Earlier today, Government of India,GSMA, COAI andTRAIannounced their intention to work together to facilitate the penetration of Mobile Broadband services in India. Last year, the Indian Government sold licenses for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access for a whopping 19.7 billion dollars. While 3G rollout kicked off few months ago, Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) is yet to takeoff. National Broadband Plan has set an ambitious target of 160 million broadband connections by 2014 and Mobile broadband is expected to play a vital role in ensuring last mile access....

Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilotannouncedyesterday that the Indian government is taking specific measures to ensure the security of Government websites in India, after 117 websites were hacked between January and June in 2011. In a written reply to a question raised in theLok Sabha, Sachin Pilot said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) carried out an analysis on the web server logs of the hacked websites and suggested specific steps and countermeasures to the ministry, to patch the existing vulnerabilities and strengthen the security of these websites....

It appears that Airtel, one of the popular Internet service providers (ISP) in India, has started blocking several file sharing websites such as Rapidshare, Sendspace and MediaFire. First reported in theIndia Broadband Forum, this move seems to be driven by the rampant piracy of media files on these websites. Airtel hasn’t officially confirmed whether these websites have been banned at its own will or it has been ordered by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to do so, although a screenshot fromSunny Chahal, one of Airtel Broadband’s users points at the latter....

Popular Indian restaurant guideZomatohas launched an events section for the Delhi/NCR and Bengaluru regions,as reported by Medianama. It is also working on an e-commerce section, which is set to be rolled out before the year is through. The website was renamed from Foodiebay to Zomato in November last year as part of a decision to eventually offer more lifestyle-related options besides restaurant listings. The launching of the events section is one of the first steps in that direction....

2011 is greeted by a surge in the number of smartphone users worldwide. As a result, smartphone penetration and mobile media consumption continue to grow at an extreme rate – especially in India. In a report fromInMobi, an independent mobile ad network, the Indian mobile ad market grew by a whopping 27 percent, or 1.5 billion ad impressions, between October 2010 and January 2011 to 7.3 billion impressions monthly. This figure wasreportedin InMobi’s January 2011 Mobile Insights Report – India Market....