Telecom staff to go on 2-hour strike on July 28
Telecom employees would go on a two-hour strike on July 28 protesting the government decision to open up long distance telephony without assuring alternative revenue plans for the DoT. "The protest will be on an all-India basis," O P Gupta, secretary general, National Federation of Telecom Employees (NFTE) told PTI. The strike which was scheduled for Wednesday was postponed in view of observance of Kargil Day, Gupta said. The Government must explain from where they would get money to run the department, he said, adding that opening up of trunk exchange system including long distance telephony would make telephone for an ordinary subscriber unaffordable.

Arvind Shah picks up stake in Freeos.com
Arvind Shah of Boston Education and Software Technologies has invested Rs 1 crore for an undisclosed equity stake in Freeos.com (free operating system.com). The company whose site has been up since 1998 caters to a community of IT clients who are willing to adopt free operating systems. The promoters Prakash Advani and Apoorva Shah plan on providing ongoing support services for free operating systems.

Fibcom India in race for DoT tender on DWDM project
Fibcom India Ltd, an ITI partnered joint venture with Tellabs of Denmark is in the race for the Rs 60 crore dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) tender called by the DoT services to meet the increased demand for high capacity and high speed connectivity. Company CEO D D Rajdev said at the AGM that the financial bid was likely to open any time now.

NextSet Software launches e-biz product devt centre
NextSet Software, a provider of Business Exchange Automation solutions has launched their e-business product development centre in Bangalore to cater to the expanding B2B segment and has announced plans to invest $ 20 million in India according to a company press release on Wednesday.

Netcontinuum sets up devt centre in Bangalore
Netcontinuum, a US company and a business associate of the Hero group, has set up a development centre for building the next generation hardware and software systems to deliver rich, multimedia content over the Internet. A Hero group company release said today that Firstring Inc, also a US company, had set up a state-of-the-art call centre facility at the International Techpark Ltd in Bangalore, which catered to the requirement of some leading customers. The group had a major share in this company.

Rational Software's SEED programme at IIIT
Rational Software Corporation India Pvt Ltd, leaders in software development tools, on Wednesday announced the inauguration of SEED (software engineering for educational development) programme at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore. "Rational's SEED programme represents a long-term commitment by Rational Software to help ensure the adoption of good software engineering discipline in the academic community", company officials told reporters here.