Broadband connection at your doorstep

Ranchi, Jan. 20: A new broadband or landline connection is now just an SMS away.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) today launched Project Udaan, which allows customers seeking new broadband or landline connections in a jiffy, doing away with the need to queue up in front of the telecom operator's office.

BSNL will reach out to probable customers at their doorsteps and get the paperwork done for new connections. All that the customer will need to do is call the BSNL office or send an SMS or e-mail and a BSNL employee will soon arrive at the door with the necessary documents.

"Under the project, we will send a team of sales associate to the residence of probable customers. The sales associates will describe the tariff structure for broadband or landline connection and help fill up the forms there itself," said deputy general manager of BSNL, Ramashray Prasad, who is in charge of Project Udaan.

The project was launched by chief general manager of BSNL Jharkhand circle D.K. Sinha at a function in Hotel Ranchi Ashoka today. Several other officials of the public sector telecom operator were present on the occasion.

Addressing the gathering, Sinha said the new project is customer oriented and would be of great help to people who have little time to come to the BSNL office and stand in queue to fill up forms for new connections.

The interested subscriber would have to dial 1500 or SMS 'LL' for landline or 'BB' for broadband at 54141 or 09400054141 and inform the BSNL officials.

If the customer wants to inform the BSNL officials about his requirement through mail, he can do so at ranchiudaan@bsnl.co.in.

The customer, however, has to provide his or her complete postal address to BSNL officials.

Similar projects are already functioning in various states across the country.

"In this project, the demands of prospective customers can be viewed by all. So the higher authorities can ask the sales associates whether they visited the homes of interested customers, thus ensuring success of the project," Prasad said.

Recently, the BSNL launched a plan for pre-paid broadband connection on the lines of pre-paid mobile connection.source

Nokia N97 Mini

Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones,announced new phones loaded with more music features and better integration with Facebook, as well as pricing for its upcoming Netbook. The company announced the new phones and services at its Nokia World Conference in Stuttgart, Germany.

Tops on the list of new phones are the N97 Mini, a slightly smaller version of Nokia's existing flagship N97 smartphone. This new, smaller N97 has a shorter battery life than the earlier device and also less memory (8GB compared to 32GB), and a smaller touch-screen display. The device is expected to ship in October. The new N97 Mini also will have Nokia's Comes With Music service integrated. This service increases the cost of the device, but provides users with a free download music service. And the device will be the first Nokia phone to have tighter integration with the popular social networking site Facebook. Nokia has struck a deal with Facebook to let users update their location and status directly to the Web site through a Nokia Ovi account. Nokia plans to offer the Facebook integration on other phones as well. The handset maker also announced two new music phones: the X6 and the X3. The X6, which has a touch screen and 32GB of built-in memory, will be Nokia's new flagship music phone. Nokia is the world's leading cell phone maker with close to 40 percent worldwide market share. Recently it has been trying to diversify its business by offering its cell phone users online services, such as music downloads, games, and maps. The company created its Ovi service platform as a repository for all of these functions and hopes that one day all Nokia phone customers will use their Ovi accounts to access and manage their music, video, and photos. In yet another attempt to diversify, Nokia also plans to offer more sophisticated hardware, in the form of a mini-laptop or Netbook--last week it announced the new device, dubbed the Nokia Booklet 3G (watch a video here). At the event in Germany on Wednesday it announced that it will ship the mini laptop in the fourth quarter with a list price tag of 575 euros, or about $817. What makes Nokia's Netbook different from others in the category is that the device will have GPS embedded to provide access to Nokia's Ovi Maps software and service.