For the first time, used VPN for an uninterrupted duration of 14+ hours yesterday. Connection is over BSNL’s DataOne, from a Solaris x86 client. Bandwidth choked a couple of times for about 5 minutes each, but overall a very good response.
The cost of network access
Just now read an article about France promising PC and network connection for a Euro a day. Well, lets see how the costs workout in India.
Typical rental charges for a decent PC is about Rs 1000 (Indian Rupees One Thousand) a month. I am talking about a PC with 512MB RAM and rest of the accessories. Basic Internet charges are about Rs 250 a month. There will be additional charges of Rs 100 a month, in the form of taxes etc. Combined together, one will get a decent internet connection (128kbps, 0.5G download, which is decent enough in this part of the world) for about Rs 1350 a month. Which amounts to about USD 30.00 a month or E25.00 a month. Close enough for what France promised, without any government intervention.
However, there is a lot in India you can buy with a Euro a day. For people with western food habits, one can by a Chicken McMaharaja at McDonalds for about a Euro. You can buy a couple of low cost, street-side lunches even in the costliest cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi. You can buy a week’s intake of vegetables etc. in most of the country.
Most of India’s internet access is taken care of not by home based PCs, but by the popular internet cafes. The prices start from about Rs 10 per hour (little less than a US Quarter and one fifth of a Euro.) Most of these cafes are scaled down versions of outfits like Kinko’s. They offer scanning, internet and laser printing services. For example, I haven’t owned a scanner for quite sometime. How do I scan something? I go to a nearby internet cafe (100 meters from my house) and get the document scanned, emailed to me, for about Rs 15.00. How many times do I scan things? May be once in about 2 months. So that comes with an annual cost of USD 2.0 :-). These outfits are mostly inhabited by students and job seekers, who may not want to invest in a home PC. Here for about a euro a day, you get 5 hours of network connectivity. Good enough for a browsing kind of use, but you may not have the notion of locally stored personal data.
Well, in summary, the cost of network access is very low in most of the urban India. There are some plans for making it much cheaper for rural India. But we may have to wait for a better infrastructure like decent electricity in rural India.
Interesting Reads
Interesting reads from the last few hours:
- Intel’s plan to layoff 1000 managers worldwide.
- Another zero-day attack on powerpoint.
- May be this hack of a hybrid may help people impacted by higher fuel prices in US.
Tough Day
One of the toughest days at work. One of my good coworkers is separating from the company voluntarily. Am going to miss her support.
Also, today is the last day for a couple of our interns, because we don’t have any open positions at this time. Very hard to see people with lots of fresh energy leave.
Anyway, all of them have good positions in offer at other places, so I feel good for them. Wish them all the luck.
Firefox improves market share
Mumbai and Srinagar, Victims of attack
Yesterday’s blasts in Mumbai and Srinagar are cowardly acts of disoriented minds. My sympathies are with people who are impacted and their relatives. Hope there will be appropriate measures to avoid repeat of such situations in future.
Microsoft and ODF
An interesting article on InformationWeek on the news that Microsoft supports ODF.
Post-Class-Notes: DTrace Class at SRKR EC
McDonalds in Hyderabad
Ronald is here in Hyderabad. My kids are a big fan of him about half-a-decade ago, before we relocated to India. They used to visit McD when we make a trip to Bangalore, but they still love the symbol and the toys that come with kids meal.
Today (July 07th) they opened a McDonalds in Prasad’s (IMAX) Multiplex. I knew about this for the last couple of days because I went to that place to book tix for today’s movie outing. Wanted to surprise my daughter, but she got the news from her schoolbusmates.
Being an weekend eve, most of the kids who knew about this appeared to be in line to get their tastebuds cranking. We had to wait for about 10 minutes in a line just to get in. Once we are in, the service was faster though. Needless to say, kids enjoyed the meal and then we proceeded to watch the latest Indain Superhero in the block, Krrish.
Alec Injured
Came to know a few hours ago thru emails and blogs that Alec Muffett of Sun Microsystems, a very popular person in computer security land, met with a motorcycle accident in France. His condition is said to be critical. We hope he recovers fast and gets out of critical situation soon.
His latest blog entry at dropsafe is being updated with his latest condition.