New Delhi: A year since the high-profile launch of its satellite phone services, BSNL has sold 4,000 handsets, majority to government agencies, and expects the number to reach 10,000 by March 2019 riding on fresh demand from corporates and states for the premium service, its chairman Anupam Shrivastava said.

“The satellite phone business is doing well, and we have sold 4,000 satellite phone handsets to defense, army, Border Security Force (BSF), disaster management agencies, ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation), Railways and some in the private sector,” Shrivastava told PTI.

A satellite phone offers communication services via satellites, as opposed to terrestrial mobile towers. Satellite phones are used in situations and locations where terrestrial mobile service may not be available. Satellite phones can work in any part of the country, inside flights and on ships too, as they depend on signals directly from satellites located about 35,700 kms above the Earth.

Traditional mobile networks cover around 25-30 kms around towers and can transmit signals to phones placed equal to or below the height of the tower. Besides the agencies handling disaster management, the state police, railways, BSF and others, even multinational companies are now feeling the need to stay connected anywhere and anytime, notwithstanding the fact that while the handset itself is expensive, even the services come at a premium—tariffs hover about ₹25-30 per minute.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) says it has earned ₹100 crore revenue from this business, that was unveiled in May 2017. “We have already hit a revenue of ₹100 crore in one year from satellite phones, annualised business will remain ₹100 crore even if we don’t do anything further. But we see a lot of potential and headroom for growth,” Shrivastava said.

The telecom PSU, which began satellite phone services by targeting government agencies, has now opened up these offerings even for non-government outfits, he said. “The demand from government agencies was so huge that in the first phase we decided to cater to that segment and transfer all the satellite communication of government to BSNL. We have now opened up services to others,” he said.

 India’s largest online retailer Flipkart has forged an alliance with video streaming service Hotstar and launched a video advertisement platform on Friday—part of a broader strategy to generate more revenue from the booming video advertising business. The new platform, Shopper Audience Network, will allow brands to target consumers through personalized video ads on Hotstar. Flipkart plans to leverage data from its massive user base and help brands connect with potential consumers using these targeted ads.

“Understanding our customers better than anyone else has always been one of Flipkart’s core strengths, and these insights help marketers in their ad journey, on our platform. This partnership further leverages the intent-based understanding and couples it with Hotstar’s platform t o create an unparalleled offering in the ads industry in India,” said Prakash Sikaria, senior director at Flipkart, who heads the company’s digital ads business. This new alliance with Hotstar comes at a time when Flipkart is aiming to cement its position as the third-largest digital ads platform in the country, behind Google and Facebook.

Mint reported on 11 July that Flipkart aims to double its annualised sales from digital advertising to roughly $200 million by March next year.

On 16 July, Mint also reported that Flipkart and Amazon India have both slashed advertising spending on Google, ahead of an e-commerce launch by the web-search company, whom they now view as a serious threat.

Over the past two years, Flipkart has become a significant player in the advertisement business, though Google and Facebook continue to attract a majority of the digital ad spending that is estimated to grow at an annual average rate of 32% to touch ₹ 18,986 crore by 2020, according to a report earlier this year from Dentsu Aegis Network.

SAN FRANCISCO, US: 

As part of its plan to connect billions of people who are still offline, Facebook is working on launching Athena, its own Internet satellite, early in 2019, the WIRED reported.

According to an application Facebook appears to have filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the name PointView Tech LLC, the project is designed to "efficiently provide broadband access to unserved and underserved areas throughout the world," the report said on Friday.

Facebook, however, is not alone in aiming to increase Internet accessibility through satellites in low Earth orbit. Elon Musk''s SpaceX and Softbank-backed OneWeb are two other prominent names who have similar ambitions.

Facebook also confirmed that Athena is their project, according to the report in the WIRED.

"While we have nothing to share about specific projects at this time, we believe satellite technology will be an important enabler of the next generation of broadband infrastructure, making it possible to bring broadband connectivity to rural regions where Internet connectivity is lacking or non-existent," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying in a statement.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday launched ‘e-Pragati core platform’ at Undavalli, near here. e-Pragati, a forward-looking digital initiative, is aimed at connecting the citizen to 34 departments, 336 autonomous organisations and 745-plus services.

Through this project, the State government intends to realise the vision of ‘Sunrise AP 2022’. The e-Pragati authority will achieve the goals of the project by supporting the seven development missions launched in the areas of e-Governance, Social Empowerment, Skill Development, Urban Development, Infrastructure, Industrial Development and the Services sector.

Mr. Naidu said e-Pragati would act as a platform to connect all departments and stand alone to resolve the issues. There should be coordination between citizens and the government to solve several issues.

Stating that Andhra Pradesh stood first with regard to Information Technology, Mr. Naidu said wonders could be done with IT and internet of things (IoT). The IT and IoT have been helping in a big way to improve performance of the government.

Explaining about government initiatives to move towards paperless government, IT Minister Nara Lokesh said certificate-less admissions were introduced in the State.

Issuance of the driving licences was also made online. The portal had single access for all 34 departments integration to cover all services.“The democratisation of data would help to know the ground level problems of people. The taxation system at grass root level is also digitalised,” he said.

Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Jul 18 (ANI): Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh announced a Chhattisgarh Online Pension Management System on Wednesday. Speaking at the event, CM Raman Singh said, “This app is big development in the digital age. E-payment to e-procurement to providing internet to every village has been done. To see how to use this in the service sector, we have started this service. It is under e-governance, fulfilling the dream of Digital India plan of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Digital Chhattisgarh.”

The Chhattisgarh Online Pension Management System launched an app called “Abhar aapki sewa ka”. Through this application, 80,000 pensioners of the state will now get all the information related to pension and payment online.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is going to shortly issue Rs 100 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi (New) Series. The new denomination will have motif of “Rani Ki Vav” –  the stepwell situated in the town of Patan in Gujarat – on the reverse, depicting the country’s cultural heritage. The colour of the 100 rupee note is Lavender and will bear the signature of Urjit R. Patel, Governor of RBI.

The RBI said in a statement issued today, “The note has other designs, geometric patterns aligning with the overall colour scheme, both at the obverse and reverse. The dimension of the banknote will be 66 mm × 142 mm.”

The earlier series will continue to be legal tender and will not be affected by the new note.

The statement said, “As is normal, when a new design of banknote is introduced, printing and supply of these notes for distribution to public through the banking channel will gradually increase.”

The image and salient features of ₹100 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi (New) Series are as under:

Obverse (Front Side)

1. See through register with denominational numeral 100

2. Latent image with denominational numeral 100

3. Denominational numeral १०० in Devnagari

4. Portrait of Mahatma Gandhi at the centre

5. Micro letters ‘RBI’, ‘भारत’, ‘India’ and ‘100’

6. Windowed security thread with inscriptions ‘भारत’ and RBI with colour shift; Colour of the thread changes from green to blue when the note is tilted

7. Guarantee Clause, Governor’s signature with Promise Clause and RBI emblem towards right of Mahatma Gandhi portrait

8. Ashoka Pillar emblem on the right

9. Mahatma Gandhi portrait and electrotype (100) watermarks

10. Number panel with numerals in ascending font on the top left side and bottom right side

11. For visually impaired intaglio or raised printing of Mahatma Gandhi portrait, Ashoka Pillar emblem, raised triangular identification mark with micro-text 100, four angular bleed lines both on the right and left sides

Reverse (Back)

12. Year of printing of the note on the left

13. Swachh Bharat logo with slogan

14. Language panel

15. Motif of RANI KI VAV

16. Denominational numeral १०० in Devnagari

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O) stock market value reached $900 billion on Wednesday for the first time, marking a major milestone in its 21-year trajectory as a publicly listed company and threatening to dislodge Apple (AAPL.O) as Wall Street’s most valuable jewel.

After Jeff Bezos founded the online book-selling company in his garage in 1994, Amazon survived the dot-com crisis and then expanded across the retail industry, altering how consumers buy products and setting off a Darwinian struggle among brick-and-mortar stores.

After announcing on Wednesday that it sold more than $100 million products during its annual Prime Day sale, the Seattle, Washington company’s stock briefly touched $1,858.88, giving Amazon a stock market value of $902 billion. It later reversed, trading down 0.16 percent for the session.

Amazon’s stock has surged more than 57 percent in 2018, bringing its increase to over 123,000 percent since it listed on the Nasdaq in 1997. An investor who bought 1 share of Amazon for $18 in the IPO would now have an investment worth more than $22,200, including three stock splits in the 1990s.

Amazon, video streaming service Netflix (NFLX.O) and a handful of heavyweight technology companies have fueled Wall Street’s rally in recent years and they remain key parts of portfolio managers’ portfolios.

Google has been hit with a record-breaking €4.3 billion ($5 billion) fine by EU regulators for breaking antitrust laws. The European Commission says Google has abused its Android market dominance in three key areas. Google has been bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system. Google has also blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android, and it “made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators” to exclusively bundle the Google search app on handsets.

The European Commission now wants Google to bring its “illegal conduct to an end in an effective manner within 90 days of the decision.” That means Google will need to stop forcing manufacturers to preinstall Chrome and Google search in order to offer the Google Play Store on handsets. Google will also need to stop preventing phone makers from using forked versions of Android, as the commission says Google “did not provide any credible evidence that Android forks would be affected by technical failures or fail to support apps.” Google’s illegal payments for app bundling ceased in 2014 after the EU started to look into the issue.

India's javelin star, Neeraj Chopra struck Gold in the Sotteville Athletics meet in France on Tuesday night. Chopra, who had won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, threw 85.17 metres to bag the top prize.

Neeraj is India's top javelin thrower and he proved his mettle once again on the international stage when he won the gold medal with a massive margin. While Neeraj Chopra threw a distance of 85.17 m, the second best was Adrian Mardare of Moldova who threw a distance of 81.48 m.

Neeraj's performance was brilliant as he did not falter in even a single attempt and completed each of his rounds. Even as his score of 85.17 m came in his fifth attempt, he came close to his eventual winning mark in his third attempt as well.

BANGKOK: Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu's title drought this year continued as she suffered a straight-game defeat against Japan's Nozomi Okuhara in the summit clash of the USD 350,000 Thailand Open World Tour Super 500 badminton tournament here today. 

Second seed Sindhu struggled with her consistency throughout the duel as fourth-seeded Okuhara dominated the proceedings to beat the Indian 21-15 21-18 in exactly 50 minutes. 

It was Sindhu's third disappointment in a final this year following her defeats in the summit clash of the India Open and Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. 

Sindhu, who had an ankle strain ahead of the CWG and missed the Uber Cup final, reached semifinal and quarterfinal in her last two tournaments -- in Malaysia and Indonesia -- before this one.