Friday, March 22, 2013

In the recent past the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) has been highlighting the industry’s concern on the way the Government has decided to implement the Requirement for Compulsory Registration Order 2012. MAIT has cautioned that the Industry will suffer losses of over Rs 1,000  crore if the deadline to implement the order is not extended. Ramdas S speaks to Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT on the statutory government order.

What is the the requirement for Compulsory Registration Order 2012?
This was an order passed by the Central Government in October 2012, which makes it mandatory for all manufacturers to get their electronic products certified for compliance with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Government had identified around 15 categories which includes among others laptops, video games, tablets, plasma/LCD/LED televisions, printers and scanners, telephone answering machines and electronic music systems. We believe, the Government has taken this step to ensure that electronic products made available to Indian consumers meet a specific quality standard, which is welcome by everyone in the industry.

Essentially all products except desktop computers and components come under the order. The deadline of the order is April 3, 2013.


What is your expectation from the Government?
We are completely in support of Government decision to set standards. The order can help resolve several challenges faced by the industry and instill confidence among consumers in long run. It may even curb parallel imports.

However, we want the logistics to gear up. We want Government to build more capacity in terms of labs. In IT industry even a four week delay is crucial with product life spans getting smaller every year.

Our first request is to postpone the deadline at least by six months, and then increase the number of labs. We also want Government to simplify procedures so that no vendor is unnecessarily hassled, and consumers in the country have latest and best available products at lowest price always.


What happens after April 3, 2013?
Government has advised various customs ports only to allow import of goods that has received the BIS standard. We have been told that a product model that has not received certification will be confiscated, and not allowed to be brought into the country.

While MAIT welcomes the government order, there are just six labs in the country which offers testing services which can certify a product. The combined capacity among these labs is just 500 devices per month at this point of time.

We estimate that among the recognized players alone there are 8,000 models that needs certification, and government recognized labs are unable to certify all these products before the deadline, and the backlogs are huge.  This could seriously impact business, and we estimate an immediate loss of Rs 1,000 crore to the industry, if government goes ahead with April 3 deadline. There will be shortages of several product lines, and could result in finally the consumer paying for more. It is not in interest of anyone.


Source: copied from CRN....

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Starting from next month, Bangalore is expected to have free wireless internet services at 2 major commercial destinations, M.G.Road and the Brigade road. Bangalore will be the first city in India to have free Wi-Fi service available at public spots. Last year, decision was made to provide free wireless broadband.

As of now, they want to test how well this plan would be piloted and the evaluation would be done based network availability. This would go for 6 months after which plans for further expansion would be planned accordingly. This piloting would be free of charge and once the piloting is successful, talks would be done with private ISP's and figure out a revenue-generating model.

Monday, March 11, 2013

2 years ago, there was a great earthquake in Tohoku region, Japan. Magnitude of the quake was 9.0 and the intensity was so devastating that it ended up creating an history for nuclear accident which is the second largest one in the world that happened till now.
Latest and sensational news is that this earthquake that happened on 11th March 2011, had a far more story. The tremor was detected by a satellite named "Goce" which is at the edge of space. When the earthquake happened, Goce satellite detected a ripple of sound at the 255th Km above the earth.
  According to experts, when quakes occur, they generate very low frequency waves or sometimes infrasound which is really below discernible to human ear. But they wonder "how can a satellite in orbit has the capability to record them"? Even though the satellite is ultra-sensitive to record these disturbances, it must be very low so that it can sense those waves.

My question is, "Was this really a natural disaster or was it a secret weapon used by any other nation to create such a massive earthquake which caused a Tsunami and finally ended up with history's second largest nuclear accident"?