Walled Garder : What are the phone company problems.

municipal WiFi" -- the effort by cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia to offer citywide wireless services that AT&T and Verizon fought (a struggle Verizon has largely abandoned but AT&T is still pursuing). It's evident in battles that are just starting on Capitol Hill over emerging technologies, such as a proposal to open the empty space between TV channels to powerful WiFi-like services that would pose a serious threat to the telcos' $60- to $80-a-month wireless broadband businesses. And you can see it in less technologically sexy areas as well: Verizon crippling freatures on its phones that would let users send photos or games to and from their computers without paying Verizon, or AT&T's yearlong foot-dragging in giving Internet phone competitor Vonage (VG ) access to its 911 switches.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/06_31/b3995070.htm?chan=mz

Mobile for Kids.

TECH TALK: Extreme Competition: Foreword by Rejesh Jain

Interesting article by Rajesh Jain

Today?s world looks very different from the vantage point of where I reside here in Mumbai, India. It is a world full of infinite opportunities as companies seek to leapfrog the legacy of decades of slow development. It is a world with youthful energy and money being unleashed as one navigates the new malls and restaurants coming up all over. It is a world where mobile phones connect people who never used a landline before?and perhaps will never use a desktop computer, opting for more advanced NetPCs and wireless devices of all manner.
It is also a world where the services juggernaut in urban India is complemented by the largely agricultural rural economy, where hundreds of millions still live in poverty. It?s a world where the old still exists and, at times, even dominates the new. The contrasts may be stark, but there is one thing that is ubiquitous in my homeland: Optimism! For the first time in living memory, there is a belief that tomorrow will be better than today. That perception alone can make all the difference. I see not just the Old India of yesterday, but the New India of tomorrow. It is an India that will be built in a world of extreme competition, and extreme opportunities?powered by transformations and disruptions.
Disruptions are technological shifts that can provide opportunities for newcomers to take on incumbents?and perhaps usurp their power. It happens all the time. Today?s king is not guaranteed to be tomorrow?s emperor. We have seen this in history and politics, and we also see it in business. While at times, incumbents hasten their downfall by questionable decisions (in retrospect), at other times entrepreneurial start-ups, with some luck, race their way to the top. While there is no magic formula, understanding disruptions and key trends is crucial for success. This is the journey Peter takes us through?from business process transformation creating real-time enterprises, to the combined buying power of the billions in the world?s emerging, underserved markets. Today?s world is one of complexity, but a thorough understanding of the underlying principles can help in reaching new markets and customers.
I am a strong believer that there is a tectonic shift taking place in the world. The East is rising. And with a reverse brain drain of talent taking place from the West, innovations are now starting to flow from the world?s emerging markets?with the potential to blowback to the developed nations. Today?s non-consumers are becoming the new battleground?because their delight will shed light on the economic future of all nations. What is needed is an understanding of the present to build a vision of the future. Extreme Competition provides the needed framework to peer through the fog of today, and unravel the contours of tomorrow

What’s the Secret to Your Success?

from:

As a CEO, I get asked this a lot. And, I'm always a little embarrassed by it. For the most part, I get the question from people who are in their twenties. They want to know “the secret path to the top.”
This past weekend, I received an email from one of my readers. He started, “I have an MBA, but I must have missed the course on Fast-Tracking My Career. If you had to boil it down to one thing, Mr. Hyatt, what would you recommend to a young, aspiring person such as myself?”
I'm not sure I could boil it down to one thing. Life isn’t usually that simple. But if I really, really had to boil it down to one thing, I would say this: responsiveness.
So many people I meet are unresponsive. They don’t return their phone calls promptly. They don’t answer their emails quickly. They don’t complete their assignments on time. They promise to do something and never follow through. They have to be reminded, prodded, and nagged. This behavior creates work for everyone else and eats into their own productivity. Sadly, they seem oblivious to it.
When I was a kid, we used to play “Tag.” The objective was simple: keep from becoming “It.” If someone tagged you (touched you), you became “it” until you tagged someone else. Whoever was “it” when the game ended, lost.
Business is very similar. People “tag” us in countless ways every day. They place calls. They send emails. They mention something to us in a meeting. Suddenly, we are “it.” And, just like the game, if you stay “it” too long, you lose. The only winning strategy is to respond quickly and make someone else “it.”
Reality is that we live in an “instant world.” People want instant results. They don’t want to wait. And if they have to wait on you, their frustration and resentment grows. They begin to see you as an obstacle to getting their work done. If that happens, it will begin to impact your reputation. Pretty soon people start saying, “I can never get a timely response from him,” or “When I send her an email, I feel like it goes into a black hole,” or worse, your colleagues just roll their eyes and sigh at the mention of your name.
Yet, these are the very people who will push you up or pull you down. You cannot succeed without the support of your peers and subordinates. (Go back and re-read that sentence again.)
As I was making my way to the top, my former boss, Sam Moore, used to ask everyone I worked with, “What’s it like to work with Mike?” “How’s he really doing?” “Do you think he could take on more responsibility?” In responding to him, all they had was their experience with me. If I hadn’t been responsive to them, how do you think they would have responded to his questions? “More responsibility? Are you kidding me? He can’t handle what he has now!” It wouldn’t take too many candid responses like that to tank my career.
And yet this happens to people all the time. I can’t tell you how many meetings I have sat in where people are complaining about someone else’s work habits. “He always waits until the last minute.” “She never plans ahead.” “I can never get him to respond to my emails.” You may think that the people who are making these comments are too far down the food chain to matter. I can assure you they aren’t. They have a way of bubbling to the top where the decisions about your career are made.
The truth is, you are building your reputation—your brand—one response at a time. People are shaping their view of you by how you respond to them. If you are slow, they assume you are incompetent and over your head. If you respond quickly, they assume you are competent and on top of your work. Their perception, whether you realize it or not, will determine how fast your career advances and how high you go. You can’t afford to be unresponsive. It is a career-killer.
My basic rule is this: respond immediately unless there is a good reason to wait. Obviously, this isn’t always possible, especially since I spend so much time in meetings. Nevertheless, I rarely let messages sit longer than a day. Twenty-four hours is the outside edge. If you can’t respond now, then at least acknowledge that you have received the message: “I received your message. I don’t have time to give it the attention it deserves right now, but you can expect to hear from me before the end of the day tomorrow.”
The great thing about being responsive is that it will quickly differentiate you from your peers. People love doing business with responsive people. Nothing will advance your career faster than this

India Rising

Rajesh Jain lists the points

1. Increased Capital Availability
2. Growth Beyond Metro
3. Bharat Becons
4. Services Boom continues
5. Media mania.

Hampi Snaps

Marketing Communications Future:

The Twilight Of Interruption, The Dawn Of Engagement Marketing
Traditional marketing methods are losing their grip on customers at an alarming rate. Trade shows, trade publications and direct mail deliver a fraction of the ROI they did only 2 years ago.
Consumers themselves have changed beyond recognition.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/12/01/marketing_communications_future_the_twilight.htm

India, Inc.

No longer just an outsourcing hub for low-level jobs, India is luring top American talent and unprecedented new investments by tech giants like Microsoft and Intel.
Universities are responding to the demand for international experience, particularly in emerging Asian markets. Last summer, Yale president Richard Levin took a 12-member team to set up joint ventures with several Indian universities. The Ivy League school will send 30 interns over this year and expects to send 50 next year. It also has 30 faculty collaboration projects underway in a number of subjects ranging from public health, to management and forestry. And this year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's India program, funded by the National Science Foundation, flew over 28 Ph.D.s to pursue their research in science and economics. "MIT sends students because it's aware of our globalized world," says coordinator Deepti Nijhawan. "But it's a leap of faith."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10455090/site/newsweek/

Brad Stone on Digital Life in 2006

Podcast at
http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=a3f98c1076263bd02bd7abf4c40a1793

Beware of IIPM

IIPM Blog Wars Redux

http://iipmexposed.blogspot.com/
Story

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India Investment Soars 487%

High-profile deals are attracting investors to the subcontinent.October 7, 2005
Private equity investment in India jumped almost six-fold in the third quarter from last year’s level, propelled in part by several high-profile acquisitions and IPOs, according to a study released Friday.

Investment increased 487 percent to $528 million during the third quarter, up from $90 million during the same period last year, according to the report by Venture Intelligence India.

Venture capitalists and private equity investors invested in 28 companies between the beginning of July and the end of September, up from the eight companies that were funded during the third quarter of 2004.

The biggest private equity investments were Newbridge Capital’s $100-million investment in truck-financing company Shriram Holdings and ICICI Ventures’ $59.8-million buyout of Associated Cement Companies’ refractory business.

The biggest tech deals were 3i’s $45-million investment in Nimbus Communications and Dr. Reddy’s Labs spin-off of Perlecan Pharma (see Perlecan Pharma Raises $52.5M). Other tech firms that saw cash were Nevis Networks, July Systems, VisualSoft Technologies, and Four Soft.

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How to develop a good knowledge worker?

UBIQUITY: So then what does it take to develop a good knowledge worker?
DAVENPORT: Well, the approach adopted by most organizations in the past is that all you really had to do is hire high-quality people in the first place — I refer to this as the HSPALTA syndrome ("Hire Smart People and Leave Them Alone). Of course, it's always a good idea to hire smart and capable people, and so it's always a good idea to put a lot of energy into attracting the right kind of knowledge workers and retaining them; but in my book I really focus on what are the kind of interventions you can make into making knowledge workers more effective. These include technological interventions, managerial interventions, workplace interventions, and social interventions.

UBIQUITY: Talk a little about those different kinds of interventions, starting with technological interventions.
DAVENPORT: I divided them into two types. First, there are things you do at an organizational level — things that from an IT perspective would be seen as applications for helping groups of knowledge workers do their work. One of my favorite examples is the approach taken by Partners HealthCare, which takes the knowledge a physician needs and embeds it into the structure of the work, and provides an electronic ordering system that has all the knowledge built into it; it's been fantastically successful, and basically every hospital in the land would like to do something similar. You know, it would be quite unsettling for a patient to hear the physician saying, "I've never really seen this before, I'm going to go do a quick Google search on it." For some reason we think that's bad behavior in physicians, though in other professions we think it would be very responsible. But with the Partners HealthCare approach the knowledge is in a sense injected into the nature of the daily work. In my book I give some other real-life examples but there aren't nearly as many of those as there ought to be.

UBIQUITY: Interesting. What's the second category?
DAVENPORT: And then the other, more general category I talk about is personal information and knowledge management, which is even less common than organizational applications. Every organization gives its knowledge workers Outlook or Lotus Notes or a spreadsheet or something like that, but they don't really help the knowledge workers figure out how to use these things effectively despite. The average knowledge worker spends 3 hours and 14 minutes a day just processing electronic information, so why not lend them a hand in doing this effectively? Intel is a particularly good example or an organization that does this right. Intel employees do 8,300 Web conferences and 19,000 audio conferences a week, so the company decided, Gee, if we're going to do these quite this frequently maybe we could help people by giving them some templates for running an effective meeting with electronic tools, and we could let them customize their office-related software to accommodate these things. So Intel did some nice segmentation based on how mobile the workers are and how aggressively they use new technology, and the company used the segmentation data to figure out what solutions made sense for what different types of knowledge workers. It's probably the single most aggressive firm on this kind of personal dimension.

UBIQUITY: Tell us now about the other types of intervention are.
DAVENPORT: First, there are interventions into the physical workplace. The frustrating thing about this one is that we do these interventions every day but we don't really learn anything because we don't do any measurements.

UBIQUITY: Example?
DAVENPORT: We move people from closed offices to open offices, or we move them into shared-office "hoteling" environments, or we tell them to work at home instead of coming into the office; in fact, we typically change multiple things at once, and we give them a new manager and new computer stuff and change the office kind of all at the same time. So we have not a clue about what's effective and what's not. A good example of creative workplace design is a place like IDEO, which basically offers free choice about what you want your workspace to look like. You're given your little area and if you want to bring in an airplane wing because you think it's got a really inspiring design and will help you be a better product designer, that's just fine with IDEO, as long as you can find a way to fix it to the ceiling so it won't fall on anybody. It uses a "mass-personalized" solution, which combines a group work setting low on segmentation (all employees share the same standard group work setting), but high on individual choice (employees are encouraged to bring in their own creative accoutrements to supplement the group solution).

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Knowledge Workers Need More Supervision

They don't like to be told what to do. They enjoy more autonomy than other workers. Much of their work is invisible and hard to measure, because it goes on inside their heads or outside the office. They are a growing part of the U.S. workforce, and their skills are hard to replace.

They're knowledge workers, and they are performing well below their potential because companies still don't know how to manage them, says Thomas Davenport, professor of information technology and management at Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass., and director of research for Babson's executive education program.

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Innovation: Challenges

Well over a century ago, American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson famously surmised that "If a an can make a better mousetrap . . . though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." Emerson assumed two things, of course—that innovation was something done in-house (literally), and that the innovator and the merchant were one and the same. But today, companies are increasingly challenging these durable assumptions.

Don’t get us wrong. Innovation in products, services and processes is as much—or more—a key to long-term growth and competitive success as it ever was. But it is becoming less and
less clear to executives just how to turn investment in innovation—or an innovation itself—into the economic returns and eager customers that Emerson’s aphorism implies. going to external sources for innovation. Why? Because they choose partners in an ad hoc manner and
rely on local management skills to ensure that projects deliver the promised benefits. And these companies often focus too narrowly on products when they think about innovation and hence source innovation on a case-by-case basis.

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Gates on Google.

Gates' mantra hasn't changed much in 20 years: The PC is the center of the computing universe, and Windows, along with Office and other products, represents the best platform for new software development. What is new, and is much in evidence this week in Los Angeles, is the growing influence of Web-based development.

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Indian VC firm Westbridge Capital Partners closes second fund, while other firms explore expansion.

WestBridge Capital Partners said on Wednesday that it has closed its second fund, WestBridge Ventures II, LLC, with $200 million in commitments.

WestBridge, the largest and most active venture capital fund in India with approximately $350 million under management, will continue to focus on high-growth companies that target both the domestic and export markets across a variety of sectors, including outsourcing services, information technology, healthcare, and the Internet.

“We are pleased to announce a very successful close to our fundraising efforts for WestBridge Ventures II,” said Sumir Chadha, senior managing director of WestBridge. “The fund was highly oversubscribed, with strong interest both from existing investors in Fund I as well as many top-tier U.S. endowments and foundations.”

The WestBridge VC team is based in Bangalore and Silicon Valley. Westbridge’s portfolio includes July Systems, Emagia, AppLabs Technologies. Strand Genomics, ICICI OneSource, Tarang Software, and Celetronix International.

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Premji's five mantras to transform India

IT major Wipro group's chairman Azim Premji on Tuesday spelt out a five-point mantra that he said would completely transform India socially and economically.
Drawing parallels with India's knowledge industry, Premji however said his five-point strategy comprised initiatives on land reforms, energy, health, primary education and interlinking of rivers that were no short-term drivers.
These areas require a lot of sweat and labour and are worth the trouble in the long run, he said while delivering the eighth JRD Tata Memorial Lecture organised here by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).

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What's Driving India's Rise as an R&D Hub?

India has long enjoyed a reputation as a destination for IT and business process outsourcing. Now, the country is fast emerging as a major center for cutting-edge research and development (R&D) projects for global multinationals such as Microsoft and Motorola as well as Indian firms. More and more companies in industries ranging from IT and telecommunications through pharmaceuticals and biotech are setting up ambitious R&D projects, in part to serve the Indian market, but also with an eye to delivering new generations of products faster to the global market.

What forces are shaping these trends? What does the future hold? To answer these questions and more, Knowledge@Wharton collaborated with The Economic Times Intelligence Group in Mumbai, India, on this special report on R&D in India. The articles below explore the factors driving global R&D toward India, the opportunities and challenges of contract research, and the human capital challenge that India faces, among several others.

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India rises, Silicon Valley drools

Promod Haque grew up in the old India, born into a lower-middle-class family, but he was lucky enough to attend a school in New Delhi for the children of wealthy dignitaries. His father was a bureaucrat; his mother took a job as a teacher elsewhere to cover his tuition. "I was very fortunate to go there," he says, "but I was an outsider."

After he graduated in engineering and started selling medical gear in India, he proudly bought his parents their first refrigerator. Two years later, in 1972, he arrived in the US for grad school at Northwestern -- and was stunned to see that every student apartment had its own fridge.

"I was amazed by all the affluence." Haque (pronounced "Hock") went four years without talking to his folks, who had no phone; they wrote letters. He never returned to live in India. In 1978 his parents joined him in Chicago.

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Internet 2.0

Bob Kagle hasn't been this busy since 1999. In the past three months the Benchmark Capital general partner has led investments in no less than four Internet companies, including an online service that connects attorneys with corporate clients and a Web-based marketplace where you can ship everything from a piano to a horse. And Kagle is just getting warmed up. "I'm looking at four more Internet deals that I just love," he says giddily. "It's getting hard to restrain myself, so I think I'll just have to do them all."

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Narayana Murthy's dream for the future

India's software giant Infosys Technologies Limited has entered its 25th year of existence. In these 25 years, the company has scaled many a peak, making the nation proud of it.
N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys, however, has plans to turn the company into a bigger, stronger, and global player.

At an analysts' meet, held to mark the silver jubilee celebrations of Infosys in Hyderabad, Murthy spoke about his future for the company.
Here's the speech that he delivered.

Link

India's Software Dream Run Is Far From Over

It's a lament one often hears nowadays: Indian software programmers, those global icons of cheap brainpower, have become greedy.
With compensation costs in the Indian software industry climbing 12.5 percent annually the past two years, some investors are now concerned about how long the country can hold on to its most promising industry.

``If salaries continue to escalate,'' Promod Haque, managing partner of Palo Alto, California-based Norwest Venture Partners, recently told Bloomberg News, ``China is more attractive to us as venture capitalists, Israel is more attractive to us, and Eastern Europe is more attractive to us.''

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the next big thing

It seems that Asia, China in particular, is undergoing amazing growth through innovation. Arguably there is more innovation coming from that region of the world than anywhere else right now. How does Silicon Valley stack up in terms of innovation currently? Where will the “next big thing” come from?Keith Thesing

Bill Gurley: Keith, that is an insanely insightful question. There are many reasons why Silicon Valley is an epicentre, and there have been death-knell calls before, as far back as several decades. What you see today is real however. Asia and Europe matter in innovation and will forever. Can the US keep up? I don’t know. I worry deeply about the lack of concern over our broadband policy. We are falling each year in terms of broadband per capita, and yet some want to pass laws that say cities can’t choose to rectify this situation. We will fail to innovate if we fail to recognise the importance of the technology infrastructure. The other equally important issue is education. China graduates 600,000 engineers a year, we graduate 70,000. And we just adjusted the SAT from 50/50 math to English to 33/67. Is that the right direction? I doubt it.

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Cisco to buy Nokia??

Cisco mulls buying Nokia-paper

LONDON (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc. is considering buying the world's top mobile handset maker
Nokia in a bid to gain its wireless infrastructure technology, the Business newspaper reported on Sunday.

The paper, which did not reveal the source of its information, said U.S.-based Cisco had traditionally concentrated on acquisitions of niche technology players, but its Chief Executive John Chambers is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company.

"Nokia has been identified as the most likely target," the paper said.

Cisco, the largest maker of Internet equipment, is worth around $123 billion, while Nokia's market value is around $71 billion.

WLAN Market to Double

In a newly released report, Dell'Oro Group forecasts that enterprise Wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment, both access points as well as switch/appliances, will overwhelm the market for standalone WLAN equipment. According to the report, DSL and Cable customer premises equipment will increasingly come with embedded WLAN, significantly reducing the need for standalone WLAN devices in the SOHO or consumer market. Similarly, as WLAN becomes embedded in more client devices such as notebook computers, PDAs, and telephones, the need for add-on network interface cards will diminish.

"Despite reductions in other areas, standalone gear will continue to thrive in the enterprise," said Greg Collins, Senior Director of Wireless LAN Research at Dell'Oro Group. "Dependent access points and switch/appliance solutions will drive enterprise growth because these devices are more secure and easier to manage than WLAN networks based on independent access points."

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Bangalore to be unwired soon

BANGALORE: The Silicon Valley of India could soon be on par with cities like San Jose, Philadelphia, Westminster and Taipei. Karnataka government, in association with industry, is planning to make Bangalore a "Wi-Fi Zone", that will provide easy and seamless Internet access to individuals, households and corporates, sans cable wires, modems or dial-up devices.

Speaking to The Times of India, state IT secretary M K Shankaralinge Gowda said the project would be a joint effort between government, companies like Intel, and Internet service providers. "We are currently in the process of drafting a viable business model. And only after that we will have clarity on issues like revenue sharing, implementation and cost of the services," he said. The state is also planning to come out with a wireless policy to facilitate Wi-Fi initiatives.

The city has over 200 hot-spots (wireless Internet access points). "We'll leverage on the existing optic fibre cable network that lies around the city to run this project, thereby making Wi-Fi/WiMAX literally the last mile access," he said.

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15 mln Indians have PCs, 5 mln are online

Aiming at India's volume PC market, two vendors this week launched entry-level products that run Linux (Overview, Articles, Company) and are priced at about $230.

Backing these initiatives is the country's minister for communications and information technology, Dayanidhi Maran, whose aim is to increase PC penetration in the country.

Currently, 15 million people in India own a PC and there are 5 million Internet connections in the country, according to Maran. The aim of the Indian government is to increase the number of people owning a PC to 75 million and the number of Internet connections to 45 million by 2010. To achieve this objective, the country needs low-cost PCs, said Maran at a launch Monday in Chennai, commenting on a $230 PC from HCL Infosystems Ltd., a large PC vendor in Noida, near Delhi.

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Online Banking trends and Age

100$ Laptop

What is the $100 Laptop, really?The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. These rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The cost of materials for each laptop is estimated to be approximately $90, which includes the display, as well as the processor and memory, and allows for $10 for contingency or profit.

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Infosys to invest $10 mn in Shanghai

Infosys Technologies Ltd on Wednesday said it will invest $10 million to set up a software development campus in Shanghai in association with Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park.
The company's Chinese subsidiary, has signed a letter of intent with Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park to set up a software development campus in Shanghai at an investment of $10 million in the next two years, Infosys informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The centre will be set up on 25,000 sq mt of land, with a seating capacity for 1,000 engineers.

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India: An Agent of Change

That's how Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani sees the country's impact on the U.S. economy, through globalization and outsourcing

While many U.S. tech companies are stuck in the slow-demand doldrums, India's Infosys Technologies (INFY ) is soaring. Revenues were up 42% last quarter. The reason: Infosys and its Indian brethren are rewriting the rules of global competition in the software and tech-services industries with their use of highly skilled but low-cost Indian talent.

As a member of a group of 10 Indian business leaders, Infosys Chief Executive Nandan M. Nilekani accompanied Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his state visit with President George W. Bush on July 18. Those business leaders make up the Indian contingent of a 20-person CEO Forum that has been set up to promote commerce and understanding between the two countries.

Nilekani stopped at BusinessWeek's New York offices on July 26 and spoke with writers and editors, including Senior Writer Steve Hamm. Edited excerpts of the interview follow:

Full Article

A Brain Trust in Bangalore

Sarnoff and other big tech names are setting up research operations in India -- and not just because of the cheap labor

They call it the monkey incident. A couple of months ago, a handful of engineers at Sarnoff Corp.'s lab in Bangalore, India, were conference-calling with colleagues at the research-for-hire outfit's headquarters in Princeton, N.J. They were sitting around a table in a meeting room when they heard loud banging from behind an air conditioner cover on the wall. One of them lifted the cover, and a baby monkey leaped into the room and raced around underfoot.

Two of the engineers were so surprised that they jumped up on the table. Then, "We all fled the room and closed the door," says Kiran Nayak, one of the participants, who recalls the incident with a huge smile.

It all turned out well in the end. In due time, the monkey returned to its mother, out on the building's ledge, and the engineers reclaimed their conference room and resumed talking about data-compression algorithms.

Such are the oddities of global research collaboration.


Full Article

From T-shirts to T-bonds

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China and the world economy

From T-shirts to T-bonds

Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Beijing, not Washington, increasingly takes the decisions that affect workers, companies, financial markets and economies everywhere

Get article background

GLOBAL tremors in the currency, bond and commodity markets greeted China's announcement that the yuan will no longer be pegged to the dollar. No longer is it just Washington that has the power to cause shockwaves. For many people, the tremors reflected the view that China is the root cause of America's trade deficit, and that the revaluation is a partial cure.

In fact, that view is wrong on several counts. China is not the main cause of the American trade deficit. On the other hand, China is behind almost everything else going on in the world economy. For China is beginning to drive, in a new and pervasive way, economic trends that many countries assume to be domestically determined.

Americans like to slap the “made in China” label on their huge trade deficit. Yet not only is China's forecast current-account surplus of around $100 billion this year only a fraction of America's likely deficit of $800 billion, but, as chart 1 shows, most of the increase in America's trade deficit has come from outside China. The main cause of America's trade deficit is a lack of domestic saving, not unfair Chinese competition. The deficit is thus made in America, not made in China.

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The war of the wires

Established telecoms companies are fighting an increasingly bitter battle against innovative attackers

“WE'RE not a telephone company anymore; I sort of resent that,” says Lea Ann Champion, an executive at SBC, America's second-largest “Baby Bell”. “We're a communications and entertainment company.” Well, maybe. Ms Champion is in charge of “lightspeed”, an SBC project to deliver TV, movies and other entertainment to customers via hugely enhanced broadband connections using internet protocol—a service known in short as IPTV. Lightspeed, which will cost $4 billion, has hit technological and legal snags recently that could slow its roll-out, scheduled to begin at the end of this year. But sooner or later IPTV will happen, if only because telecoms companies all over the world are betting on it. And when it does it will be controversial.

That is because IPTV forms part of a larger, and quite desperate, defensive strategy now being adopted by telecoms firms against fierce attacks on multiple fronts. On one front are cable giants, such as America's Comcast, which are luring customers with an enticing “triple-play bundle” of TV, broadband and telephony services. On a second front are mobile-phone operators, which young customers in particular are increasingly using to “cut the cord” from their fixed-line company.

But arguably most dangerous of all is the third front, where traditional telecoms firms are under attack from voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) providers, which use the internet to carry conversations that would previously have taken place via a conventional phone. TeleGeography, a research firm, estimates that the number of subscribers to VOIP services such as Vonage, which lets users plug their traditional phones into a gadget connected to the internet, will grow from 1.8m at the start of this year to 4m by the end of December in America alone; by 2010, it projects over 17m American subscribers. This does not count the world's largest VOIP provider, Skype, which uses a small and simple software application to let users make free calls between computers—so far, it has been downloaded 141m times.

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ndia's tech boom sparks recruitment rush

Full @
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050727/tc_nm/india_jobs_dc;_ylt=AmlBu8Unfz2A_5JzuhtC0lZT.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

WSJ: Huawei in US

http://www.emergic.org/archives/2005/07/30/index.html#huawei_in_us

The Next PC Revolution Will Be Televised

It uses less power than a night-light and plugs into a TV. Best of all, as the first $100 computer, it's affordable enough to propel the rest of the world into the digital age.

By Om Malik, July 20, 2005 About two miles inland from Chennai's long white-sand beaches -- part of a stretch of Indian coastline hammered by last year's tsunami -- the downtown sidewalks buzz with life during the morning rush. Vendors flog coconut water and newspapers while rope-thin men in ankle-length lungis jostle for space with office workers in polo shirts and slacks. Three floors up in one of the city's numerous office towers, past a row of cubicles and half a dozen programmers, 38-year-old Rajesh Jain points to a table that holds, he'll tell you repeatedly, personal computing's next big thin

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OMmalik : VSNL, a new voice giant awakens.

Growing up in India, I would often hear about VSNL, the god forsaken government owned phone company that made it almost impossible to call overseas, thanks to their over-the-top charges for long distance calls. It seemed they wanted to penalize people for making long distance calls. But that was almost a whole lifetime ago. Now VSNL is no longer a government owned company. Instead it is the center piece of Indian conglomerate, Tata’s telecom play. For less than half-a-billion dollars they have put together a global network that is third biggest voice carrier - right behind AT&T and MCI. (Telegeography puts the combined company at #5, so I need to clarify this point!)

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Google's Magic Bus

A few lucky people actually look forward to the daily commute. Just ask one of about 300 Google employees who regularly go to and from the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., on the company's free Wi-Fi-equipped shuttles.
NO ROAMING PENALTIES Google (GOOG) project manager Cari Spivack conceived of the Bay Area-wide busing program. "People have moved up to San Francisco because they know they can take the shuttle to work," she says.
TIME SAVER The biodiesel-fueled shuttle and its carpool-lane privileges can cut a 90-minute commute in half.
STAY CONNECTED Web access comes via a high-speed cellular data network and an 802.11g wireless router. "Riders tell me they're experiencing a boost in productivity," Spivack says. And, presumably, a lot less road rage.

Here

What I wish I knew when I was 20

Here

The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims

IIPM - One of the Top 10 B-Schools in India”
“Ranked #4 in Industry Interface (Ahead of 3 IIMs)”
“Ranked #7 in International Linkages (Ahead of 2 IIMs)”
“Ranked #8 in Extra-curricular activities (Ahead of 6 IIMs)”
- as advertised by IIPM in Times of India, dt May 16, 2005

This “data” is from the Outlook-C fore rankings 2003. IIPM Delhi was ranked 17th in the overall list of the Top 50 B-schools. No other branch of IIPM made it to this list. But that’s not the only thing surprising about it.

A brief visit to the webpage of the list on www.indiabschools.com (a website run by C fore, the research agency which put together the list for Outlook) will give you this information - “IIPM has been removed from ranking as we received serious complaints about the veracity of information given by them.”

So how can IIPM continue using these rankings, AFTER they’ve been removed from them? We asked Premchand Palety, CEO, C Fore and this is what he said, “Most of their (IIPM’s) advertisements are false and overstate facts. The action has to be taken by some regulatory body related to false advertisements.”

HERE
http://www.jammag.com/careers/articles/mbacorner/iipm/index.htm

PHP Usage growth

Globalization led to outsourcing: PM

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said outsourcing was a logical outcome of the process of globalization and urged US companies to work together with India to ensure that this process moved forward.

“I sincerely believe that outsourcing is a logical outcome of the process of globalization. And that we have to work together to ensure that this process moves forward and not backwards,” Singh said at a press conference in the US.

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Fueling Asia's Future: India, China race to create ties with oil-rich nations

"The likely emergence of China and India as new major global players ... will transform the geopolitical landscape," said the report titled Mapping the Global Future. "In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the 'American Century,' the early 21st century may be seen as the time when some in the developing world, led by India and China, come into their own."

The report also said that energy demand through 2020, especially by India and China, "will have substantial impacts on geopolitical relations."

Bush also feted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the White House in clear recognition of that country's growing significance.

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Lunar Surfing !!

Amazing,

http://moon.google.com/

Press F5 to increase size.

Together at last

America adds substance to its professions of friendship for India

America’s professions of friendship have of late started to ring rather hollow. It has remained committed to its strong alliance with India’s nuclear-powered neighbour and rival, Pakistan. It has refused to endorse India’s chief foreign-policy goal, a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council. It opposes India’s cherished project to pipe gas from Iran across Pakistan. And it has withheld co-operation in military and nuclear technology because India tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and has never signed up to the international non-proliferation regime.

Of these four areas of contention, Mr Singh’s visit marked a breakthrough only on the last. But this one matters so much that it has transformed the relationship. America has agreed to help India acquire “the same benefits and advantages” as other states with nuclear weapons. India is to be granted “full civil nuclear energy co-operation”—such as fuel supplies and the transfer of technology.

This is hugely important for India. One of the biggest constraints on the continuing success of its fast-growing economy is an electricity shortage. Nuclear energy, which at present accounts for only about 3% of total generation, is, in many eyes, an attractive alternative to coal and expensive imported oil and gas.

World Growth : 2005

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Korea : The Road to $20,000 GDP/capita [IT 839 Strategy]

The 839 Implementation Plan
		8 Services - WiBro Service - DMB Service - Home Network Service - Telematics Service - RFID based Service - W-CDMA Service - Terrestrial Digital TV - Internet Telephony (VoIP)
		3 Infrastructures - Broadband Convergence Network (BcN) - Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) - Next-Generation Internet Protocol (IPv6)
		9 New Growth Engines - Next-Generation Mobile Communications - Digital TV - Home Network - IT SoC - Next-Generation PC - Embedded SW - Digital Contents - Telematics - Intelligent Service Robot

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Microsoft Plans JV with Tata

Microsoft sets up outsourcing venture with Tata Consultancy Services and Chinese government.July 1, 2005
Microsoft and Indian outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced Friday that they have been selected by the Chinese government to partner in a new joint venture aimed at outsourcing IT functions and software development.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer signed a letter of intent in Beijing, along with Chinese officials, Tata executives, and executives from Chinese firms also partnering in the venture. The JV will be located in Beijing’s Zhongguancun Software Park and is expected to begin operating in early 2006.

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Investors Rate India vs. China

Survey of multinational companies predicts more India investments likely, but companies prefer China for foreign direct investment.July 18, 2005

Almost 70 percent of the multinational companies (MNCs) participating in the first CII-A. T. Kearney MNC Survey 2005 said there is a high likelihood they would make additional medium and long-term investments in India.

The investment outlook in the medium term does not appear to be dictated by the current investment performance in India. Most companies indicated a medium to high likelihood of investment, regardless of performance.

In any case, three out of four MNCs state their performance in India has met or exceeded internal targets and expectations. Tailoring products and prices to suit Indian tastes, appointing local leadership, and indigenization are key factors for success in India, in their experience.

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Survey of multinational companies predicts more India investments likely, but companies prefer China for foreign direct investment.July 18, 2005

Almost 70 percent of the multinational companies (MNCs) participating in the first CII-A. T. Kearney MNC Survey 2005 said there is a high likelihood they would make additional medium and long-term investments in India.

The investment outlook in the medium term does not appear to be dictated by the current investment performance in India. Most companies indicated a medium to high likelihood of investment, regardless of performance.

In any case, three out of four MNCs state their performance in India has met or exceeded internal targets and expectations. Tailoring products and prices to suit Indian tastes, appointing local leadership, and indigenization are key factors for success in India, in their experience.

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Global Skill Report - 2005

Country wise, and state wise report from BrainBench

http://www.brainbench.com/globalskills2005/Brainbench_GlobalSkillsReport2005.pdf

Contribution by Minister Chin Dae-je

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As widely known, India is a country possessing the world¡¯s top professional manpower in the software sector. For instance, India ranked 3rd in the world in the possession of IT professional engineers. About 2,000 educational institutions in India also produce 100,000 experts every year. Moreover, the country uses English as its official language. Owing to these merits, India has become the main country for the outsourcing of IT-related global enterprises with their headquarters based in the United States and Europe.

Now, India¡¯s dilemma is how to boost its value added software industry. In keeping with the advent of the ubiquitous era, major software enterprises in India are interested in the trend of pursuing close links between hardware technology and software technology. On the other hand, Korea is in shortage of software-related professional manpower to back up its IT manufacturing industry. The shortage of manpower in the nation¡¯s software development sector numbered about 18,000 in 2003. In case of the embedded software and its close relations with the IT839 strategy, insufficient manpower numbered some 14,000. Accordingly, the Korea-India cooperation is regarded as a meeting of the former, armed with the world¡¯s top-level IT manufacturing basis, and the latter, called the software power. The two countries agreed to cooperate in eight projects. India and Korea have agreed to cooperate in eight projects. Under the pact, Korean companies are able to use India¡¯s superior software technology and manpower easily and foster excellent SW manpower through education at top-class IT educational institutions in India. Korea possesses the world¡¯s top-level super-speed infrastructure, experience in building e-government and many advantages in hardware sectors, including mobile communication and IT manufacturing. With this experience, Korea has decided to cooperate with India in the construction of e-government and super-speed communication networks, as well as the mobile communication service sector. The Korea-India cooperation is expected to maximize synergy effects by developing the two countries¡¯ pros and cons into a mutually beneficial relationship

56.2% of software developers use open source components

Evans Data has found a rising trend toward including open source modules in software development world. While 38.1% said they used OSS modules in their applications in Spring of 2001, in the most recent survey, 56.2% said they had.

"The Myth of Open-Source"

JBoss founder Marc Fleury explains how his hot startup makes profits from its free application-server software

Q: Why is it a myth that a startup will get developers to hone the product for free?
A: Think for a second, who works for free? I think it gets perpetrated because it's such a nice myth -- you would get love and peace, the old hippie dream you know? And it's mostly true, but across all of software, not just open-source, you have a pyramid of productivity. It's an art still -- a black art of creating great software.

At top of the pyramid, you have these top 2% of developers that are 10 times -- in some cases 100 times -- more productive than the rest. It's true in proprietary developments like Microsoft and true of open-source too. The value is the QA [quality-assurance testing to make sure the software works and finding and fixing bugs]. They cover more ground than we could ever test.

Putting aside the QA, there are 20 people who write the kernel, and guess what? These guys are all professionals. If you get free, you want a lot of it. If you give free, you're going to give until you're tired of giving, and that's exactly what happens in the open-source community.

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Home Is Where The Work Is ...

Home Is Where The Work Is
Software writers with solid skills are finding plenty of jobs stateside

Remember two years ago when the sky was falling for software programmers? Not only had the tech downturn thinned their ranks, but Indian upstarts were putting tens of thousands of low-salary coders to work on projects that once would have been done by Americans. Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ) predicted more than 3 million U.S. service jobs -- including programming -- would move offshore by 2015. It seemed like the "giant sucking sound" Ross Perot predicted in 1993 was coming to pass for software writers.

Not so fast. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contain a pleasant surprise: The ranks of "computer and mathematical occupations," which include many programmers, actually rose in the second quarter by a robust 7.5%, to 3.2 million, compared with the previous year. While software companies themselves boosted jobs by a modest 3.3%, employment at establishments providing custom programming services increased by 5.6%. By contrast, tech manufacturing jobs were up just a tad and telecoms are still cutting staff.

Why the shift? A couple of reasons. High-end programmers' skills are in demand as corporations and tech companies adopt a slew of new technologies from wireless computing to Web services -- pieces of software that fit together like Lego blocks. That makes it easier to add new features and to integrate one program with another. A second factor: While Indian service firms and their Western rivals are hiring lots of programmers overseas, they're also recruiting people with design skills and business knowledge close to their clients in the U.S. and Europe. "You always need programmers on site or nearby," says analyst Gregory Smith of Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER ).

The hot strategy for tech services companies these days is delivering services from around the world. This goes for giants like Accenture and IBM (IBM ) as well as the Indian upstarts. They staff software projects with a combination of U.S.-based programmers who make design decisions along with others in Asia, Eastern Europe, or even the U.S. who can produce high-quality programming at a low price. India's Tata Consultancy Services, for instance, has 10 software centers in the U.S., plus eight others outside India.

Software likely won't be a jobs growth engine in the future. Still, so long as U.S. companies continue to innovate and schools produce grads with top-flight skills, many American programmers will find jobs at home.

India haunted by corruption, money: President

''This nation is haunted by corruption, of power and money. Now, the time has come when only the youth can change the system,'' the President said, and dictated a oath to the students that they would strive to create a corruption-free India.

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Versata transferring lab from Bangalore, India, to Halifax

Brett Adam, Versatas' chief technology officer, said Thursday it is increasingly difficult to retain staff in Bangalore - the nucleus of India's thriving high-tech outsourcing industry. "We're an innovation company, we need sustaining relationships with our technologists," Adam said at a news conference announcing the move.

He said it was challenging to keep Indian workers on staff for more than nine months due to the number of rich job opportunities available to them.

Adam said the "post-bubble" environment of the technology sector in the United States, Australia and Canada is more stable than in some other countries.

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Disruptions : Opportunity India

Rajesh Jain Writes,

The three key building blocks for my thinking about the future are broadband, mobility and emerging markets. Broadband will enable on-demand, net-native services. Mobility will empower users with computers in their pockets. Much of this future will begin and spread faster in emerging markets because they have very little legacy.

We have one of the world’s largest populations. We now have in The Times of India the world’s largest selling English-language broadsheet newspaper. And amongst all the enterprise that Indians have been known for, it will be good to also build one of the world’s largest corporations in the next decade. Ambitious, yes. Earlier, it would have taken decades to build the next-generation conglomerates. But now, disruptions provide an opportunity to compress time. Google has become the largest media company (by market capitalisation) in about 6 years. We in India should set ourselves the goal of doing so in even less. Let us embrace Aggregate and Brainstorm Coming Disruptions, leveraging Entrepreneurship to Focus on building the next Googles. Hear me, India?

'China, India are growth elephants'

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Bill Gates said: 'So are you in the US or in Bangalore?' Almost every floor had piles of Indians."

The Rising: India’s tenth largest economy, and growing

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It’s official: India has arrived on the global scene. We now live in the world’s 10th largest economy in terms of absolute gross domestic product (GDP) size. According to the latest World Bank report, India jumped two places to number 10 in ‘04 (from number 12 in ‘03) in GDP terms. India notched up a GDP of $692bn, is growing at over 6% annually and can be expected to move further up the rankings.

India comes in just three notches below China and could rise further if the economy continues its 6%-plus growth every year. Economies in the developed world, such as the Euro zone and Japan, have recorded growth rates of less than 2%. GDP is the sum of value added by all resident producers.

India has also been growing fast on account of high consumption demand, which is a very important component in measuring the size and growth of an economy. Over the last six years, India has seen massive increases in job opportunities, which have resulted in greater amounts of disposable income in the economy.

Top outsourcing destinations: India, Philippines, Central America

Weissman Center for International Banking at Baruch College and The Paaras Group surveyed the outsourcing field among the North American and European companies in regards to their outsourcing destinations. Since many companies have multiple outsourcing locations, the results do not add up to 100%.

Where American and European companies outsource
Country IT ContactCentre BPO
India 91% 80% 90%
Philippines 17% 20%
Central/
South America 13% 40% 10%
China 9% 10%
Singapore 9%
Ireland 5% 5% 25%
Spain 4% 20%
Malaysia 4% 20% 10%
Eastern Europe 4%
Australia 4% 20%

Source: Weissman Center for International Banking at
Baruch College and The Paaras Group

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VCs hanker for hunk of China, India

Many venture capital firms in the U.S. expect to expand their investments in China and India over the next five years, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The United States will remain the country that captures the most domestic venture capital dollars in the next five years, according to the survey by Deloitte & Touche and the National Venture Capital Association. However, China and India are high areas of interest. Venture capitalists view those regions as ripe for investment, given the high level of IT knowledge there.



Full article here

Number of software developers in China and India to grow at 25.6% and 24.5% a yea

According to IDC, China and India will experience the highest growth in professional software developers between 2003 and 2008 with compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of 25.6% and 24.5% respectively. The Asia/Pacific region will surpass North America in the overall number of professional developers beginning in 2006 while the Middle East and Africa will experience the highest regional growth with an 18.3% CAGR between 2003 and 2008. North America continues to lead all other regions of the world in the highest penetration of professional developers by a wide margin. IDC forecasts that the total number of professional developers worldwide will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.8% between 2003 and 2008, reaching 14.9 million in 2008. This forecast is based on worldwide population statistics, changes in literacy, and growth in IT spending.

Does location Matter...Bangalore or US?

Rafe writes.

One of the big selling points of Internet telephone services, such as Vonage, is that customers can pick any area code they want. Running a small financial consulting company out of Montana and want it to look a bit more cosmopolitan? Get a tony 617 (Boston) area code. (Unfortunately, Vonage seems to be fresh out of the primo Manhattan 212 area code--but, then, even some people who live there can't get those anymore.)

Or say you're running a small tech business in Bangalore but want customers to think you're operating out of Silicon Valley. You can get a nice 408 area code to go with your hip Web address. Take your VoIP (Voice over IP) router to your office in India, and not only will you save a fortune in overseas calls, your customers won't ever know you're 8,800 miles away.

Bill Gates: In 2014, magic software, free hardware

through Tech-Update

SAN DIEGO--During an interview at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2004, Bill Gates was asked to give his vision of computing in the year 2014. He cited the "magic of software" and the continuation of Moore's Law as the key components that would bring about new technology advances in the coming decade.

Within 10 years, said Gates, hardware could be considered as almost free, with powerful server and desktop systems, high bandwidth networks and wireless technology bringing anytime, anywhere connections.

also,

"If I had been born in India, maybe the one location would be in India or maybe it would be in China," Gates said. "It could be done there. Now, you wouldn't be closest to the world's biggest, most demanding market, but you could overcome that. You'd have to have a liaison group in to see those customers a lot. It turns out we are in the world's biggest, most demanding market, and I think that's some help to us. But the key point is, are you going to fragment it across a lot of different locations? Some companies in the technology industry do things across multiple locations, and we seen the inner lab fights and the lack of common architecture between labs. We have one common architecture, everybody working towards one way of doing modeling, one set of Web services protocols. That uniformity allows us to make the advances as fast as we can."

On the other hand, Microsoft maintains research and development facilities in the United Kingdom, China, India and other countries.

What's wrong with offshoring R&D to US?

David Watkins writes here
IBM's announcement to grow the high-level technology skills of its U.S. employees, versus further advancing the workforce housed in distant countries, was a valiant step for the economy, but it was also a very strategic step for the company itself. Yet, it seems to me that IBM appears to be in a small minority. Most surveys and reports indicate that the majority of software companies, both large and small, are planning to send some amount of R&D offshore, if they are not doing so already.

Back to the big picture, offshoring R&D has a direct impact on both local and national economies by taking jobs away from a plethora of native IT talent. Additional harm to the broad U.S. workforce also impacts businesses, and therefore the number of companies that have the money to purchase enterprise software. I encourage any vendor hoping to stay the course to scrutinize the "why2offshore" hype, as it brings both industry and macroeconomic ramifications that we may live to regret. Let's hope that reports of a decline in R&D emphasis aren't true, and that we aren't shipping out the future of U.S. technology strength.

China inches up on India for outsourcing

John Cestar thought he had found a big opportunity four years ago, when he opened a business in China and hired local programmers to write software for Western companies
But the initial response was less than enthusiastic, said the Harvard Business School graduate whose company, Freeborders, is in China's southern city of Shenzhen. Western companies seeking to outsource work were focused on India at that time, he said.

"The rest of the world was very skeptical," Cestar said. "India was very successful, and people were satisfied that India was perfect, and there was no need to go anywhere else."
But as the number of U.S. companies with operations in India increased, so did India's wages, personnel turnover and delivery problems, prompting clients to seek alternatives.
China, the Philippines, Russia, Poland, and Israel now are seen as growing alternatives for outsourcing.

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28% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck

ACNielsen says 28% of Americans have no spare cash and are living paycheck to paycheck.


While more Americans appear to be investing than last fall, the U.S. still ranks near the bottom of all countries surveyed in terms of setting money aside for the future. When totaling the percentage of respondents who said they use spare cash for savings, stock or mutual funds, and/or a retirement fund, the U.S. ranked 33rd out of the 38 countries surveyed.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck, and unable to set money aside, financial planners suggest that you take certain steps:
1. Track your spending on a weekly basis. Try to account for every dollar spent, whether it's going towards paying big bills or buying a $4 latte in the morning.
Create a budget. Figure the amount you spend on various bills and necessities, and put the rest in savings.
2. Pay your bills on time. Set a date every month when you take care of all of your bills in full. Don't pay your bills with credit cards, which just build new debt, on which you may have to pay high interest.
3. Stick to a meal plan. Wasting money by excessively eating out can drain your financial resources. Homemade meals cost much less, so try to shoot for only one meal out per paycheck.
Hold a sale. Everyone has excess possessions he or she doesn't really need, so consider having a garage sale or putting unwanted items up for online auction.

WLAN market to reach $5 bln by 2006

The wireless LAN market is expanding year after year along with the rapid spread of broadband infrastructure, Research and Market says. Recent advances in technology have made commercial deployments of wireless networks possible, opening up a potentially huge business opportunity. The WLAN market is set to grow at an annual rate of 30% per year to nearly $5 bln by 2006. WLAN equipment sales have jumped 60% from this time last year to the present. WLANs for the home and small offices are projected to grow 103% and WLAN sales to the enterprise will grow at 32%.

redherring: Indian Startup Funding Falls

Venture capitalists invested 44 percent less cash in companies founded by Indian entrepreneurs in the U.S. during the second quarter.

Meanwhile, investment in startups in India by U.S. VCs rose to $395 million in the quarter, from $300 million in the year-ago period, according to a separate report from TSJ Media (see VC Investment in India Rises).