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How the wireless industry will connect the next billion people

BARCELONA, Spain--The price of mobile devices and services will need to come down to connect the next billion people.

That's according to the CEOs of four major companies in the wireless arena: Nokia, Qtel Group, Bharti Airtel, and Mozilla.

"As an operator, we have to package services to the lower segment of the economy," said Nasser Marafih, CEO of the Qtel Group, during a keynote address at this week's Mobile World Congress.

Qtel yesterday announced a new brand, Ooredoo, which will cover various wireless carrier brands throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Much of … Read more

Airtel CEO: It's time for super-cheap smartphones

BARCELONA--Airtel has 250 million customers in India and Africa, but very few of them can afford smartphones, and Chief Executive Sunil Bharti Mittal said that's holding the countries back.

In developing countries, lower-end feature phones today are being used for banking and buying as well as for communications, but smartphones could offer much more, Mittal said at the Mobile World Congress show here.

"Certificates in villages -- birth or death -- become extremely important. Ration cards become very important. All this can be delivered through mobile phones. The difficulty is that we will have to provide very inexpensive … Read more

iPhone 4S to hit India November 25

The iPhone 4S will soon hit the world's second largest mobile market.

Offered by two of India's major carriers, Apple's new iPhone will start selling there November 25.

Bharti Airtel has been identified by sources as one of the carriers, according to a recent story in The Times of India, though the company itself provided no news or announcements about the phone on its Web site.

However, An Airtel spokesperson confirmed the launch of the iPhone 4S to CNET, saying that the phone will be available starting midnight on November 25 with preorders to kick off this … Read more

Google and the wrongly jailed Indian Net surfer

On August 31, Lakshmana Kailash K. was arrested in Bangalore, India, and charged with posting insulting images of a revered historical figure on the Internet. The police claimed that he had uploaded disrespectful images of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the Indian equivalent of George Washington. Free speech, it seems, does not extend to that sort of thing in India.

Normally, this wouldn't be a press-worthy story. After all, India is not the first country to take a hard line against Internet free speech. The Thai military regime blocked the entire YouTube Web site earlier this year after a single video posted … Read more