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 The Indian Express, Manoj C.G., October 30, 2020 Tech giant  Google  on Thursday told the joint parliamentary committee on Personal Data Protection Bill that India should avoid data localisation requirements, a submission which riled some panel members, it is learnt. Digital financial services platform  Paytm  too appeared before the Meenakshi Lekhi-headed panel Thursday. It is learnt that Paytm representatives were asked about the quantum of Chinese investment in the company and told that the servers on which customer data is stored should be in India. It is learnt that Paytm vice-presidents Narendra Singh Yadav and Dharmender Jhamb told the panel that the company was of the view that the data generated in India should be parked in the country. They were candid about the 35 per cent Chinese investment, it is learnt. Both Google and Patym were asked about the recent  Google Play Store controversy , it is learnt. Google had last month removed Paytm from its...

 WhatsApp cannot access details of messages and calls on its platform, the Facebook-owned messaging app has told the Delhi High Court in response to a notice issued to it in a drugs case. In the bail pleas filed by three accused, who are suspected to be major suppliers of “illegal smack” in the national capital, Delhi Police had told the court that WhatsApp was not responding to its queries related to the case registered at New Usmanpur police station after recovery of 25 grams of ‘smack’ from the main accused. Following the submission, the court had issued a notice to WhatsApp. The accused are suspected to be part of a drug syndicate and had a WhatsApp group to coordinate the “illegal trade”. The contents of the group are unknown and cannot be ascertained unless a transcript of the WhatsApp conversations is obtained, as per the police. A number of WhatsApp calls have also taken place among the accused, the court was told. While objecting to issuance of notice in a bail matter, Wha...

Great Game India August 20, 2020 In December 2017, Great Game India revealed how a secret unit of Facebook helped create troll armies for governments around the world including India for digital propaganda to influence elections. We are republishing the report owing to repeated requests from our readers. Under fire for Facebook Inc.’s role as a platform for political propaganda, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has punched back, saying his mission is above partisanship. But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition—sometimes with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies. The initiative is run by a little-known Facebook global government and politics team led from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former digital strategist who worked on 2014 Indian elections. Since Faceboo...

Economic Times August 19, 2020 Banks seeking to recover over Rs 40,000 crore in dues from Reliance Communications (RCom) told the Supreme Court that the telco may go into liquidation if the right to use spectrum cannot be transferred through the insolvency resolution process. RCom will go into liquidation if spectrum sale is not permitted. In any case, spectrum can only be sold with DoT nod,” the committee of creditors, through senior advocate Harish N Salve, told a three-judge bench led by Justice Arun Mishra on Wednesday. The banks approved UV Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. as the preferred bidder for some of RCom’s key assets including spectrum, fibre and data centre. The resolution plan now awaits approval by the insolvency court. However, the Department of Telecommunications opposed the plan in the National Company Law Tribunal. DoT has said it won’t get anything from the Rs 23,000 crore proceeds chalked out in the resolution plan. It has claimed AGR dues of Rs ...

Hindustan Times  August 19, 2020 China has extended an anti-dumping tariff on optical fibre made in India, the ministry of commerce said in a notice published on its website on Thursday.  The duties will be renewed from Friday and remain in place for five years. In the announcement, the MOFCOM “…decided to continue to impose anti-dumping duties on imported single-mode optical fibers originating in India from August 14 on the basis of the final review of the investigation results. The implementation period is 5 years”. The ministry defined single-mode fibre as a fibre that transmits only a single-mode optical signal within a certain wavelength range.  The punitive tariff on single-mode optical fibre takes effect from August 14 and lasts for five years, with tariffs ranging between 7.4 percent and 30.6 percent depending on the specific Indian manufacturers, the ministry said. The extension of the anti-dumping duties comes in the backdrop of the ongoing S...

 The Telegraph August 08, 2020 The Trump administration has announced sweeping restrictions on two popular Chinese social media networks, TikTok and WeChat, a sharp escalation of its confrontation with China that is likely to be met with retaliation. Two executive orders, released late on Thursday and taking effect in 45 days, cited national security concerns to bar any transactions with WeChat or TikTok by any person or involving any property subject to the jurisdiction of the US. The order essentially sets a 45-day deadline for an acquisition of TikTok, which is in talks to be acquired by Microsoft. Tensions between the US and China have already escalated to levels not seen in decades over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade. In recent months, Trump administration officials have challenged China on its crackdown in Hong Kong, its territorial claims in the South China Sea and its efforts to produce global tech champions.  The campaign has been provoked in part by China...

The Telegraph July 03, 2020 The department of telecommunications (DoT) is expected to float a fresh tender to upgrade BSNL’s network after an eight-member panel finalises its recommendations on the terms of the bidding process that will exclude Chinese companies such as ZTE which had won the upgradation contract last year. Reports suggest that there will be an attempt to foist a 40 per cent local sourcing norm in the contract which could skew the pitch for Ericsson and Nokia. The attempt is to cap the price of upgradation; fears had been expressed that the upgradation by the two European majors would lead to a surge in the price. BSNL has cancelled its Rs 8,697-crore 4G tender floated in March. Though the PSU did not give any reason, the cancellation is speculated to be a result of the standoff between Indian and China in Ladakh. BSNL had initially proposed existing ZTE as a technically and commercially viable option alongside Finnish giant Nokia. However, the DoT had e...

Indian Express Dated: April 23, 2020 By: Pranav Mukul and Sandeep Singh In the largest FDI in the Indian technology sector, US Internet giant Facebook will be buying 9.99% stake in Reliance Industries Ltd’s digital unit Jio Platforms Ltd, for $5.7 billion (more than Rs 43,450 crore). While helping Reliance pare its debt of nearly Rs 3 lakh crore, the deal will also give the oil-to-telecom giant access to the over 400 million-strong database of WhatsApp, as it seeks to jumpstart its commerce business under JioMart. Facebook, in turn, makes its long-awaited foray into Indian telecom space. The deal has come at a time when global mergers and acquisitions have hit roadblocks due to the COVID-19 crisis. RIL said that concurrent to the investment, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail Ltd and WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, have reached an agreement to “further accelerate” business on JioMart. Under this, the company said, it would offer consumers the ability ...

Dawn March 05, 2020 Ramsha Jahangir KARACHI: Pakistan has been ranked 76th out of 100 countries on the inclusive internet index 2020 released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), falling into the last quartile of the global index overall. The ‘Inclusive Internet Index’ benchmarks countries on the internet’s availability, affordability, relevance and the readiness of people to use it. The annual report is commissioned by Facebook. In its fourth year, the index covered 100 countries, representing 91pc of the world’s population and 96pc of global GDP. On a scale of one (best) to 100 (worst), Pakistan stood at the 76th place out of the total countries surveyed. According to the EIU, in 2020 Pakistan falls into the last quartile of the global internet index countries overall, and it ranks 24th out of 26 Asian countries. Commissioned by Facebook, the exercise represents 91pc of the world’s population “Notable among its weaknesses is by far the largest g...

The Telegarph Dated: November 29, 2019 By:  By  PTI  in New Delhi Digital payments major Paytm plans to raise another round of funding worth $1 billion and is in discussions with multiple investors, including former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, according to sources. Sources close to the development said the discussions are on and might take a few weeks to get finalised. They added that the funds will be used to expand the merchant offerings across India to equip them with technology and various other services. Paytm declined to comment, while a response from Cameron could not be elicited immediately. Paytm had earlier this week announced a $1 billion (around Rs 7,173 crore) fund raise, led by US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price. Existing investors Alibaba, Softbank and Discovery Capital had also participated in the funding round. Interestingly, Paytm founder and chief executive officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted a photograph of him an...

The Times of India,  TNN | Nov 19, 2019, 07.55 PM NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio, the country’s largest telecom operator, followed rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in plans to raise consumer tariffs, saying the move is necessitated by the need to make fresh network and technology investments. When it happens, it will be the first significant tariff increase by the new telecom operator which had disrupted the financials of the mobile industry through its aggressive plans after launching services in September 2016. “Like other operators, we will also work with the government and comply with the regulatory regime to strengthen the industry to benefit Indian consumers and take measures, including appropriate increase in tariffs in next few weeks,” the company said in a statement that came a day after Airtel and Vodafone Idea announced plans to raise consumer tariffs from next month. Jio, however, said that the tariff hike will be done “in a manner that does not ...

Hindustran Times, November 4, 2019 Cybercriminals using enterprise-based strategies for phishing Cybercriminals are using enterprise-based development and deployment strategies, such as phishing as a service (PaaS), to leverage some of the worlds largest tech brands, with 42.63 per cent of domains observed targeting Microsoft, PayPal, DHL, and Dropbox, a report from Cloud delivery network provider Akamai Technologies said on Monday. The report also revealed that phishing is no longer just an email-based threat, but has expanded to include social media and mobile devices, creating a wide-reaching problem that touches all industries. This evolving method continues to morph into different techniques, one of which being business email compromise (BEC) attacks. According to the FBI, BEC attacks resulted in worldwide losses of more than $12 billion between October 2013 and May 2018. “Phishing is a long-term problem that we expect will have adversaries continuousl...

BUSINESS STRANDED SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 MEGHA MANCHANDA Distressed employees of cash-strapped Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) on Monday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revive the company and make it a strong telecom operator. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the staff of the beleaguered company said, “We heard that the finance ministry is proposing the closure of BSNL, instead of its revival.” “It is felt that those officers involved in the process may not get an opportunity to learn about the critical role played by BSNL in nation building and in implementing government schemes and projects,” general secretary of BSNL Union Sebastin. K said in the letter. Stressing the role played by the company during critical situations, the employees have sought relief from the government. Sebastin said during the recent developments in Jammu & Kashmir, the government is fully dependent on BSNL landline and mobile for providing services to a few government functiona...

BusinessToday.In   New Delhi     Last Updated: August 20, 2019 Hackers can guess your password correctly just from the sound of typing on a keyboard, a new study has revealed.  Cyber security experts from Southern Methodist University in Texas have found that while typing on a keyboard, sound waves are produced which can successfully be decoded by a hackers' smartphone.   In tests researchers were easily able to detect what was being typed with accuracy just from a microphone found on a mobile. This method can not only crack a person's password but can also figure out someone's personal mails or messages. A smartphone can intercept the acoustic signals that can be processed allowing a hacker to decipher what a person was typing. In fact, even in a noisy place the password can be detected easily. The researchers warned that a person would have no clue that they are being hacked, however there are certain caveats to the method. A...

Business Line June 26, 2019 Committee led by the Principal Scientific Advisor to submit report on the issue soon.  The governmrnt is likely to allow 5G trials by all telecom equipment companies, including Chinese firm Huawei, top sources in the government said. The committee is looking into the 5G trials issue is also expected to table its report shortly, multiple sources told  BusinessLine . Last month, the government had constituted a committee, headed by the Principal Scientific Advisor, to decide on Huawei India’s participation in the 5G trial. “All parties (companies) are likely to be permitted on the trial of 5G…it is just a matter of time now,” a senior government official said requesting anonymity. The official said that the Committee may table its report to the Ministry of Communications within a week. The Digital Communications Commission (DCC) — the highest decision-making body of the Telecom Department – had recently cleared norms for 5G trials. Comp...

The Economic Times June 24, 2019 Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei Monday said it is ready to sign "no back door" agreement with the Indian government to discourage espionage, and other companies should also follow suit. Huawei's business engagement in India is under scrutiny by the government after the US restricted hardware as well as software supplies to it.  "We are proposing to the Indian government that we are ready to sign 'no back door' agreement. We encourage other OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) also to sign this kind of agreement with the government and telecom operators," Huawei India Chief Executive Officer Jay Chen told .  "Back door" in technology products refers to arrangement with government or with any third party to share customers' data in an unauthorised manner with mala fide intention. The telecom department had come up with security guidelines in 2011 that mandated telecom operators to install ...