Idea Cellular shares offer promise

Investors with a two-to-three-year horizon can buy shares in Idea Cellular, a mobile phone player aspiring to have a pan-India presence by December, considering the continuing strength of its current circles of operation and launches in more profitable circles, says Hindu Business Line.

These apart, there is also a strong technical advantage in the form of frequency allocations in the 900MHz band and benefits from Indus Towers that are likely to kick in over the next few years.

At Rs 79 (R12.80), the stock trades at about 20 times its likely 2009 to 2010 per share earnings. This is expensive compared to broader markets.

Getting a text message is akin to someone sliding a piece of mail under your door: You may not have asked for it, you can't stop its delivery and you have to deal with it whether you want to or not, writes The Associated Press.

The fact that text messages appear on mobile phones without any interaction from the user, and sometimes with limited interference from the cellular network operators, can give criminals an opening to break into those devices, as three teams of researchers showed last week at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Apple's iPhones and phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Google's Android operating systems were all shown to be vulnerable. In some cases, the problems weren't with software, but the way cellular networks process messages.

Mobile WiMax services are now commercially available, and major cellular companies are on the cusp of upgrading to LTE, reports CED Magazine.

Service providers looking to perform cellular backhaul for these 4G technologies will find that there are significant differences from today's 3G networks, and they will have to prepare their networks accordingly.

With 4G networks, simple text messaging and slow e-mail downloads are replaced by high-speed connections that support true mobile office applications, real-time video, streaming music and other rich multimedia applications. 4G wireless networks will approach the broadband speeds and user experience now provided by traditional DSL and cable modem wireline services.