Heena Sharma Blog

  There has been a lot of buzz around 5G . Some say it will bring to life the sci-fi experience. Others speculate that it will enable the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, bringing to reality the concept of connected homes, office spaces, vehicles, and more. So, what is 5G really? And how does it work? Let’s understand: To understand 5G better, it is important that we know about data transfer speeds, latency rate and throughput. These are the basic parameters that define 5G. What is data transfer speed? The data transfer speed is the maximum volume of information transferred between two systems every second. For instance, if a broadband connection has 100Mbps speed, it can handle up to 100 Megabits of data every second. Therefore, the higher the data transfer speed, the more the volume transferred every second. Read More

  The hour-long Fastly Inc. outage was a reminder of how exposed the world’s biggest websites are to the impact of disruptions ranging from simple human error to coordinated cyberattack . The failure at Fastly, which helps websites load their pages faster, sent vast swaths of the web offline on Tuesday. News websites including CNN, the New York Times and Bloomberg News, services such as Amazon.com Inc., Shopify Inc. and Stripe Inc., plus sites as large as Spotify and Reddit all went offline. U.K. government digital services were also unavailable for a period. Major sites began reporting problems around 10:30 a.m. U.K. time on Tuesday, according to Downdetector, which tracks service interruptions. In a summary of the events that unfolded, the company said a valid software configuration change by one of its customers triggered a previously undiscovered bug, introduced during a May 12 software deployment. Fastly quickly identified an issue with its content delivery network and a...

Two months ago, Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, announced that it planned to buy the rights to a tract of internet real estate for more than $1 billion. But it wasn’t just any piece of digital property. It was dot-org, the cyber neighborhood that is home to big nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations like the United Nations (un.org) and NPR (npr.org), and to little ones like neighborhood clubs. The deal was met with a fierce backlash. Critics argued that a less commercial corner of the internet should not be controlled by a profit-driven private equity firm, as a matter of both principle and practice. Online petitions and letters of concern came from hundreds of organizations, thousands of individuals and four Democrats in Congress, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Rarely has the acronym-strewn realm of internet addresses — so-called domain names — stirred such passion. Now, a group of respected internet pioneers and nonprofit leaders is of...

Soon, rural India may have access to broadband services through cable networks. To boost rural internet connectivity, the ministry of information and broadcasting and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) proposed to provide broadband services through existing cable networks. According to ministry officials, the move has the potential to provide internet connectivity to nearly 190 million households that have television sets. A Times of India report says that about 100 million homes already have cable TV subscription. Trai chairman R S Sharma said that such a move can increase internet connectivity through fixed line networks from the existing 7 per cent, against the global average of 46 per cent. During the mid-December meeting of the ministry and TRAI with service providers, Sharma cited the instance of South Korea, which has implemented a similar proposal. For it to be implemented, the proposal will now be whetted on the financial implications of a ...

Music composer Shantanu Moitra feels television is no longer the sole option for aspiring artistes as youngsters have started breaking the Internet to garner praise and support for their performances. Moitra, however, admitted that channels like YouTube and other podcast platforms have been flooded with music videos and clips, making it difficult for the experts to choose from the vast talent pool. "Television is not the only hope for aspiring artistes anymore. Ten years back, a budding performer had to approach a TV studio, but he or she has independent choices now. That, in a way, has also increased competition," the national-award-winning music composer told PTI on Wednesday. ALSO READ: How borderless nature of internet makes social media regulation complicated Asked if the present Bollywood numbers were as popular as the ones released in the 70s and 80s, he said music directors work under various constraints these days. Read our full coverage on ...

Interestingly, nine out of every ten new internet users are exploring the online content only in their native language Current Affairs News : India is now adding close to 10 million daily active internet users every month, the highest rate of addition to the internet community anywhere in the world. Interestingly, nine out of every ten new internet users are exploring the online content only in their native language, heralding the dominance of a non-English internet user base in the country. "The volume of new internet users is growing in straight vertical line for the past 18-20 months after the data charges had come down to just about Rs 15-20 per gigabit following the entry of Reliance Jio from a level of as high as Rs 250 per 1 GB data in the past," Rajan Anand, internet technology company Google's vice president (south east Asia and India) said while disclosing these latest data points on Tuesday. Those who are accessing internet content in loca...