HTC 7 Mozart is one of their latest, smart phone running Windows 7 for mobile just about launched in India sometime last month. A dream design, the slick single-piece body with a cool battery compartment also housing the antennae is a masterpiece of art. The look and feel is a unique mix of metal, plastic and rubber in one perfectly shaped handheld. Great ergonomics meets flawless design in a device form factor for once.

MWC has been a harbinger of things to come, if not for the devices and handsets at least for the mobile infrastructure and network applications space with particular focus on the operators. [Much of the device magic it is believed is lost to CES] – that being the case, it was no surprise that this year’s Barcelona Mecca was resplendent with global bigwigs from the infrastructure space painting the town red with their coolest goodies to woo the big celcos.

Growing up as a kid in the ‘70s, one thing that stood out often as symbol of status for the great Indian middle-class was the famed four-wheeler Ambassador. While inside the house, the babus [Indian bureaucracy] also sought two things that were symbols of ‘having arrived’: one was the famous black rotary analogue phone and the other was the 15Amps thick wired cable for the All Electric Home. Looking back it seems laughable that having your house wired with a 15Amps electrical circuit was such a big deal for the simple...

Between 2007-2010, the Indian government continuously delayed / postponed the BWA / 3G spectrum auctions much to the disappointment of the global telecom community. Finally it pulled it off in a flawless manner in mid 2010 when amidst severe competition, operators bid up the prices and the government literally laughed its way to the banks. In the process the BWA aspirants  paid more than a king’s ransom to acquire precious spectrum in whatever circles they could get. With some of these licenses falling in the billion...