Blackberry has been facing the ugly questions about its messaging services which are or can be misused by the anti-social elements. Blackberry’s push-mail service it encrypts the messages and so it becomes very difficult to tap into. Apart from India, Saudi Arabia has also been complaining about this and has banned the service in the region. Blackberry was asked to comply with the law by Indian authoities within a given deadline or face a ban. With all the confusion and disorders, it seemed to be the right time to ask people if it is ok, if the government to snoops into the e-mails sent from Blackberry. The results reflected in favor of patriotism of people to that of one’s privacy. For the safety of the country more than 60 percent of people were OK with government going through their stuffs. But there were around 40 percent of people who felt it was unnecessary to interfere with their privacy. A main website held a poll in which readers expressed this opinion. One of the users said, “I’m ready for it. If you aren’t doing something wrong, then there is no reason to worry. Moreover, if such a step saves the lives of our loved ones, why not let them?!” While another replied, “No, it is not alright for the government to be watching our text messaging and e-mail. My Internet use is my personal right and the government has no inherent right to snoop.” Though there is no definite view on this issue, but a majority of people in India seem to be accepting the fact that to keep our country safe, the government needs to have some control over communication channels like Blackberry.

In a study conducted by Zinnov Management Consulting, a management consulting firm, multi-national R&D Centers in India will continue to witness attrition during the first and second quarter of 2010. This is expected to level out during the second half of the year. For the first quarter of 2010, average attrition rate was 4.7 percent. This is an increase of 1 percent over the previous quarter and 0.5 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Bengaluru witnessed lower attrition rate of about 3.1 percent while city like Pune the attrition level was high and stood at 5.6 percent. Bengaluru’s lower attrition rate is attributed to the fact that the companies provided timely salary increments, provided better career growth and employees having a better understanding on the company’s economic situation.

Companies with over 1,000 employees witnessed attrition rate of about 8 percent than smaller companies which were able to retain their employees and had attrition rate of about 4 percent. Better pay packages with other large MNC companies, dissatisfaction with salary increments, forced attrition were some of the reasons cited for this higher rate of attrition among larger companies. In comparison, smaller companies offered better salary increments which aimed to bring their salaries closer to the bigger companies for their critical resources which enabled them to retain their employees.

According to Praveen Bhadada, Engagement Manager, Zinnov Management Consulting, “We expect that first half of 2010 to witness much less attrition and the yearly average to settle around 10 percent. We also expect that the demand for cost control will force R&D centers in India to put a check on salary escalations in the near term.”

Debt funds have been a popular way of accumulating money for undertaking development work all over the world. India, though late in the race, has also decided to launch debt funds of about $7 to $11 billion. The funds raised from this move will be used to fund highways and other infrastructure. Over the next five years India is planning to spend about $500 Billion to update the infrastructure that is believed to be slowing the country’s growth.

Rather than accumulating a single lump sum fund, there will be several series of financial ventures which will be launched over a period of several years. The funds will be more in number and smaller in size. By the end of this year itself, the first debt fund for $11 Billion, will be set up. This money will be specifically targeted towards improving infrastructure.

In addition to these debt funds, by the end of 2012, there are also plans to launch several policy changes which will encourage higher participation of both foreign and private equity funds in infrastructure projects. Right now, even though the government allows 100% FDI in the road sector. However, private investors find difficulties in acquiring land. Apart from that, there are other difficulties which deter the investors from investing money in Indian infrastructure.

Today, Reliance Communications (R Com) introduced Simply Unlimited Pack a new rate plan which has on a monthly recharge unlimited talk time for their CDMA pre-paid consumers though it does not provide SMS and other value added services.

With the introduction of this plan, R Com discards the traditional rate metering trend prevalent in the country’s telecom circles. Currently, pre-paid customers have payment options of per call, per second or per minute. This plan is the first of its kind in which the customers need pay only once in a month.

The plan packs in 3000 minutes of air time each month to any local Reliance phone (Reliance GSM, CDMA or Fixed Line) and a whopping 900 minutes of  free air time to networks other than Reliance, with a daily cut off at half an hour for Rs.299

If the cap limit is exceeded, every additional minute is billed at 50 paisa. National long distance will also be billed at 50 paisa per minute.

Simply Unlimited CDMA National Pack retails for Rs 599, packs in 3000 minutes of air time each month to any Reliance phone within India and 900 minutes of free air time to networks other than Reliance, with a daily cut off at half an hour.

Customers can avail of this plan in the next three days when these will be launched.

“A cell phone user uses 443 minutes in a month, on an average. These plans are tailored to accommodate the air time that most customers utilize on a daily basis. Our intent is to attract the customers who use their phones moderately as also the current GSM consumers, as they can track their usage every month”, remarks Syed Safawi, president wireless, R Com.

Of a 100 million consumer base that the company enjoys, about 55 million are CDMA service users.
The company remarks that its plans does away with the trend of rate metering thus eliminating the need for the customer to keep a track of the seconds and minutes usage.

“Customers no longer have to be afraid of their pre-paid balance getting exhausted and they have the convenience of a monthly recharge. In addition to pay per second and pay per minute plans, we have come up with a unique pay per month plan”, remarks Mahesh Prasad, President, R Com.

To avail value added services like SMS, GPRS and others, consumers will have to avail another recharge for which they will be billed as per rack rates that exist currently, remarked Safawi.

An MTS executive, commenting on the RCom offer remarked, ‘A much cheaper plan will be introduced by MTS in the next few days’.

Industry experts though commenting the plan was convenient also remarked, ‘If calls from Reliance to Reliance are deducted, the plan boils down to local calls being billed at 33 paise per minute. Tata, for example, offer a plan that packs in 10 minutes of talk time for Re.1, thus each minute being billed at 10 paise.

Tata and other providers match Reliance’s country wide calling rates which are pegged at 60 paise per minute.
Harit Shah, analyst at Karvy stock broking comments, “The Company is obtaining ARPU as this is a one time monthly recharge. The company is also fostering increased usage. A positive impact will be felt if customers shift as usage and realizations could improve.”

Nisha Biyani, telecom analyst at Prabhudas Liladher, remarks the plan would not have a major impact on the financials of the company. ‘The inherent mindset of the consumers does not provision for change in CDMA plans. Other than that, plans with varying tariffs for calls in the same network are already in existence.’

The main intention of the Simply Unlimited CDMA offer is to make things simple and provisions for the Simply Reliance initiative of per second, per minute and per call to a monthly basis and does away with limitations and restrictions on usage, balance etc for Reliance Mobile CDMA prepaid consumers.