'Nothing Can Be Free Forever', Airtel Complains to TRAI About Jio Offer

October 26, 2016

Oct 26: Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal on Wednesday took exception to free voice calls offered by Reliance Jio, saying nothing could be free forever.

airtel1Speaking on the sidelines of an event here organised by GSMA, Mittal urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to look into the issue. "TRAI needs to settle the issue of Reliance Jio free tariffs. Nothing can be free for a lifetime," Mittal said.

Recently, the regulator had said that it had found no faults with Jio's tariff plans.

Mittal said his company would respond to the government and the regulator regarding the penalties slapped on it, along with two other service providers, for denying sufficient points of interconnections (PoI) to Reliance Jio.

"TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) must have some confusion regarding the PoIs offered to Reliance Jio," Mittal said.

The TRAI on October 21 slapped heavy penalties on three telecom players - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular - amounting to Rs. 3,050 crores for not providing sufficient PoIs to Reliance Jio.

It also said the action of the three operators showed "ulterior motive to stifle competition".

In similar letters to the three players, the watchdog said it has recommended a penal action of Rs. 50 crores per licence service area (LSA) (except Jammu & Kashmir) where PoI congestion exceeded the allowable limit of 0.5 percent as reported by Airtel/Vodafone/Idea Cellular through emails on September 23 this year.

In the case of Airtel and Vodafone, the fines imposed were for 21 LSAs, amounting to Rs. 1,050 crores each while in the case of Idea, the fine was Rs. 950 crores for 19 LSAs.

The regulator had received a letter from Reliance Jio on July 14, stating that the incumbent players were not providing it with sufficient E1s (interconnect points, with technical parameters).

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Agencies
March 18,2020

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 18: To raise awareness about protective measures against coronavirus, Kerala Police released a dance video on the State Police Media Centre's Facebook page promoting the washing of hands, here on Tuesday.

In the video, the police officers were seen dancing to the tunes of Kalakkatha from the Malayalam action-drama thriller Ayyappanum Koshiyum while demonstrating the right technique for washing hands.

The video gained over 27,000 likes and over 2,400 comments and more than 33,000 netizens shared the video.

The video has received a positive response with users congratulating Kerala Police for the initiative.

"Congrats Kerala police media for this kind of initiative," one user commented on Facebook. Another user thanked the police in the comments section saying, "Super super thanks to KL (Kerala) police."

The number of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in Kerala is 25.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India has reached 147, including 122 Indians and 25 foreign nationals, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare earlier today.

Globally, the virus has infected more than 184,000 people and killed more than 7500, as per the data available on the World Health Organisation website.

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Agencies
June 22,2020

Chennai, Jun 22: Commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment for five convicts, the Madras High Court on Monday set free Chinnasamy, the main convict, who had also been sentenced to death in the Udumalpet Shankar honour killing case.

A Division Bench comprising Justice M. Sathyanarayanan and Justice M. Nirmal Kumar also dismissed the appeal by the state police against the acquittal of three persons by a lower court.

The Bench ordered the five convicts sentenced for life to undergo a jail term of not less than 25 years.

In 2016, V. Shankar, who had married C. Kausalya, was killed by a gang in Udumalpet in Tamil Nadu. The gang also injured Kausalya in the attack.

It was alleged the parents of Kausalya -- Chinnasamy, Annalakshmi -- were against the marriage.

P. Pandidurai, the uncle of Kausalya at the behest of Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi had hired a gang to kill Shankar.

The gang killed Shankar in broad daylight in a public place and Kausalya too got injured in the attack as she tried to save her husband.

The Principal District and Sessions Court in Tiruppur had convicted and sentenced to death six accused persons -- Chinnasamy, P. Jagadeesan, P. Selvakumar, M. Manikandan, M. Mathan alias Michael and P. Kalaithamilvaanan.

The court also sentenced two other accused, K. Dhanraj for life and Manikandan to a five year jail term, while acquitting Annalakshmi, Pandidurai and Prasanna.

The convicts had filed an appeal against their sentence in the Madras High Court while the police filed an appeal against the acquittal of three persons.

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Agencies
March 16,2020

While Google is still working on a coronavirus screening and tracking website, Microsoft Bing team has already launched a web portal for tracking COVID-19 infections worldwide.

The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country.

The COVID-19 Tracker currently lists 168,835 as total confirmed cases, 84,558 active cases, 77,761 recovered cases and 6,516 deaths.

There are at least 3,244 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the US and at least 61 deaths.

"Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, was quoted as saying in a ZDNet report on Sunday.

An interactive map allows site visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases and related articles from a variety of publishers.

Data is being aggregated from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Microsoft announced the website two days after US President Donald Trump said Google has begun working on COVID-19-related portal for US citizens.

Google's website is being built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on healthcare services.

"More than 1,700 engineers are currently working on the site", Trump said during a press briefing last week.

The tool will triage people who are concerned about their COVID-19 risk into testing sites based on guidance from public health officials and test availability.

Initially, there was some confusion on Google's coronavirus portal but the company later announced that it is "partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk, and testing information."

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