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India's leading smartphone handset player, Micromax Informatics Limited, on Monday announced its investment in ixigo, a mobile travel search and marketplace.
 

	ixigo helps Indian travellers plan their trips, find the best train and bus services, book cheapest flights, cabs, hotels and more. Following the investment, Micromax will strengthen its foray into application services. It will also give ixigo a reach of over 30 million incremental users over the next year.
 

	Rahul Sharma, Co-founder, Micromax Informatics said, "We are really impressed with ixigo's talented team and its mobile technology. We look forward to working closely with them to build on-demand and one-click travel experiences for Micromax consumers. We will be announcing more such partnerships over the next few months to accelerate our journey into services."
 

	Micromax had last month announced that it would be making investments of 20 million dollars in over 20 startups in the coming year.
 

	For this objective, Micromax has also set up an M&amp;A team which has been actively sourcing and working with startups across major technology markets such as Silicon Valley, Europe, Israel and India to bring in the best products and capabilities.
 

	Meanwhile, Aloke Bajpai, CEO &amp; co-founder, ixigo said, "Eighty per cent of our travel &amp; transportation queries and 50% of our transactions currently originate on mobile devices. This partnership with Micromax will strengthen our market leadership in mobile travel services for middle class users. We expect to quadruple our mobile user-base in the next 12 months."
 

	ixigo aims to provide relevant travel services to the next 300 million smartphone users, and has recently entered the budget hotels, packages &amp; cabs segments. It plans to use this investment for expanding its product &amp; technology team and to add 25,000 small and mid-sized travel service providers to its marketplace offering, making ixigo the most comprehensive platform for comparing and buying travel services on mobile.

	 
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After Healthifyme.com, Micromax invests in ixigo

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	The data services in the National Capital region are already becoming costlier. India's third-largest telecom operator, Idea Cellular was the first company to announce an increase in the data rates. 
 

	Now the company has announced that it has witnessed growth in its revenue market share (RMS) by 1.6% in Q4FY15 and 1.3% in FY15, the company said, citing telecom regulator data. 
 

	The company is part of Aditya Birla Group and maintained its track record of being the fastest growing operator by RMS growth in the world's fastest growing market, reported the Economic Times. 
 

	The telco further consolidated its position as one of the top 3 operators in India by growing at double the rate of industry growth in terms of gross revenue. 
 

	In Q4FY15, Idea witnessed a growth of 21%, whereas the industry average revenue grew at 10.5% in one year. The company showed gross revenue growth of close to 20% in FY15, as against 10.8% the total industry revenue growth - the highest amongst all pan-India operators. 
 

	"Our commitment to grow both voice and data businesses, by investing in network infrastructure and spectrum acquisition, customer experience management, and brand building, has helped us further consolidate our position in a hyper-competitive market," Himanshu Kapania, Managing Director, Idea Cellular said in the statement. 
 

	Idea Cellular serves over 160 million subscribers. 
 

	Apart from this, the company has recently announced a roll over plan. Under this, new 3G roll over data pack will allow Idea postpaid subscribers to carry forward their unused 3G data balance to next month without any extra charges. 
 
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Idea Cellular gain incremental market revenue

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47677486.cms" />The Department of Telecom (DoT) is expediting spectrum allocation and has issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) to telecom players in this regard.
 

	The auction of air waves was held in March and the government received around Rs 1.1 lakh crore from sale in four bands- 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz.
 

	"As of now, we are expediting to allocate the spectrum which has already been auctioned this year... The Letter of Intent has been issued to all," Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told PTI.
 

	The government put around 470 MHz of spectrum for sale in the four bands and about 11% of the air waves remained unsold.
 

	The LoI also has the effective date for the spectrum. Eight telecom operators participated in the auction and except Uninor, all of them won air waves. The government got upfront payment of over Rs 32,300 crore from telecom players against the spectrum sold. This was way above the minimum outstanding due of Rs 28,835.34 crore.

	 
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DoT expedites spectrum allocation to telecom players, issues LoI

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In today’s information age, the rapid development of technology has given more wings to cyber criminals as now they come up with even more frightening attack strategies than ever before. And if hackers get access to your credit card and transaction history, what can be scarier than that? <img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47583048.cms" /> 
 
As per a new report by NextBigWhat, Ola Cabs has been hacked by a hacker group which has posted the database structure of the biggest cab provider in India. The hackers, on Reddit, claimed to have an access to the user details as well as credit card transaction history. Isn’t that frightening? 
 
The hacker group stated that, “Their Application design is very poor and their development server is weakly configured. The hack was a little tricky and involved many steps to get to the database. Once we got to the database it was like winning a lottery. It had all the user details along with credit card transaction history and unused vouchers. The voucher codes are not even out yet.” 
 
Calling themselves Team Unknown, these hackers have assured the users that they would not be using credit card details and voucher codes. 
 
The hackers also posted the snapshots of the database structure of taxi rider, raising a question on the security team of Ola Cabs. 
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However, a Ola Cabs spokesperson stated, "There has been no security lapse, whatsoever to any user data. The alleged hack seems to have been performed on a staging environment when exposed for one of our test runs. The staging environment is on a completely different network compared to our production environment, and only has dummy user values exclusively used for internal testing purposes." 
 
The spokesperson further stated, "We confirm that there has been no attempt by the hackers to reach out to us in this regard. Security and privacy of customer data is paramount to us at Ola." 
 
[Source: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/pwned/comments/38vvkm/olacabscom_hacked/">Reddit</a>] 
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Olacabs hacked again! Hackers get access to credit card, transaction details

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47243266.cms" />Just at a time when Indians were seen moving around with a giant sized device and making phone calls, none knew the smartness would be out of fashion so soon. If a data by CMR’ s India Quarterly Tablets Market Review is to be believed, shipment of tablets in the first quarter of this financial year has suffered a double-digit decline of 13.9% q-o-q in terms. Earlier while tablets were setting records for shipment, this is the first time when a decline has been noticed. 
 
“Since there isn’t much value addition coming in the shape of specific solutions to enhance device usability at the moment, Tablets are only becoming devices of convenience, essentially larger screen versions of smartphones. This has resulted in lower priority in the list of ‘must have’ devices for the average user. Tablets only make the ‘nice-to-have’ grade. 
 
To prevent the Tablet form factor from dying out, vendors must position their offerings as a distinct category, rather than just an also ran device at the cusp of a Smartphone and a Laptop PC,” said Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice. 
 
However, BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) enabled Tablets posted 60% contribution in the total shipments for the period. Though negative vibes are prevailing in the market, Samsung maintains lead and improves on market share. 
 
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Tablet sales have gone down even further in India

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47243236.cms" />The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has decided to wait for regulations on Net Neutrality before taking any action against telecom and Internet firms over giving preferential treatment to mobile operators and websites. 
 
The CCI said it would wait for more clarity on regulations ensuring access to free Internet before moving ahead. 
 
“With regard to the issue of Net Neutrality, there are no clear regulations in place so far. The authorities are working on it and once the regulations are clear, then we (Commission) can look at the issue,” a senior CCI official told a news agency. 
 
The Government has so far maintained that it stands by ensuring non-discriminatory access to Internet to all. Even the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had invited suggestions from net users on Net Neutrality. 
 
CCI, which keeps a tab on unfair business practices across sectors, will order a detailed probe into a matter only if there is prima-facie evidence of anti-competitive ways. 
 
The debate over Net Neutrality was triggered after leading telecom carrier Bharti Airtel announced ‘Airtel Zero’, an open marketing platform that allows customers to access a variety of mobile applications for free, with the data charges being paid by start-ups and large companies. 
 
TRAI last week had said it did not intend to police the Internet but there were three unexceptional principles including ‘no blocking’ which are not debatable. 
 
It recently came out with a consultation paper for regulatory framework on over-the-top (OTT) service like Internet-based calling and messaging services and Net Neutrality. 
 
 
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Fair trade watchdog to wait and watch before taking on telcos in Net Neutrality

In a bid to drive data usage in India, domestic handset manufacturer Micromax on Tuesday said it has collaborated with state-run telecom firm BSNL to offer free Internet access on select devices in the country. 
 
As per the partnership, BSNL will bundle free data usage of up to 2GB per quarter for 12 months on smartphones, free voice calls (on net) on feature phones and other freebies on purchase of Micromax tablet and data cards. 
 
This interesting offer will be available on six Micromax devices -- X070, X088 (feature phones), P410i (tablet), MMX377G (datacard), A37 and A37B (smartphones). 
 
According to Micromax CEO Vineet Taneja, "We are delighted to partner with BSNL, as this collaboration will be an excellent unification of BSNL's offerings and Micromax's design capability thus enabling millions of Indian consumers to enjoy seamless connectivity through data usage, affordable call rates and other VAS services." 
 
The partnership will further provide a major boost to better connectivity and Internet adoption as BSNL's pan-India network coupled with our devices, backed by a strong channel and retail presence which will take these offerings across length and breadth of the country, he said. 
"The association will create immense opportunities for customers by offering them high speed 3G data. BSNL has already provided 3G coverage in more than 2,300 cities and towns of India and is committed to provide 3G coverage to additional towns," said AN Rai, chairman and managing director of BSNL. 
 
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Tech Radar India Bureau

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