Aircel Launched its Next-Gen Wi-Fi Services

Aircel, has finally announced the launch of their next generation of high speed data services Aircel Wi-Fi.

They have launched their services in five major cities of India,  at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad & Bengaluru.

The TV commercial of the service are already on air for the last few days. With the launch of the service they have also introduced a free trial offer for all Aircel customers in the above following cities.

All Aircel users can enjoy free wireless Internet at a blazing-fast speed and an enhanced user experience at all Aircel Wi-Fi Zones, before 20th Feb, 2011.

But prior to that you need to understand what Aircel Wi-Fi is!

Aircel Wi-Fi is a service that allows you to browse the Internet without connecting to broadband via wired connection. Through Wi-Fi you can access the Internet just about anywhere at any time, without using wires.

 Features:

 1. 50,000 Wi-Fi zones across India

 2. Choose your plans as per your need

 3. Secure access to protect your data

 4. High speed access @ 512kbps

 5. Unlimited downloads in each session (FUP of 30MB/hour)

How to access in Wi-fi Zone:

 At any of the Aircel Wi-Fi zones, simply connect to the internet with any Wi-Fi enabled device – smartphones, laptops, netbooks or tablets. Then, choose your session time as per your need, and that’s it, you’ll be connected!.

All you have to do is:

 1. Go to your nearest Aircel Wi-Fi Zone and switch on the Wi-Fi on your laptop or mobile.

 2. On the welcome screen, just click on New User.

 3. Enter your details along your Aircel mobile number to acquire a User ID and Password via SMS.

 4. Then simply use these details to log in to your account.

Note:

Post the free trial offer, the Wi-Fi service will be charged hourly plan of Rs. 15 the charges would be adjusted against your postpaid bill or would be deducted from your prepaid balance.

Metered Internet billing banned in Canada

A recent verdict in Canada will stop unlimited Internet access from smaller ISPs, forcing most of the country into limited usage plans.  Canada may now pay their Internet service providers based on how much they use the Web. Canadian telecommunications regulators made a ruling last week that would largely make it possible for smaller ISPs to continue to offer pay-per-month data plans.

Currently, many smaller Canadian ISPs lease bandwidth from larger ISPs on a per-customer basis, which allows them to offer customers unlimited bandwidth, and bill them monthly. Laws had prohibited larger ISPs like Bell from charging these wholesale customers (smaller ISPs) per gigabyte for usage, but the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has moved to abolish that restriction, a shift in billing that will ultimately make its way down to customers.

One example is the small ISP TekSavvy, which under the ruling will be forced to the set the data ceiling at 25GB a month and charge customers between $1.90 and $2.35 for each additional gigabyte. TekSavvy formerly offered 200GB or unlimited options, which will be wiped away by the CRTC’s new regulations. According to an e-mail sent out to its subscribers, its premium, unlimited plan users pay $31.95 for will now only get them 25GB per month.

According to petition site Stopthemeter.ca, it would be less expensive to start using SSDs. “…It is now cheaper in Canada to put our downloads on to expensive SSDs, ship them across the country, and then throw them out instead of paying the $2 per GB our ISPs want to charge us when we go over our already ridiculously bandwidth caps.”

So, besides the customers and indie ISPs, who’s going to suffer because of the new regulations? Video streaming sites. Netflix (which was only just introduced to Canada), Apple, Amazon, and Hulu are bandwidth hogs, and only stand to increase the amount of data they chew through as their services’ quality improves.

Naturally, the ruling is already being challenged. Federal Liberals argue that it would limit competition and choice for consumers, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced via Twitter that he has ordered a review of the decision. “We’re very concerned about CRTC’s decision on usage-based billing and its impact on consumers. I’ve asked for a review of the decision.” According to CBC News, a decision will be reached by March 1. More than 200,000 citizens have already signed a petition against the new regulations.

ISP's top data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month

 ISPs sometimes complain about "data hogs," often in the service of ridiculously tight-fisted data caps on Internet service. But there are users who deserve the porcine label, and Belgian ISP Telenet recently offered a rare picture of them. Can you imagine downloading 2,680GB of data in a single month?

One Belgian can. Between July 4 and August 6 of this year, Telenet's single largest user slurped up 2.7TB of data. He was followed by similarly impressive downloaders who transferred 1.9TB, 1.5TB, and 1.3 TB.

These numbers drop off quickly, though. Only a single user on the entire network topped 2TB in a month, while another seven topped 1TB.

Telenet recently published a list of its top 25 downloaders to a discussion forum—but the goal wasn't to demonize the users. Instead, it was to show other people just how much data could be transferred in a single month. The ISP hopes to encourage people to migrate up from its least-expensive plans (with 50GB and 80GB data caps, respectively) to its more expensive "fair use" plans.

In this case, "fair use" doesn't refer to copyright but to downloading. Telenet doesn't want to call its plans "unlimited," but it does say that "'fair use' means that you can send and receive a very large quantity of data via the Telenet network. Telenet will only ask you to adjust your consumption in the case of excessive volume consumption that may threaten the comfort of other subscribers."

If you turn out to be an "excessive" user (double the average data use for your speed tier), Telenet can throttle you down to 512 Kbps until your next billing period begins. Oh, and subscribers can only use this bandwidth to "disseminate legal data."

According to Rudolf van der Berg, a Dutch Internet consultant and policy analyst, Telenet has the fastest network in the area, so this list "pretty much is the top 25 [downloaders] for Belgium."

Still, the Belgians have nothing on Americans when it comes to downloads. One US ISP told me last year that a single user had transferred 4TB of data in a single month from a consumer Internet account, and we've received reports from readers who have been warned by their ISPs after sucking a cool terabyte of data down their home pipes in a month.

Such numbers are outliers, of course. ISPs have told us that average broadband user is in the range of 2-6GB per user, but you can see why some ISPs like Comcast prefer to set high monthly limits to rein in the few peak users, who can use more bandwidth (and, more importantly, cause more local congestion on a cable line) than hundreds of other customers combined.

Broadband Growth in Homes Is Slowing, Study Finds

The latest survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project shows that broadband growth in homes is slowing. About two-thirds of Americans have broadband, the Pew study says, but saturation and high prices are slowing adoption. But access to 3G Internet on mobile devices has exploded with business offering free Wi-Fi.
Two-thirds of American adults now have broadband Internet access at home, but fewer people are signing up for it, according to the latest study by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

The survey of 2,252 adults 18 and older, conducted for the center by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between April 29 and May 30, found 66 percent using broadband, almost the same as 63 percent in 2009.

Slowest Growth Since 2004

That five percent increase is the slowest growth measured by the center since 2004.

The 63 percent in 2009 was a 15 percent jump from the previous year. In 2005, the number of broadband homes measured by the center grew to 53 percent from 50 percent the previous year, a statistically insignificant number, after a 20 percent increase in 2004 from 2003.

"Broadband is slowing in the U.S. due to saturation and a relatively high price point, typically $40 per month," said Gerry Purdy of MobilTrax. "It's hard for some people on low budgets to buy broadband. They realize they have to have a phone but don't have to have broadband at home, especially with Starbucks and McDonald's now offering free wireless Relevant Products/Services broadband access all day long."

At the same time, use of the mobile Relevant Products/Services Internet through 3G Relevant Products/Services connections on smartphones and other devices has exploded.

Is 3G Killing Broadband?

"There is growth in 3G wireless due to lots of different reasons, including growth in machine-to-machine, use of wireless access cards for notebooks, growth of MiFi, growth of migration to smartphones," Purdy said.

J.D. Power and Associates wireless analyst Kirk Parsons says 3G could be one of many factors in the broadband slowdown.

"3G may have a minor impact, but not major, as users tend to employ broadband services via PC for different reasons than when they access Internet services via devices," Parsons said. "Device broadband access tends to be more search Relevant Products/Services/communication-related, while PC broadband usage tends to favor high-volume consumption like entertainment, music downloads, purchasing."

The cost of largely optional broadband access for nonbusiness users during a recession may be another factor, Parsons said, while saturation may also be slowing the market.

"Growth rates typically slow down when you reach high market-penetration rates based on availability of product," he added. "Broadband access in major cities and suburbs is 80 percent."

Another factor is the lack of competition, with fewer areas where rival companies, such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, offer competing deals. "Lower price points tend to spur growth rates, but both company offerings and build-outs have slowed down," Parsons said.

Not The Government's Business

The Federal Communications Commission has launched an initiative to encourage more high-speed Internet access, particularly in rural areas. But 53 percent of those surveyed told the Pew Center this should not be a government priority, while only 41 percent said it should be.

The survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent, also found that African-Americans are now faster adopters of broadband than whites. Defying the overall slowing trend, the number of African-American users grew 22 percent in the year between the Pew surveys, from 46 to 56 percent, while the number of white broadband users changed slightly from 65 percent to 67 percent.