NEW DELHI, Apr 30: India’s telecom subscriber base, mobile and landline combined, touched the 1.18 billion mark at the end of February 2017, growing 1.17 per cent over the previous month, according to regulator Trai.
The market growth was propelled by the addition of 13.75 million mobile users during the month. The demand for once- popular landline phone has been dwindling as the cheap mobile handsets, coupled with falling tariffs and freebies, have led to an explosion in cellphone connectivity.
Over the past few months, operators including newcomer Reliance Jio and incumbents like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have been doling out attractive offers and unleashing high- decibel marketing campaign to woo customers.
“The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,174.80 million at the end of January 2017 to 1,188.5 million at the end of February 2017, showing a monthly growth rate of 1.17 per cent,” as per the data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
The urban connectivity went up to 692.15 million in February-end, from 681.15 million in January-end, a growth of over 1.6 per cent.
The pace of growth of rural connectivity was slower at 0.56 per cent. Rural telecom users increased to 496.39 million from 493.65 million during the same period.
The Indian telecom market – the second-largest in the world after China in terms of subscriber base – added 13.75 million mobile customers in February. This pushed up the total mobile subscriber base to 1.16 billion.
The wireline connections – which have been losing sheen over the last few years – remained flat with subscriber base stagnant at about 24.35 million.
Lesser number of people sought network port outs in February compared to the previous month. Nearly 5.6 million subscribers submitted requests for mobile number porting in February, compared to 6.24 million placing such request in January this year.
“In February 2017, 5.67 million subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability (MNP),” Trai said.
With this, the cumulative requests increased from 261.06 million at the end of January 2017 to 266.73 million at the end of February since implementation of this facility nearly seven years ago.
Cellular industry body COAI Director General Rajan Mathews believes that the MNP numbers need to be seen in the broader context of the overall subscriber base of India and not on a standalone basis.
“In some markets like the US and Europe, the MNP ratio is nearly 3-5 per cent of the overall base whereas in India, the number is much smaller,” he said.
The facility of number portability allows mobile subscribers to retain their numbers when they relocate from one service area to another or wish to change their operator. (AGENCIES)
&&&
BIZ-COMPANIES-AADHAAR…
Aadhaar to be soon compulsory
for filings under Cos Act
NEW DELHI, Apr 30:
The Government will soon make quoting of Aadhaar number compulsory for key managerial personnel and directors in regulatory filings under the Companies Act.
The move, primarily aimed at tackling the issue of bogus identities, comes at a time when authorities are bolstering measures to deal with the menace of shell companies, suspected to be used for laundering illicit funds.
Moving towards implementation of the Aadhaar requirement under the companies law, the Corporate Affairs Ministry has already asked individual stakeholders to obtain Aadhaar at the earliest for “integrating their details with MCA21”.
MCA21 is the portal through which filings required under the Companies Act are submitted to the Ministry.
A source said the Ministry has started work for implementing a framework to make quoting of Aadhaar compulsory in the filings made under the companies law.
“We will roll it out pretty fast. It will be done in a phased manner,” the source said.
The idea is to have a system in place which would help in identifying the stakeholders whose name come up in the filings made through MCA21.
The move also assumes significance against the backdrop of instances where authorities have found discrepancies in personal details provided by individuals in the regulatory filings.
According to the source, having Aadhaar number along with the filings would help ascertain the authenticity of the individuals.
With respect to foreign entities, a separate system would be worked out by the Ministry.
There are more than 16 lakh registered companies.
While asking individual stakeholders to obtain Aadhaar at the earliest, the Ministry had emphasised that information in Aadhaar should be in harmony with PAN (Permanent Account Number).
“When implemented, all MCA21 services shall be available based on Aadhaar-based authentication only,” the notice, issued earlier this month, said.
Individual stakeholders, including “DIN (Director Identification Number) holders/ Directors/ Key Managerial Personnel” as well as certain professionals have been asked to obtain Aadhaar.
Professionals of the institutes of chartered accountants, company secretaries and cost accountants have been asked to get Aadhaar as early as possible. This would be applicable irrespective of whether the individual is in “employment or in practice”.
As many as 8-9 lakh registered companies are not filing annual returns with the Ministry and are a potential source of money laundering, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said on Saturday. (AGENCIES)
^^^^
SCIENCE-HUMANS
Virtual humans may help doctors learn empathy: study
WASHINGTON, Apr 30:
In a first, scientists are using life-like virtual humans to train doctors on how to break bad news and express empathy to patients and their family members.
Researchers created two virtual humans – Robin and Delmy – that are intelligent and conversational, and have the capacity to interact using a wide range of communication behaviours shared in typical face-to-face dialogue.
Such intuitive interactions could help aspiring doctors better prepare for difficult and emotionally charged encounters with patients and hospital colleagues, researchers said.
“Communication is the most important part of the doctor- patient relationship,” said Frederick Kron, from the University of Michigan in the US.
“We found that virtual human simulation was an engaging and effective tool to teach medical students advanced communication skills and, very importantly, that skills in the simulation transferred into a more realistic clinical situation,” said Kron, who is also the founder of Medical Cyberworlds, that developed the virtual reality programme.
Research shows that poor clinician communication skills may contribute to lower levels of patient satisfaction, poorer health outcomes, and higher risk of complaints and malpractice claims.
Poor communication is among the most frequently identified causes for events that can lead to preventable patient harm or even death.
“Finding an effective way to assess and teach advanced health care communication skills has been a long-standing challenge,” said Michael Fetters, also from University of Michigan.
“Medical learners have a great need for practical, innovative methods to help them master the complexities of health care communication and develop excellent communication skills – both verbal and nonverbal,” said Fetters.
“Ours is the first-ever research showing that it can be done effectively with virtual reality,” he said.
Researchers addressed this challenge using revolutionary virtual human technology called MPathic-VR.
This application allows learners to talk with emotive, computer-based virtual humans who can see, hear and react to them in real time. The virtual humans use a full range of behaviours expected between two people talking together.
The system assesses learners’ body language, facial expressions and communication strategies, then uses this information to produce real-time responses from the virtual human and provide personalised suggestions based on the learners’ strengths or weaknesses.
Learners also see their interactions with the virtual human on video, then get the chance to apply what they have learnt.
The research was published in the journal ‘Patient Education and Counselling.’ (AGENCIES)
&&&&
RESEARCH-FACEBOOK
Facebook comments, likes may help reduce exam anxiety: study
WASHINGTON, Apr 30:
Reading supportive comments, ‘likes’ and private messages from Facebook friends just before taking an exam may help anxious students reduce their nervousness and improve test scores, a new study has found.
Researchers at the University of Illinois in the US found that undergraduate students with high levels of test anxiety who sought support from their online friends and read the messages prior to a simulated exam reduced their anxiety levels by 21 per cent.
These students, and peers who performed a seven-minute expressive-writing exercise, were able to perform as well on a set of computer programming exercises as students who had low levels of test anxiety, said Robert Deloatch, a graduate student at the university.
Up to 41 per cent of students are estimated to suffer from test anxiety, which is a combination of physiological and emotional responses that occur while preparing for and taking tests.
Test anxiety is linked to lower test scores and grade point averages, as well as poor performance on memory and problem-solving tasks.
Test anxiety can be particularly acute when students face exams involving open-ended problems, such as those commonly used on computer science exams that require students to write and run codes, the researchers said.
When students’ test anxiety is reduced, their scores and task performance improve accordingly, they found.
Students with high test anxiety strongly fear negative evaluation, have lower self-esteem and tend to experience increased numbers of distracting and irrelevant thoughts in testing situations, according to the study.
For the simulated exam, students had to solve two programming problems by writing and running codes.
Most of the participants were computer science majors or computer engineering students who passed a pretest that ensured they had basic programming knowledge.
The researchers measured participants’ levels of test anxiety using the Cognitive Test Anxiety scale, which assesses the cognitive problems associated with test-taking such as task-irrelevant thinking and attention lapses.
Participants also completed two other questionnaires that measured their levels of anxiety.
The day before the experiment, students in the social support group posted messages on their personal social media pages requesting encouragement – in the form of likes, comments or private messages – about an upcoming computer programming challenge they planned to participate in.
“We found that only the students who received supportive messages from their Facebook network showed a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in their performance on our simulated exam,” Deloatch said. (AGENCIES)
&&&&
PAK-ACCIDENT
14 killed in road accident in northwest Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Apr 30:
At least 14 people were killed and several others injured when the vehicle they were travelling in skidded off the road and fell in a deep ravine in northwest Pakistan.
The accident occurred near Lawari Top in upper Dir district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa yesterday, officials said.
The vehicle met the accident when the driver lost control while negotiating a sharp turn in the mountainous terrain near Lawari top connecting Dir district with Chitral district, they said.
The condition of the injured is stated to be critical, officials added. (AGENCIES)
^^^^
Follow our WhatsApp channel