Pages

Monday, September 24, 2018

OpenSignal: Kolkata Tops in India in terms of 4G Coverage

Kolkata, the City of Joy always has a sweet spot for Indian telecom. Back in 1995 Kolkata became first city to get mobile services in India, that was MobileNet from Modi Telstra - turned Hutch later, and now operates as Vodafone Idea. 

Interestingly 3G, the next of 2G obviously, was not first launched in Kolkata, rather it was Delhi to get country's first 3G mobility from MTNL in 2008. And see what happens - in 8 years (however private players didn't able to launch 3G until 2010 when 3G auction did happen; so to be precise it's just 6 years) 3G is turning to be obsolete in favour of 4G (Jio was launched in 2016).

4G again fell in love with Kolkata, as Airtel became first Indian operator to launch 4G in April 10, 2012. Fyi, I attended that inauguration press meet. 4G has a very slow uptake until Jio started their commercial services in September 2016.

What I want to say, with out Kolkata touch, 3G failed while 2G is surviving and 4G is rocking. Same for CDMA too, Reliance Mobile India went for countrywide launch back in 2002 and in 2018 all CDMA networks are defunct.

Now while we are embracing 4G - thanks to Jio for bringing down the tariff to a super affordable level, Kolkata touches a new milestone as per OpenSignal's data. It's the only city in India to cross more than 90% 4G availability (90.7% to be precise) - keeping the other top areas of South East Asia behind, Hong Kong (90.4 per cent), Singapore (86.6 per cent), Taipei (89.8 per cent) and Kuala Lumpur (80.8 per cent) in terms of 4G coverage.

Well though it's impressive to reach a global standard, it's not acceptable that 4G is not that much fast in India. India's average speed is behind to that of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Monday, September 03, 2018

App Aggregator Tapzo to End Journey as Amazon Pay Acquires Tapzo

Tapzo is to be shut down by 31st October, 2018. It was launched with a target to bring many apps (35+) under one roof that includes cabs, recharge, food, shopping deals, bill payments, news and etc. Tapzo was earlier known as HelpChat when I personally started using it. 

Tapzo, the biggest app aggregator in the country had tie up with Ola, Uber, Mobikwik, freecharge, nearby, Zomato, Swiggy, hindusthan times, airtel money, Cleartrip, bookmyshow, billdesk, redbus, mysmartprice and others. 


Tapzo had sent a mail to its users on 2nd of September regarding its shutting down. 



Interestingly there was market news that Amazon to buy out Tapzo on August end. 


Update: Tapzo was actually acquired by Amazon Pay soon after Tapzo's announcement of shutting down services. 

Sunday, September 02, 2018

Best of Beef Food Joints in Kolkata


Like many Calcuttans, I started my journey into beef dishes from Nizam at Esplanade. But it's sad that Nizam closes its door for beef lovers. Right now they only serve chicken or mutton. The famous beef roll of Nizam is now a history. Nizam was also making Halim during Ramzan days and beef biriyani every day, though biriyani is still not a favorite of mine.

How to Install One Plus USB Drivers

When I connect the 1+6 to my Windows 7 laptop, it auto installed 3 drivers out of 4 required drivers and failed to install OnePlus Device Driver USB Device.