Tech PIVI

Three under-sea cables connecting India to Europe and the Middle-East suffered from multiple cuts last week. BSNL has released a statement revealing that its Internet capacity has dropped by 21% thanks to fiber cuts in three undersea cables that are responsible for global connectivity. According to a story by NDTV, it’s still not clear if the cable cuts have resulted in sub-par Internet connectivity for BSNL users since the BSNL customers we spoke to did not notice any anomalies in Internet speeds and connectivity. Two of the undersea cables that suffered from cuts are managed by Tata Communications- the IWEWE cable system connects India to Europe via the Middle East and the SMW4 cable system connects South East Asia to Europe. In a statement, Tata Communications confirmed the cable cut and said that some customers could have noticed service disruptions last Wednesday. We had  earlier done a story  on how these under-sea cable cuts could have been responsib...

For the first time the telecom subscriber base in the country has registered a decline. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) data, users base has dipped to 944.81 million in July from 965.52 million. The TRAI reveals that the decline is driven by the wireless segment, which saw a slump of 26.1 million. Reliance Communications saw a loss of 20.48 million users. RCom was followed by Tata Teleservices, which lost about 2.4 million customers. Uninor lost more than 1 million users, while Videocon 0.41 million. Loop Mobile and state-run MTNL lost around 0.15 million subscribers in July. RCom says removal of inactive users has caused the drop. "With an objective to release the substantial blocked resources of number series and in context of DoT's stringent guidelines on issuance of fresh numbers, RCom has decided to deactivate the inactive prepaid subscribers who have not had any usage in the last 60 days," a RCom spokesperson is q...

The website of state-run telecom company MTNL was disrupted by a hacking group to protest against "censorship" of the internet. MTNL's corporate website could not be accessed, following the attack since afternoon and officials said efforts were underway to restore it. However, its individual city-specific websites (for Delhi and Mumbai) were working. MTNL Delhi, Deputy - GM (Internet), Deepak Sharma said it was not hacking but 'denial of service attack' under which the server is unable to provide services to the customers. "The changes are being made and the website will be fully operational within the next 24 hours," Sharma told PTI. A post on the Anonymous Operation India web page claimed responsibility for the hacking saying "we are against Internet Censorship. Instead of blocking few URLs, the ISP (MTNL) blocked the whole domain of various file sharing websites." It has also asked netizens to wear 'Guy Fawkes' masks,...