The cable system is likely to carry commercial traffic by the end of 2014. "...consortium members - Telekom Malaysia Berhad (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Omantel...
03:30 PM, Apr 30, 2013
New Delhi: Reliance Industries' telecommunications arm will use Bharti Airtel's submarine cable network to provide data connectivity across Asia Pacific, the two Indian companies said on Tuesday. The i2i cable network connects India to Singapore and is wholly owned by Bharti, India's top mobile phone carrier. Bharti and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, unit of Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries, will continue to build on this "strategic framework" and consider other mutual...
11:47 AM, Apr 23, 2013
New Delhi: The process of full digitisation of cable TV systems in the country is expected to be over well before the end of the current fiscal given a sharp surge in the installation of set-top boxes by large distributors, a report has said. The large cable TV distributors, known as MSOs (Multi Service Operators), gained higher market share than Direct-to- Home (DTH) players in the second phase of digitisation...
04:10 PM, Apr 14, 2013
New Delhi: The Maulana Azad Medical College finds a rare mention in a US diplomatic cable during Henry Kissinger era which says that the hospital caters to around 3,000 out patients daily. In a cable to Washington, the then US Ambassador Daniel Moynihan said Dr Hari Vaishnava, professor of medicine, gave them the information that there were at least 1,700 people admitted to Maulana Azad Medical College, associated with Irwin...
12:32 PM, Apr 14, 2013
New Delhi: The US Embassy cables accessed by WikiLeaks have claimed that there were three assassination attempts on late former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's second son Sanjay Gandhi. A 1976 dispatch says Sanjay was the target of an unknown assailant in a "well planned assassination attempt" during the Emergency. It quotes Indian intelligence sources as saying that he was shot at three times on August 30 or 31, but escaped...
08:51 AM, Apr 11, 2013
New Delhi: US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks say that late former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had written to the then Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1974 offering to share nuclear technology but only if proper conditions for trust were created. The offer was rejected by Bhutto. The cables also say Indira Gandhi was evasive about nuclear weaponisation. The cables quote her as saying, "If our scientists have...
10:43 AM, Apr 10, 2013
New Delhi: AK Antony was "one of the only" leaders apart from Priyaranjan Dasmunsi who "flatly criticised" Sanjay Gandhi during 1976 AICC session in Guwahati during Emergency when the latter's political graph was on the rise, US diplomatic cables have claimed. The cables, made public by Wikileaks, also said the party faction led by Antony, the Kerala unit President, refused to support Sanjay and questioned his "rapid ascent to a...
02:02 PM, Apr 09, 2013
Washington: Unlike in the past, the latest tranche of secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have not been leaked, but have been "legitimately obtained from a US government web site" and released in a user-friendly searchable format. These diplomatic cables about 1.7 million from the period of 1973-76 - now being dubbed as "The Kissinger cable" - were declassified by the US State Department in 2006 and since then...
12:15 PM, Apr 09, 2013
New Delhi: WikiLeaks returned to haunt the Congress party on Monday which trashed reports claiming that Rajiv Gandhi was a middleman for a Swedish aircraft company before entering politics but the Opposition demanded that the "truth" be made public. The Congress made it clear that the reports had no basis whatsoever, with party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi referring to the last line of the leaked WikiLeaks cable to emphasise that...
08:54 PM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The Congress has trashed the latest WikiLeaks revelation naming late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as mere 'sensation with no substance'. Reacting to the revelation, Congress leader Janardhan Dwivedi said, "I do not know on what grounds such a story was published." "Right below this article, is an article which names an NDA leader, does it mean there is truth to that article as well? That he took...
03:16 PM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The Opposition has questioned the Congress over the latest revelations by US cables WikiLeaks naming late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a scandal. The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded that the Congress comes clean on it. "Today, the WikiLeaks revelations are serious. They are connected to the first family of Congress. All defence deals have some relation with the Congress's first family. They should come clean on...
11:02 AM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The Congress has rejected the WikiLeaks revelation that named late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a scandal. Reacting to the allegations, Congress said, "The credibility of WikiLeaks is questionable and any case the author is planning a political party. We don't give importance to the allegations and the cables." The Bharatiya Janata Party, has, meanwhile, demanded that the Congress comes clean on it. "Today, the WikiLeaks revelations...
09:54 AM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The latest WikiLeaks revelations from US Embassy cables have named former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a scandal. National daily The Hindu has published their findings of the Kissinger cables, which claim that Rajiv Gandhi may have been a middleman for a Swedish Company before he became the Prime Minister. This, during the 1970s when Swedish company Saab-Scania was trying to sell its Viggen fighter aircraft to India....
08:20 AM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The government will not extend the deadline for the second phase of digitisation of TV set-top boxes, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said on Wednesday. "We are not going to relax the deadline. We want digitisation to go through," Tewari told reporters. He added that transition from analogue to digital cable will be implemented in a sensitive manner. Thirty-eight cities across 15 states were required to switch...
01:05 AM, Apr 04, 2013
About one-fourth of 1.6 crore households missed the deadline of television digitisation on Monday in 38 cities. But they may get a short transition period for switchover to Set Top Boxes depending on local conditions. ...
12:36 PM, Apr 03, 2013
The Karnataka High Court on Monday directed the Central government to ensure that analog channels are not switched off in the state till April 5, 2013. Justice Abdul Nazeer granted time to the Union government to file its objections to a petition seeking extension of the March 31, 2013 deadline for installing Set Top Boxes (STB) filed by Mysore District Cable Operators' Association. ...
12:40 AM, Apr 02, 2013
Senior US military officials said an Afghan teenager had killed an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan by stabbing him in the neck. Two officials said on Monday that Seargent Michael Cable, 26, was guarding a meeting of Afghan and US officials in Nangarhar province when the stabbing occurred. ...
07:33 PM, Apr 01, 2013
The deadline set by the government for Cable TV digitisation in 38 cities across 14 states ends on Monday. Television sets without set top boxes would go blank. These cities are part of the second phase of digitisation as government claimed 67 per cent digitisation had been achieved in these places. ...
08:50 AM, Apr 01, 2013
Telecom PSU BSNL said its Internet capacity has dropped by 21 per cent due to multiple fibre cuts in three under-sea cable systems that connect the country with many parts of the world. ...
05:32 PM, Mar 31, 2013
