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VSAT in my village

I currently reside in the UAE and plan to return to my rural hometown in India. Although my hometown does have electricity and telephone lines, the standards of service are very poor. I believe that this is unfortunately typical in many Indian villages.

Upon my return to my hometown, as an honor to my village, I would like to set up a message center, which will be open for all to use. I would like to provide Internet-based services using satellite communications.

Can you help me achieve my dream of connecting my village to the Internet and making it a part of the information age? Since electricity is in short supply, I may have to use a diesel generator or solar power.

Regards

Dr. P Singh

Dear Dr. Singh,

There are three large VSAT service providers in India. Here is the contact information.

HCL Comnet (www.hclcomnet.com/)

Hughes India (www.dwge.com/services/networking/services.htm)

Venkatesh Krishnan

Comsat Max
venkat.krish@comsatmax.com

Security in India

The article on enterprise security, written by Anil Patrick R, titled 'A call to arms' (Network Magazine, November 2003), was really informative. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Indian companies like Godrej are following security guidelines very strictly.

Do employees actually accept guidelines? I ask this because the security guidelines sometimes add to their inconvenience. And considering that employees in India are far less aware of online threats than personnel in developed countries, it really must be a difficult task to implement the security process with full co-operation of the employees (who happen to be the most important loose link in the security structure).

There are very few articles on enterprise security in Indian magazines these days. I am sure that articles like these will help increase awareness levels among enterprise users.

Regards

Srikrishna Kadimisetty

Dear Srikrishna Kadimisetty,

Thank you very much for your encouraging words.

You are right about the security awareness levels among employees in Indian organizations. It's evident from the examples that this is not an impossible task. And just like any business issue, it's a matter of imparting awareness to the employees regarding the need for, and the benefits of security.

We at Network Magazine are hopeful that all Indian organizations will take the issue of information security more seriously.

A bit late is better than never...

Regards

Anil

Call center

I just read the case study written by Soutiman Das Gupta regarding Manjushree Infotech's call center in the December 2002 issue of Network Magazine. It is very well written and informative.

We want to set up a 20-seater BPO unit in Jamshedpur to perform call center and back office jobs like data conversion. We already have office space of around 5,000 sq.ft.

Can you help us by telling us how to start going about building a call center?

Regards

J.P. Mehta

Dear J.P. Mehta,

Thank you for appreciating the article. It's good to hear that you plan to set up a BPO and call center services organization.

To set up the call center infrastructure, you will need voice-enabled routers and switches, and specialized software for call routing and CRM. The amount of equipment and cost will depend on factors like the levels of service, capacity, and expected growth.

It's a good idea to get in touch with consultants like E&Y and Gartner, or experienced system integrators like Datacraft. You can also approach experienced call center equipment manufacturers like Nortel, Cisco, and 3Com directly for assistance.

We wish you all the best for your project.

Articles for Network Magazine

I work in the MIS department at IDRBT. I would like to contribute cases or articles. Please let me know how can I proceed.

Regards

Prof. Swapna

IDRBT

I am working as an applications engineering manager. Zarlink semiconductor designs, manufactures and markets broadband silicon chipsets.

I would like to propose an article on broadband networks with relevance to the networks that are coming up in India. Would you please review the abstract and see whether this fits into one of your issues?

Regards

Ullas

Zarlink Semiconductor

Our company deals in Biometric, smart card technology based solutions. We also have some Net security solutions based on biometric technology.

We are interested in publishing articles in your informative magazine. These articles provide updated info on technology.

Milind Patil

Axis Software Pvt Ltd

Dear Readers

We receive a dozen such proposals each month through our website. We are sorry if we haven't replied to each of your requests individually. However, I do hope to address the issue here, once, and for all.

As a matter of policy, we do not publish articles from readers. We at Network Magazine believe in generating content in-house. However, we do have guest columnists and external writers have been selected after evaluation.

We welcome articles from CIOs, CEOs and industry consultants—but not from students and the academia. For those writers who we approve, article summaries and topics need to be discussed in advance with the editorial team.

Regards

Brian Pereira

Assistant Editor