TRAI asks Jio why extension of offer

TRAI asks Jio why extension of offer is not violation of rules

Telecom regulator TRAI has asked Reliance Jio to explain why extension of its free voice and data plan should not be seen as violation of existing regulations requiring promotional offers to be limited to 90 days.

TRAI shot off the letter after the Mukesh Ambani-led firm announced free data and voice calls for existing and new customers under the 'Happy New Year offer', days before the 90-day inaugural welcome plan ended on December 3.

In the December 20 letter, the regulator, which is in the process of examining the new plan by Reliance Jio, also asked why the offer of free data under the promotional scheme should not be treated as "predatory".

When contacted, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) did not offer any comments on the issue.

Sources with direct knowledge of the development said the regulator in its letter had cited RJIL's consumer base growing to 63 million as on December 18 to state that the company will become a significant market player in the broadband space shortly, may be by December-end.

Stating that the preliminary analysis relies on factors like average subscriber additions per day and free data being offered, TRAI is learnt to have asked RJIL to clarify as to "why the offer of free data under the promotional offer should not be treated as predatory."

Another source said that in a meeting with TRAI, Jio has said that the latest Happy New Year offer is substantiatively different from the Jio Welcome Offer (that commenced on September 5) as in the initial offer it had provided 4GB of free data per day, and in the new offer the same was capped at 1GB under Fair Usage Policy.

Also, they contend, in the first offer there was no option of renewal or payment after the 4GB limit was exhausted, but in the new offer, one can recharge both data and the promised speed.

In terms of market dominance, Reliance Jio is six per cent of the installations in the country whereas the Competition Commission of India (CCI) norms specify 30 per cent threshold to trigger the 'misuse of market dominance' clause.

Sources said, TRAI has also asked Jio to give an estimated month-wise projection of the number of subscribers that are expected to be added till March 31, 2017.

Reliance Jio's 'Happy New Year' offer in trouble, here's how

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked Reliance Jio Infocomm to explain why extension of its free data and voice offer should not be seen as violation of norms that limit promotional offers to 90 days.

"We've asked them how the plans are different. A letter to this effect was sent a week ago and a reply is expected any time," said a senior official at Trai. "We're examining the issue closely."

Jio has five days to respond to the letter sent on December 20. The Mukesh Ambani-owned telco has also been asked to clarify why its promotional scheme should not be treated as "predatory." An email to Jio seeking response to the development did not elicit a response as of press time on Monday.

The Reliance company had announced free data and voice calls for existing and new customers, under its 'Happy New Year offer,' on December 1. It initially announced a 'welcome' offer giving free data and voice for three months from September, which was supposed to end on December 3.

The official said that upon initial examination, the new offer 'prima facie' appeared to be an extension of the old promotional offer — unlimited video calling, free voice calls, data and Jio apps, among others — with a small change in quantum of data offered.

In a December 7 communication to Trai, Jio had informed that another promotional offer would be available to new consumers from December 4, for three months, and consumers availing earlier promotional offers would would be migrated to the new offer as well.

Trai's move to question Jio comes close on the heels of incumbent Bharti Airtel moving Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT). In its petition, Bharti asked the court to direct Trai to ensure that Jio does not provide its free voice and data plan beyond December 3.

Bharti alleged that Trai was being a "mute spectator" to alleged violations. According to Trai sources, Jio said the new offer was different from Welcome offer in terms of data usage and speed.

The old offer provided 4GB of free data a day, while the new one free data is only at 1GB a day, as per fair usage policy. Further, the new offer allows users to recharge data and speed, while the earlier offer did not allow renewal.

Pokemon Go will serve up free goodies on Christmas Day

December has already brought more Pokémon to more places (including Apple Watch), but developer Niantic has one, last treat. And it's a festive Christmas surprise.

Starting on Dec. 25 and ending on Jan. 3, Pokémon Go players will have an increased chance of receiving Togepi, Pichu and other newly added Pokémon from hatched eggs. The Santa hat-wearing Pikachu that's been popping up will also be a more common occurrence.

You can't hatch eggs in Pokémon Go without an incubator, and the event takes that into account. Every day between Dec. 25 and Jan. 3, players will receive an incubator from their first PokéStop visit.

But wait, there's more. Niantic is hosting a separate event that starts on Dec. 30 and ends on Jan. 8. During that time, the three starter Pokémon — Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle — and their bigger, badder evolutions — will appear more frequently in the world.

What's more, to up your chances of nabbing a Charizard, Blastoise, or Venusaur even further, lures will last for 60 minutes instead of the usual 30.

Got all of that? Good. There's a lot happening to keep Pokémon Go fans occupied over the next couple weeks.

Facebook kills off exact location sharing in Nearby Friends, adds Wave

Nearby Friends didn’t turn into the Foursquare-killer it could have been, but Facebook is still trying to help people meet up in person…with a few changes. Facebook has removed the precise location sharing feature from Nearby Friends, which now only lets you opt-in to broadcasting your approximate distance from friends and current neighborhood.

Previously, you could select to temporarily or permanently share your constant exact pinpoint on a map with specific friends, or request this from a friend. This was useful for meeting up with someone on the move, knowing when someone was arriving, or frighteningly, stalking your significant other.

Facebook Nearby Friends’ old map and precise location sharing feature have bene removed.

But it also lent an air of creepiness to a product that is relatively privacy-safe for a location sharing service, since users fully control who sees what. And if your forgot you’d permanently shared your exact spot with someone, it could needlessly drain battery.

TechCrunch noticed the map being removed from the Nearby Friends service in the Facebook app’s More tab, and Facebook now confirms that the feature for letting people see your precise location on a map is no longer active. That strips Nearby Friends’ main visual component too, making it now just a list of people’s proximities and neighborhood.

That seems to have paved the way for a desktop version of Nearby Friends in the chat sidebar on the right. It shows a list of friends within a few miles, with their neighborhood and name. Tapping lets you send them a message to arrange a get-together. Facebook confirmed this is in testing after we spotted the addition.

Facebook is testing a Nearby Friends list in the right sidebar (magnified here in the red box)

Finally, Facebook has built a successor to the classic “Poke” feature called “Wave”. Some users have the option to send a Wave to friends they see in Facebook Nearby to let them know they’re interested in what that friend is up to. It’s a lightweight way to reach out without a full-fledged instant message, but that could lead to a conversation on Messenger about whether they’re free to hang out.

Wave addresses the core flaw of Nearby Friends — that just because someone is in your proximity, doesn’t mean they’re available. This is what plagued Foursquare too. You were never sure if you should drop in on someone down the street, since their checkin wouldn’t necessarily tell you if they were on a date or in a meeting there. Wave was pointed out by Matteo Gamba and others, and first covered by Social Times.

A Facebook spokesperson confirms that “We are testing a new feature within Nearby Friends allowing people to send their friends a waving hand emoji to say hello and help them meet up. This is meant to give people more ways to express themselves, and help friends interact with one another in new fun and lightweight ways.”

Twitter reportedly killed its messenger product before launch

To attract new users to the platform, micro-blogging website Twitter had developed a standalone instant messaging app in India for emerging markets but killed the product without launching it as the company shut down its Bengaluru engineering centre that developed it, a BuzzFeed report claimed on Friday.

According to the report, the standalone app - for which Twitter spent more than a year developing it - was intended to be an on-ramp for new users to Twitter proper.

The app was built at Twitter's Indian engineering centre in Bengaluru and blended tweets and instant messages in a single interface. But the company killed it in September this year when it shut down its India engineering centre, it added.

Twitter intended to identify "influencers" around certain topics - let's say news or politics or sports and encourage them to create groups of interest within the app.

Twitter users could chat among themselves on the app and they could also subscribe to relevant Twitter accounts whose tweets would be pulled in automatically into these groups.

Citing a source, the publication said "Twitter did not have that many active users in India, so the idea was that if enough people used the instant messaging app, we could expose a lot of people to tweets without them even going to Twitter in the first place.Eventually, we hoped they would see the value of signing up for Twitter and directly following as many people as they wanted"

A project lead in Twitter's Bengaluru office, who oversaw the instant messaging project, reportedly decided to shut the project since the versions of the app that Twitter tested out with users anonymously did not get good feedback.

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Government to drive digital payments with cash prizes

To attract new users to the platform, micro-blogging website Twitter had developed a standalone instant messaging app in India for emerging markets but killed the product without launching it as the company shut down its Bangalore engineering centre that developed it, a BuzzFeed report claimed on Friday.

According to the report, the standalone app - for which Twitter spent more than a year developing it - was intended to be an on-ramp for new users to Twitter proper.

The app was built at Twitter's Indian engineering centre in Bengaluru and blended tweets and instant messages in a single interface. But the company killed it in September this year when it shut down its India engineering centre, it added.

Twitter intended to identify "influencers" around certain topics - let's say news or politics or sports and encourage them to create groups of interest within the app.

Twitter users could chat among themselves on the app and they could also subscribe to relevant Twitter accounts whose tweets would be pulled in automatically into these groups.

Citing a source, the publication said "Twitter did not have that many active users in India, so the idea was that if enough people used the instant messaging app, we could expose a lot of people to tweets without them even going to Twitter in the first place.Eventually, we hoped they would see the value of signing up for Twitter and directly following as many people as they wanted"

A project lead in Twitter's Bengaluru office, who oversaw the instant messaging project, reportedly decided to shut the project since the versions of the app that Twitter tested out with users anonymously did not get good feedback.

"It did not test out so well in the market surveys that we did with college students and I think that was one of the reasons why Twitter decided to shelve it," the report added.

Less than a week after the company announced its global layoffs at the end of October, Twitter India head, Rishi Jaitley, quit after a four-year stint. Just a couple of days later, Parminder Singh, Twitter's managing director for Southeast Asia, resigned too.

PayPal opposes registration of Paytm’s new trademark

Global payments major PayPal has filed a complaint opposing the registration of Paytm's trademark in a notice with the local trademark office, which falls under the ministry of commerce.

The notice, reviewed by TOI , says that PayPal has pointed out that Paytm's trademark is "deceptively and confusingly similar to PayPal" with a similar colour scheme.

"The first syllable in each mark is in dark blue colour and second syllable is in light blue colour. Further, both marks begin with PAY' which consumers tend to remember more than the second syllable, and the marks are of similar length. These similarities cause likelihood of confusion in the aggregate, specially considering the fame of the opponent's (PayPal) earlier trademark," the notice said.

When contacted, both PayPal and Paytm spokespersons refused to comment on the matter.

India ranks at No. 2 in innovation destinations globally

Other cities like Hyderabad, Pune, and Jaipur also emerged as attractive investment destinations as each city welcomed two new centres between March and October. The report notes that in May, Cisco, along with Qualcomm Technologies, GE and 3M India, launched an IoT innovation centre in Jaipur. Hypercat, a London-based consortium of IoT companies, launched an accelerator in Hyderabad recently .

The report says India's rise has also been spurred by the government initiatives related to digital and startups.

The report also notes Asia rise in comparison to both Silicon Valley and Europe. Capgemini has now done thrice, the first in July 2015, the next in February this year and the latest in October. "In each report, we witness the inevitable erosion of its (Silicon Valley's) dominance. Between July 2015 and October 2016, its share in the world's total innovation centres has fallen from 18% to 14%. This is a result of increasing competition from a diverse set of hubs across the world. In particular, the top three cities in Asia - Singapore, Bangalore and Tokyo - together added more innovation centres (9) between March and October 2016 than the Silicon Valley (7)," the report said.

It goes on to say that in its latest analysis, Asia (34) added more innovation centres than any other region. "In fact, the number of innovation centres in Asia has taken a big stride forward between March and October 2016, making Asia host to 29% of all innovation centres - overtaking Europe in terms of its share of total innovation centres for the first time," it said.

Industrial workers to get only cashless payments soon

In a move that will impact salary payments to millions of factory and industrial workers, the government plans to make it mandatory for payments to be made only through cheque or directly into their bank accounts, against the current practice of paying cash.

The move - for which a Cabinet note has been circulated - is in line with demonetisation and also aimed at ensuring that workers are paid the minimum wages stipulated by the Centre and states, senior government sources told TOI.

The idea is in line with the Modi government's efforts to promote a cashless economy. Workers whose wages do not exceed Rs 18,000 per month will be covered under the new rule.

The government is set to make it mandatory for payments to factory workers to be made only through cheque or direct transfer.

"One of the reasons for ineffective enforcement of payments of wages to workers is the payment of wages in cash... With the passage of time, technology has undergone a sea change. A large section of employed persons now have bank accounts," sources told TOI. "The time has come to adopt technology, as emphasised by Digital India."

While the central government will have the mandate for workers employed by the railways, in air transport services and mines, and at oilfields (directly or through a subcontractor), the respective state governments will identify the other industrial and factory establishments.

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma raises Rs 325cr by selling 1% stake

Digital payments and commerce platform Paytm's founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has sold 1% of his holding in One97 Communications to raise about Rs 325 crore.

This money will be pumped into the group's proposed payments bank. Sharma has sold the stake to one of the shareholders of One97 Communications, the company that runs Paytm. The shareholder's name was not disclosed.

"We completed the transaction last week," Sharma told TOI. According to documents filed with RoC (Registrar of Companies), Sharma had a 21.33% stake in One97 Communications as of March 2016. The latest transaction reduces that stake to 20.33%. The transaction values One97 Communications at about $4.7 billion.

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma raises Rs 325cr by selling 1% stakePaytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma raises Rs 325cr by selling 1% stake - ImageSharma has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India to start the payments bank but the final approval is awaited.

Facebook is really, seriously working on its fake news problem

Facebook can't escape criticism about its role in distributing "fake news." Confronted with what you might call a gentle probing on The Today Show on Thursday, a top exec said the company is "working on it." 

"We've been working on this for a long time, and we've taken important steps, but there's a lot more to do," Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, told Today anchor Savannah Guthrie. "We're working on it, because misinformation is something we take seriously and something we're going to continue iterating on the surface."

But Sandberg maintains the party line that her product, a social network with 1.79 billion monthly users and a major destination for media consumption, couldn't have influenced the presidential election.

"There have been claims that it swayed the election, and we don't think it swayed the election, but we take that responsibility very seriously," Sandberg said.

When Sandberg says Facebook has been working on the spread of hoaxes "for a long time," she means it. The social network has released public statements about misleading information dating back to at least August 2014.

Any "important steps" Facebook has taken in the past didn't stop the viral spread of totally fake news this election season. An analysis from BuzzFeed News found that "hyper partisan," Trump-supporting fake news was shared at a considerably higher rate than left-leaning hoaxes.

Just one fake news article can be shared to millions of people, Mashable found, to say nothing of the potential impact of many articles distributed by several different outlets.

Sure, we can't say that fake news certainly influenced voter behavior. But we do know that it's enough to motivate violence. 

MasterCard, Visa and RuPay Updates

MasterCard, Visa and RuPay to take a hit on revenue as they help push digital payments

Banks and digital payments processors, such as Visa, MasterCard and RuPay, are expected to lose over Rs 1,000 crore in revenue between November and December as the merchant discount rate (MDR) on the usage of debit cards at PoS (point of sale) transactions has been waived till December 31.

Currently, for transactions below Rs 2,000, a merchant pays the acquirer bank 0.75% MDR, while for transactions above Rs 2,000, he shells out 1%. The acquirer bank (the one issuing the swipe machine) then pays 0.6% of its share to the card-issuing bank. The payment processors make anything between six and eight basis points on these transactions from acquirer and issuing banks.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also collects 60 paise from card-issuing banks and 30 paise from the bank that issues the swipe machine.As per the latest numbers from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the collective value of debit and credit card transactions at ATMs and PoS was Rs 2.62 lakh crore in September, and according to an estimate, banks and payment processors make around 1% on transactions at PoS terminals.

Android malware Gooligan affects over 1 million Google accounts

Remember Ghost Push? The malware that started threatening all Android devices about two years ago has come back to haunt the global Android community. Google has verified the existence of a new variant of the Ghost Push malware named Gooligan. The malware was first discovered by Check Point, a security research firm. The report says that over 1 million Google accounts could have been affected by the threat and the number is increasing with about 13,000 account breaches every day.

According to Checkpoint, the malware infects devices and steals information that further helps it to access data from Gmail, Google Play, Google Photos, Google Docs, G Suit, Google Drive and more.

Adrian Ludwig, director of Android security at Google, confirmed the Checkpoint report and said that his team is working closely with the security firm.