Introduction to nextGen LTE : Gigabit LTE

Exploring the true potential of Gigbit LTE, US tech giants Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm broke the barrier of 1Gbps on LTE, as Qualcomm's press release notes on 21st September, 2017 on 21st August. This is industry first with commercial silicon and network infrastructure to hit over 1Gbps on LTE, 1.07Gbps to be precise. 

The testing process used Qualcomm'x X20 LTE modem, and Ericsson radios and LTE software and utilized 12 LTE streams on three 20 MHz channels of licensed Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) spectrum, alongside 4x4 MIMO and 256-QAM. 

The 1.07 Gbps speed was achieved using only three 20MHz carriers of FDD (Frequency Division Duplex using separate transmit and receive frequencies) spectrum, achieving new levels of spectral efficiency for commercial networks and devices. 

In the begining of August (to be specific 2nd August, 2017), the same trio - Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies had touched astounding 953Mbps in a joint commercial network deployment in Boca Raton, Florida. The demostration used network components from Verizon including a cell site, hardware, software and backhaul; most advanced radio systems from Ericsson (micro Radio 2205 for LAA) and Gigabit powered Qualcomm's Snapdragon X16 LTE modem (based on Snapdragon 835 mobile platform).

Jio De-Clutters Indian Telecom by Removing Many Add-on Packs

Long back I wrote down some similarities between Jio's strategy and Google's strategy in India and United States respectively.

After nearly one year of Jio's commercial launch (= SIM availablity to everyone) we must admit Jio disrupted the mobile telephony by price and services.

Jio did it uniquely, began as a greenfield operator, deployed own fiber optic network and towers, dealt with several tower and telecom companies for infra sharing and launched world's fastest growing telecom and digital services platform. And they deployed single technology - 4G/LTE, even their voice and texts are going through LTE networks across 2300, 1800 and 850MHz spectrum.

But after the free days are over, Jio launched the plans similar to developed countries where a single plan offers voice, text and data. Before Jio came, every existing operators have several prepaid packs - some for talktime, some for SMS pack, or rate cutters for own network, for local calls or STD calls or for roaming purpose.

airtel vs Jio LTE Speed Comparison

This week I ported to Airtel and I could not resist to make a comparison of two 4G/LTE giants - airtel and Jio.

Day : 22nd July, 2017
Location : Shyamabazar, R.G.Kar Medical College Campus.
I found that in this campus airtel has some issues with LTE signal, probably because of the old buildings.
Weather: It was raining.

airtel 4G speedtest:

Google WiFi at Rail Stations Gets a Brandname : Google Station

Partnered with Indian Railway's own telecom arm- RailWire, Google had launched free WiFi services in Indian Railway stations across the country back in January of 2016. I posted a review of this free WiFi services at Sealdah rail station - read here. The deal between RailTel corp, the mother of RailWire brand and Google Inc. was signed in September 2015 with a target to reach 400 railway stations, equipped with WiFi. In January 2016 Mumbai Central became first station in India to have Google WiFi.

Kabab Gully of Calcutta at Zakaria Street and Phears Lane

Ramzan is just ended, and the zeal over Kolkata's Kebab street Zakaria street is growing year by year. This is 4th July of 2017 and we had Ramzan on 25-26th June. During the Ramzan days I had a visit into Zakaria St. without any homework. I just googled it and visited the damn place - directly through the Nakhoda Masjid's gate on Central Avenue, opposite to Md. Ali Park. I just went straight and soon met the crowd of Ramzan, the narrower street by the middle-of-the-road stalls across the Zakaria st, till the road ended at Rabindra Sarani and Nakhoda Masjid crossing.

India's Payments Banks - Will they Change India's Banking Sector?

Payments banks are predicted to change our country's poor banking system in coming days. As majority of payment bank licensee, approved by Reserve Bank of India are directly or indirectly related to Telecom industries, it can be assumed that India's telecom industry can be a partner in changing the banking landscape or banking system can be revamped by telecom majors-owned, stripped down version of conventional banks, which are in turn known as Payments Bank.

As per RBI norms, Payments banks have to focus on providing basic financial services, including social security and utility bill payments, remittance functions, and can mobilise deposits of up to Rs 1 lakh.

Payments banks differ from traditional banks, as they don't offer any credit card or loans. Also you can keep maximum of 1 lakh rupees in the payments bank account. Experts believe payments banks are not replacement of traditional banks but they can be the bridge between people without banking facilities and digital banking system, paving a way towards Digital India. Payments banks will be better than the e-wallet systems (Citrus Pay, Ezetap, Freecharge, Mobikwik, Citi MasterPass, Ola Money, Jio Money, HDFC PayZapp, ICICI Pockets, JusPay Safe, PayUMoney, LIME, MoneyonMobile, MomoeXpress, Mswipe, Oxigen, PayMate, State Bank Buddy, Vodafone M-Pesa, mRupee, ItzCash etc) which almost offers the same except interest, ATM cards and some other facilities like pure banking services like ATM usage, cheque book use etc. Interestingly e-wallet business got an escalation after demonetization (banning of old Rs 500 and 1000 rupees notes), though many think digital wallet business model is not viable.

Migration to Blink-based Opera 15+ from Opera 12+ (Presto based) [Updated Regularly]

Story was first published on 18th March, 2014

I am a long time Opera desktop user (on Android I use Dolphin) and when the company moved on to Blink from its own Presto I did not move on as Opera desktop version was a downgrade of features.

However next update to Opera Presto is yet to come, and company's dev team is not caring about Presto-powered version anymore. So I am starting the migration to Opera Blink today.

This is a long process, and I will update here, as soon as I made some movement.

Jump into the water

Installed Opera 18.0.1284.63, installation was straight forward and there is no issues. When you first use it, you have to learn few new things:

Open a new tab, you will find 3 options - Speed Dial, Stash and Discover. We know about Speed Dial.

Stash means where you can dump pages to read on later. [on Opera 12 I use Tab Vault, another extension]

Discover is a Flipboard-like stuff which can show you news on different categories and that's too country-specific. This feature was debuted on Opera for Android and now it is available on desktop too. I don't find it's much useful. (Update: It's now Personal News, or feed reader inbuilt)