Monday, December 29, 2014

Let the relative cost efficiency of VoIP technology drive the Indian telecom market's future course

Airtel's decision to charge for VoIP calls made using applications such as Skype, WhatsApp, etc., shows that it is trying to protect its lucrative franchise - voice calls revenue - by artificially making it more expensive to make the same calls using a technology which is otherwise much cheaper. That voice calls can be made over VoIP for a fraction of what Airtel, etc., currently charge for regular voice calls is example enough that the true cost of these calls is actually much lower than what is being charged to us, the users. Alternatively, it is [strongly] possible that currently there is cross-subsidization taking place [expensive voice calls revenue is subsidizing cheap data rates, with the latter's true cost actually higher than what is being charged to us]. If the alternative scenario is true [that is, data should actually be costlier and regular voice calls should be cheaper], then any loss of revenue from a shift of voice calls to VoIP will result in reduced revenues/profits for telecom firms [assuming unchanged data rates]. Eventually, over the medium/long term, telecom firms will automatically be forced to raise data rates in order to sustain their businesses, thus correcting the cross-subsidization and bringing prices of both regular voice calls and data closer to how the market dictates.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

CIA/US could be cultivating a pro-US future Prime Minister of Pakistan in Malala

The kind of attention that US is giving to Pakistan's Malala, including an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize, can mean only one thing - that the US sees her as a long term geopolitical pawn to tame Pakistan's politics. She's probably being cultivated/nurtured as a future PM of Pakistan, and all the media and political coverage that she's getting [and will probably keep getting] will culminate in her eventual entry into Pakistan's politics [with heavy support from the US], with the target of the highest seat. From there, the US can then indirectly control Pakistan. A great, albeit indirect, method of regime change.


Wednesday, December 10, 2014

BlackBerry 10 OS has this amazing yet little-known ability to run built-for-Android APK files!

I think not many people are aware that you can run at least several Android applications directly on the BlackBerry 10 OS, if you get your hands on the .APK files for those applications. Several websites, such as this one, provide APK files for you to download. Download an APK file like any other file to your BB10 phone, then check it for malware at VirusTotal and/or Jotti's malware scan. If it's all clean, run the file. BB10 will ask/caution you if you're sure about installing an application from a source other than BlackBerry World, and when you proceed, in at least many/most cases the application should both normally install and run.

And remember, these Android applications that you're able to run on your BB10 phone are in addition to the native applications available for BB10 over at BlackBerry World. Terrific!


Update [Feb'15]: A positive indirect effect of BB10's support for Android/APK is that in case you don't like an application in BlackBerry World, you [usually] have the option of ignoring it, and instead using the APK version of the same application. For example, the WSJ application for BB10 in BB World is kind of half-cooked and lame, so I removed it and instead installed the latest APK of WSJ. The latter is so much better [screenshot below]!