My 3G Experience on my Blackberry Phone

My 3G Experience and the future of 3G

I have been waiting for 3G Services  since a very long time and it was about 2 years ago, MTNL(Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) announced the commencement.


The handset I had owned during that period thankfully was a 3G ready one and fortunately enough I also happen to have a MTNL GSM SIM card. 


The MTNL 3G services initially only covered certain selected areas of Mumbai. Covering Navi Mumbai was a far cry. So, I had to wait for the D-Day. Meanwhile, whenever I had opportunity to travel to Mumbai for a day, I quickly grabbed the opportunity to make the most of 3G coverage and browse the mobile internet at blistering speeds.     

A year later, even Navi Mumbai also was privileged to have MTNL 3G coverage and again in selected areas. 


It is now that even Navi Mumbai has complete 3G coverage. 


Meanwhile, Big GSM private players such as Vodafone, Airtel also commenced with their 3G operations covering entire Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. 

1. 
   
   1.       Activation & Deactivation of 3G Services - Depending on the operator, and the class of service(Postpaid or Prepaid) one could activate 3G on their 3G enabled handset and you are ready to go.
   
   For your convenience, these are the links to the popular GSM networks 3G services page.
   
   a. MTNL- 3G Jadoo -http://www.mtnlmumbai.in/index.php/mobile/3g-services
   b. Vodafone, Mumbai - http://www.vodafone.in/3gworld/pages/3g_serivces.aspx?slide=1&cid=mum
   c. Airtel, Mumbai -http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/airtel3g/Airtel3G/3G-Services/
   
   2.       Mobile Applications which run on a 3G backend
   3.       Blackberry Services on 3G - Your Blackberry mails download much faster and also the heavy attachments open much faster to give you a comfortable experience. No more struggling opening a heavy attachment which your friend had sent you.  
   4.       Types of 3G - Little did I realise that 3G speeds are same across various handsets, but after a little for research I realised that depending on the model of your handset, your 3G experience would vary. The HSPA(Fast 3G) handsets come with a variety of speed options from 3.6 Mbps to 21 Mbps. The more popular ones are those handsets with 7.2 Mbps.  
   5.       Cost of 3G Service - As always, any new technology or service when it is new comes with an expensive price tag and in this case it is the same. But, the GSM operators have been kind enough to let experience the discerning customers for as low as Rs.10/- for a 10MB pack. The cost varies depending on the volume of the 3G data pack and validity.
   
   
   6.       3G coverage– A Reality Check
   
   
   a.       Inhouse mobile signal boosters are not 3G enabled. - GSM Operators have been also installing mobile signal boosters to enhance coverage in the entire building. The 2G coverage is great but they somehow forget to enable these boosters with 3G bandwidth. In this case a 3G consumer would not be able to avail of 3G services and be deprived of 3G experience.
      
   b.      Certain areas yet to be 3G enabled : Many areas still as on date are not covered with 3G signals or not stabilized 3G signals. The 3G network keeps appearing and disappearing.
   
   
   7.       TV on Mobile –  One of the best features of having 3G services is Live TV. Now, with a 3G handset and Live TV connection, its possible to view a variety of channels at a click of few buttons, where ever their is 3G connectivity. This service only costs Rs.7/- a day for over 50 channels. A small Live TV application needs to be downloaded and you are already on your way to experience Live TV.  
         On Vodafone TV - To activate just sms "TV" to 111. Download the Live tv app by clicking the download app link received via sms.
   

   
   

   
   

   

   
   
        
   
   
   8.   Tethering on 3G – Its now possible to enjoy high speed browsing on your laptop/desktop by simply connecting your handset to your PC via usb data cable/bluetooth. Whats more if your smart phone allows hot spot creation its possible for your friends also to enjoy 3G high speed browsing on their respective connected PC/laptops.
   

   

   
   
   
   9.   USB 3G Dongles - The 3G USB dongle just costs under Rs.1000/- and its now possible to enjoy 3G broadband speeds upto 21 Mbps(Depends on the hardware) on the go.
   

   

   
   
   10.   GSM(3G) Vs CDMA Broadband -  CDMA Broadband is only limited to a maximum speed of 3.1 Mbps where as HSPA 3G starts with a speed of 3.6 Mbps and has downloading capabilities upto 21 Mbps. The GSM 3G is a clear winner in terms of speed.
   
   
   11.   The Future of 3G ( What I Foresee) - Current, 3G data packs are expensive and because of the broad bandwidth the data gets exhausted in no time. Very soon  data packs would be made available at the same price point and also I see unlimited packs featuring soon the the 3G services menu. Other Internet connectivity options will see a lot of competition in this front and the consumer is going to be immensely benefited.
   
   Enjoy the 3G Experience. Please feel free to call me on +91-9004222919 or mail me on sbokde@gmail.com for any further queries. 
   
   

Cloud Computing-The Buzz word

The Background


When I had invited the late Mr. Meherman Kelkar to as a guest speaker for our students during which he had mentioned this concept of “CLOUD COMPUTING” to me. This was in the year 2008. He also made a statement about the fact that “CLOUD COMPUTING” is the future. I was quite excited about this new concept and decided to find out more information about this unique concept. Imagining a life without the stress of maintaining servers and have somebody else to maintain it on your behalf sounded too good.


The AIH Mailing solution: When, I was told to explore a mailing solution for the newly setup AIH in April 2007, as I was browsing through the various possibilities and cost implications, I came across Google apps for education website which spoke about an email solution.





After some research, I decided to register the AIH domain for Google apps mailing solution and now it’s been close to 5 years, the Google apps mailing solution has been working without any glitches.


As, we are an education institute and have an edu.in domain extension, we had the entire mailing solution coming to us Free of cost. On this mailing system, we maintain about close to 300 email id’s and each one enjoying a inbox space of about 25 GB each.


This was my first experience with the Cloud Computing concept. Lets now get down to the basics of Cloud Computing to understand it better.




The Concept: Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility(like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).





The Types of Cloud Computing:
Cloud Computing can be classified into 4 types on the basis of location where the cloud is hosted:


 Public Cloud: Computing infrastructure is hosted at the vendor’s premises. The customer has no visibility over the location of the cloud computing infrastructure. The computing infrastructure is shared between organizations.


 Private Cloud: Computing architecture is dedicated to the customer and is not shared with other organisations. They are expensive and are considered more secure than Public Clouds. Private clouds may be externally hosted ones as well as in premise hosted clouds.
 Hybrid Cloud: Organisations host some critical, secure applications in private clouds. The not so critical applications are hosted in the public cloud. The combination is known as Hybrid Cloud. Cloud bursting is the term used to define a system where the organisation uses its own infrastructure for normal usage, but cloud is used for peak loads.


 Community Cloud: The cloud infrastructure is shared between the organizations of the same community. For example, all the government agencies in a city can share the same cloud but not the non government agencies.


 Infrastructure as a Service(IAAS): Hardware related services are provided using the principles of Cloud Computing. These include disk storage and virtual servers. Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Servers are some of the leading vendors.


Platform as a service(PAAS): Development platforms are provided on the cloud. The platforms may not be compatible with each other. Wikipedia puts it appropriately as ‘Platform as a service’ (PaaS) the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service.PaaS offerings facilitate deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities, providing all of the facilities required to support the complete life cycle of building and delivering web applications and services entirely available from the Internet. PaaS offerings may include facilities for application design, application development, testing, deployment and hosting as well as application services such as team collaboration, web service integration and marshalling, database integration, security, scalability, storage, persistence, state management, application versioning, application instrumentation and developer community facilitation. These services may be provisioned as an integrated solution over the web.


Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure and Saleforce’s force.com are the leaders in this category.


 Software as a service (SAAS): This is the most common form of cloud computing which we see in action. It is a complete software offering on the cloud. They are accessed by the customers on pay per use basis. Saleforce.com’s CRM, Google apps etc are the prime example of such a service. Salesforce.com’s CRM, Gmail and Hotmail are prime examples of SAAS.


The Applications:
Leveraging on the Growth of Internet Bandwidth: Internationally, over the years, the Internet bandwidth prices has been dropping resulting the low cost of Internet bandwidth been made available to the consumers/institutions. The concept of Cloud computing will only work well if the end user enjoys a uninterrupted Broadband Internet connectivity.


The Reduced Cost Implication and improved Bottom lines: In case of change of a corporate email system, the cost savings would be in a tune of millions of rupees.


For Eg: On a conventional email system would cost Rs.6000/- per email id per year.For 300 email id's it would be Rs.18,00,000/- per year.


A shift to a Google app cloud would cost less than Rs.2000/- per mail id per year. For 300 email id's the cost would be less than Rs.6,00,000/- per year. Thats a huge saving. Isn't it?


My Next Blog would be an extension to Cloud computing concept on " Anywhere Front Desk". Do keep reading !