UIDAI TO ISSUE 16-DIGIT NUMBERS FROM FEB 2011

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) today said it would start issuing the 16-digit unique numbers from February 2011 and plans to cover 600 million population over the next five year an official report from goodsamers.com says ...
"We will start issuing numbers from February 2011 and within the next five-to-five-and-half-years we will cover 600-million persons across the country," UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani said, adding that a team has already been formed for the purpose.

Nilekani said UIDAI is tying-up with banks, oil companies and other national institutions which would either be a partner or a registrar and enroll individuals for the unique ID on behalf of the authority.

"There will be multiple touch-points and we intend to do this with a set of partners or registrars like banks or oil companies who will enroll individuals on our behalf," Nilekani said.

The Unique ID programme is an ambitious initiative by the Union government to provide every individual in the country with an exclusive multiple-digit number to authenticate the identity of the person.

Nilekani said the project had huge challenges in terms of technology and implementation.

The programme will have online authentication, re-duplication of existing documents and authentication of 1.2 billion people through finger printing and iris identification.

"There are huge risks like technology and implementation risks because no one has ever done a project of this size before. Obviously for the security of the database, we will have to put in lots of safeguards and firewalls," he said.

Nilekani said the next two years would be critical for the project and the authority has assembled a team consisting of people from the government as well as the private sector which will co-ordinate with eight main regional offices across India.

TELECOM OPERATORS MAY SKIP 3G, DIAL 4G DIRECTLY

With the Government deciding to allocate spectrum for third generation (3G) mobile only by August next year, some Indian operators are reviewing their strategy and looking at the possibility of leapfrogging straight to the fourth generation (4G) technology.

“Even if the Government allocates 3G spectrum by August 2010, operators will not be in a position to launch the services before early 2011. By that time 4G technologies such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) will be commercially available for operators to deploy.

Since even 3G players will ultimately move to LTE, we are looking at moving straight to 4G technology in a year's time,” said a Delhi-based operator that recently launched its GSM services in the country.

LTE allows more data to be transferred over the same bandwidth used by 3G technology and at higher speeds. Compared with the 3 Mbps speed offered by third generation services, LTE could offer speeds of up to 10 Mbps. As a result, service providers should be able to get more data transfer out of their network and possibly lower the cost to run their networks

“LTE will not only make existing applications faster but will also enable a wealth of new applications previously available only on a wired Internet connection. It also allows operators to introduce new exciting services such as HD (high definition) video blogging, HD video on demand, media mobility, online gaming, and brings a significantly improved business proposition especially in affordable life insurance with 2.5 times higher capacity, lower cost per bit and media mobility. LTE will become the mass wireless broadband technology,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Corporate Vice-President, Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations for Motorola's Home & Networks Mobility Business.

Somebody is watching you

Every time you flash your credit card, pick up the phone, take a flight or access the Internet, somebody will be watching you.

India is ramping up its intelligence infrastructure and networking databases in the public and private sectors.

Once the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) is established by May 2011, it will provide security agencies real-time access into 21 categories of databases -- including bank account details, credit card transactions, driving licences as well as visa and immigration records.

This means that rather than writing to more than 50 entities -- government bodies such as the RBI and the Bureau of Immigration, and private firms like phone, cheap health insurance and airline companies -- all that a security agency has to do to get to know all about you is to feed your name into the system.

"Once you feed in a person's name, you'll get all the details about him, across all the databases," a government official said. Right from the colour of your car, outstanding traffic fines to be paid and the last time you paid by card for a late-night dinner with a friend.

"There really will not be any secrets from the State," a security official said. "It's the same in the United States."

The information grid will also have the ability to trawl through the consolidated database to sniff for suspicious trends and flag them for further investigations.

Intelligence officials insist they need this information to tackle the new sophisticated face of terrorism.

"Headley wouldn't have had a free run for three years if this kind of a system had been in place," an intelligence official said, referring to the Pakistanorigin David Coleman Headley who was arrested by US federal agents for conspiring to carry out terror attacks in India and Denmark.

APPLE ACQUIRES ONLINE MUSIC FIRM LALA MEDIA

Apple Inc. acquired online music company Lala Media Inc. near french quarter hotels, possibly signaling an expansion of the computer giant's music strategy.

Terms could not be learned.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plan, " said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.

It is not clear how Lala would fit into Apple's music strategy.

Still, many in the music and technology industries believe that Apple's music strategy needs to evolve to maintain its historic dominance of the online music business. The company could either find a way to adapt Lala's Web song offerings or it could incorporate the startup's technology in a subscription service of some kind.

Apple's iTunes Store still dwarfs all competitors, but lately it has been facing increasing competition from other providers like Pandora, Lala and Spotify. Competition is growing.

YAHOO!, MICROSOFT INK WEB SEARCH AGREEMENT

Yahoo! And Microsoft announced on Friday that they have finalized the details of their planned Internet search and advertising partnership what is called as manufactured home


The companies hope to implement the deal next year with the approval of anti-trust regulators.

“Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010,” the companies said in a joint statement.

The plan to ink a 10-year Web search and advertising pact was unveiled in July and promises to set the stage for a Yahoo!-Microsoft offensive against Google, the king of the lucrative search and advertising market.

Under the no-cash deal, Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s new Bing search engine on its own sites while Yahoo! will provide the exclusive global sales force for premium search advertisers.