US ISP’s taking a wrong turn in limiting usage..

US ISP’s are trying to go back to olden days, Time Warner’s plans of limiting Bandwidth usage and trying to levy extra charges would possibly result in loss of not only high end customers but also irritate average user. If TimeWarner believes its mainline customers dont download movies/music why will they need 7Mbps and 15Mbps connections in the first place?. For simple browsing 1.5Mbps connection is more than sufficient.

After comcast’s delaying of P2P traffic,TimeWarner has started testing plans to limit bandwidth usage primarily targetted at blocking P2P traffic.This dangerous trend from ISP’s arise mostly out of capitalistic interests of these businesses and not on interests to save customers.If you are from other places of the world like India, then probably you will realize how pathetic situation of Customers in US, be it Mobile Operators,Cable companies or ISP’s the big companies pretty much make you do what they want you to do.Already the options are pretty less here.Maybe Google’s entry may change stakes but at present situation is looking very grim.

Usually customers paying for a service would never like to get monitoring/limiting functions on the service we will find a way to get away from those options. Say Timewarner brings a plan where it will allow 10GB tranfer limit for 30 $, customers who want to be free from limits will always ask for a unlimited option and so Time Warner might give a new plan for $60 and we will end up paying $30 more for same plan we are using now. Net Result.. Its a forced price hike, afterall if they get more profit they will do anything bothering nothing about end user.

If such a plan comes into effect I will be the first guy to ditch Time Warner.

ICICI Bank launches iMobile- Innovative mobile application for complete banking

ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank launched today iMobile, a unique mobile banking platform on mobile phones. iMobile is a breakthrough innovation in banking where practically all internet-banking transactions can now be simply done on mobiles phones. Customers can now transfer funds to ICICI and Non ICICI Bank accounts just with the click of their mobile. The application covers Savings bank, Demat, Credit Card and Loan accounts. Customers can also pay their utility bills and insurance premium through this facility. ICICI Bank offers this facility free of charge to customers.

The application uses ATM pin to auntenticate users on this application for security.Currently ICICI uses mobile banking through SMS ,ICICI has 13 million customers of which 7 million has registered for SMS banking. It sends 20 million SMS alerts to its customers every month.

Customers who are already registered for mobile alerts will be able to download this application by sending an SMS “iMobile” to 56767661. Customers who have GPRS connection will receive a WAP link for activation. Customers who do not have GPRS can download iMobile from ICICI Bank.com on their desktops. It can then be transferred on to their handsets using either Bluetooth or data cable.