Airtel conducts 5G trial in 700 MHz band in partnership with Nokia

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it has conducted India’s first 5G trial in the 700 MHz spectrum band in partnership with Nokia.

The demonstration, which was conducted on the outskirts of Kolkata, also marked the first 5G trial in the eastern India, the company said in a statement.

Airtel has been allotted test spectrum in multiple bands by Department of Telecommunications for the validation of 5G technology and use cases.

“Airtel conducts India’s first 5G trial in the 700 MHz band in partnership with Nokia,” the telco said.

Airtel used equipment from Nokia’s 5G portfolio, which included Nokia AirScale radios and standalone (SA) core. Read More

Google launches Showcase, to train 50,000 journalists in digital skills

Google on Tuesday announced several initiatives for Indian news industry under its Google News Initiative (GNI), including the launch of Google News Showcase, a programme to train 50,000 journalists in digital skills, and training 800 small and mid sized news organisations grow their digital ad revenue.

The Google New Showcase, launched late last year, and currently active in several other countries, will show content from Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi in dedicated News Showcase panels in Google News and on Discover.

Showcase will have add support for more Indian languages in the future. As part of the licensing agreements with publishers, Google will also pay participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content.

From today, Google News Showcase will roll out in India with 30 news publishers including national, regional and local news organizations like The Hindu Group, HT Digital Streams Ltd, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, The Telegraph India, IANS (Indo Asian News Service), ANI, and others. Read More

Latest 737 Max problem sets back Boeing new airplane deliveries

Boeing continues to grapple with an electrical problem affecting some 737 Max airliners, and the setback is hurting the aircraft maker’s ability to deliver new planes.

The company said Tuesday that it delivered 17 planes in April, including just four Max jets. CEO David Calhoun had warned analysts that April deliveries would be light because of the Max problem.

The slow pace of deliveries hurts Boeing’s cash generation because airlines and other customers typically pay a large chunk of a plane’s purchase price upon delivery.

The Max, Boeing’s best-selling plane, was grounded for 20 months after two crashes that killed 346 people. Deliveries of the jet resumed in November after Boeing updated a flight-control system, but now about 100 Max jets are idled because of an issue with electrical grounding of some parts. It has taken Boeing far longer than expected to come up with a fix.

Ed Pierson, a former Boeing production manager who has told Congress about problems on Boeing’s assembly line, said the electrical issue should have been caught during the post-crash review of the Max. He criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for focusing its review on the flight-control system and not examining production problems. Read More

OYO to show vaccination status of partner hotels’ staff on its app

Hospitality firm OYO on Tuesday said it will show COVID-19 vaccination status of the staff of its partner hotels on its app as it believes that such initiative will be a key factor in building trust and confidence among consumers when they are ready to travel again.

The initiative, ‘VaccinAid’ is crucial to aid the recovery of the impacted tourism and travel industry, OYO said.

“Vaccination is the most important intervention against COVID-19. We are launching an industry-first feature, VaccinAid, to show self-reported vaccination status of hotel staff across OYOs,” OYO Founder and Group CEO Ritesh Agarwal said in a tweet.

OYO’s guest surveys show that 87 per cent will prefer hotels with immunised staff when they plan to travel again. “Vaccination visibility when self-reported timely and accurately will become a confidence builder for travel recovery,” he added.

“VaccinAid is our small attempt to promote the larger cause of vaccination among our customers as well as our hotel partners & their staff,” Agarwal said. Read More

SpaceX to accept dogecoin as payment to launch lunar mission in 2022: Musk

SpaceX will launch the “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon” in the first quarter of next year, with Elon Musk’s commercial rocket company accepting the meme-inspired cryptocurrency dogecoin as payment.

“SpaceX launching satellite Doge-1 to the moon next year – Mission paid for in Doge – 1st crypto in space – 1st meme in space”, Musk said in a tweet https://bit.ly/3betdTm.

Geometric Energy Corporation announced the dogecoin-funded mission earlier on Sunday, with the statement not disclosing the mission’s financial value.

“This mission will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and set the foundation for interplanetary commerce”, SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Tom Ochinero was quoted as saying in the statement released by Geometric Energy. Musk said on Twitter in April that SpaceX was going to put a “literal Dogecoin on the literal moon”. Read More

Airtel is now 5G ready, waiting for adequate spectrum to rollout services

Airtel is now a 5G-ready network and the telecom operator is waiting for adequate spectrum allocation to rollout 5G services in the country, said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel on Thursday. Recently, the company demonstrated live 5G over a commercial network in Hyderabad city and said that its network is 5G ready. Airtel did this over its existing liberalised spectrum in the 1800 MHz band through the Non Stand Alone network technology. Using the dynamic spectrum sharing, Airtel operated 5G and 4G concurrently within the same spectrum block.

“I am very proud of our engineers who have worked tirelessly to showcase this incredible capability in Tech City, Hyderabad today. Every one of our investments is future proofed as this game changing test in Hyderabad proves. With Airtel being the first operator to demonstrate this capability, we have shown again that we have always been the first in India to pioneer new technologies in our quest for empowering Indians everywhere,” said Gopal Vital. Read More

Road to 50K: Sensex jumps 10,000 pts in 74 sessions; these are top gainers

The BSE barometer Sensex scripted history on Thursday, January 21, when it scaled Mount 50,000 for the first time. The 30-pack index galloped from 40,000-mark hit on October 8, 2020 to 50,000 in just 74 sessions and from 45,000 level (scaled on November 4, 2020) in mere 32 trading days.

When the index had plummeted to the lows of 25,000 at the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, there was little to no one who had envisaged such a meteoric rise from the index’s three-year low. A plethora of factors have fuelled such a rally in the index, ranging from liquidity push by the central bankers to FII buying, and recovery in economic growth.

Latest developments on the Covid-19 vaccine front and a change of guard in the United States too lent confidence to investors to keep ploughing money in the market. Read More

GATE 2021 admit card to be released by IIT-B today: All you need to know

GATE 2021 admit card: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay will release the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2021 admit card today. GATE 2021 will be on February 5,6, 7,12,13 and 14, 2021, in two shifts (forenoon and afternoon) for which, 860,000 candidates have registered. The results for GATE 2021 examination is scheduled to be announced on March 22, 2021.

Steps to download GATE 2021 admit card

Step 1: Visit the official website gate.iitb.ac.in

Step 2: Click on ‘GATE 2021 admit card’

Step 3. Login

Step 4. Your GATE admit card 2021 will be displayed on the screen. Download and take a print for future reference

Important documents to carry for GATE 2021 exam

Candidates must carry GATE 2021 admit card to the exam hall along with a valid photo ID. Read More

NEET MDS admit card 2021 likely to release today on nbe.edu.in; check steps

The National Board of Examination (NBE) is likely to release today the NEET MDS admit card 2021 on its official website – nbe.edu.in. Candidates who registered to appear for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Masters of Dental Surgery (NEET MDS) 2021 will be able to download their hall ticket from today. The NEET MDS examination is scheduled to be conducted in the online mode on December 16, 2020 from 7 am to 7 pm. The NEET MDS result will be declared by December 31.

The online registration process for the NEET MDS 2021 exam was held from October 26 to November 15 this year. NEET MDS candidates will receive SMS/e-mail alerts and website notice regarding the release of the NEET MDS admit card on the NBE website. Candidates can contact the National Board of Examinations at 022-61087595 for examination-related queries. NBE Authorities can also be contacted at helpdesknbeexam@gmail.com for more information. Read More

Tesla gets permission from China to sell Shanghai-made Model Y SUV

Tesla Inc has obtained permission to start selling its Shanghai-made Model Y sports utility vehicle in China.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published the approval on its website on Monday.

Tesla, now sells its Model 3 electric cars in China and has been building new car manufacturing capacity in Shanghai to make its Model Y SUVs. It applied for the Shanghai-made Model Y SUV sales permission earlier this month.

It started delivering vehicles made in its Shanghai factory last December and sold more than 13,000 vehicles in China in October.

The company has started exporting China-made Model 3 cars to Europe and said last week it plans to also start making electric vehicle chargers in China in 2021. Read More