iWorld
MIB summons Netflix content head over IC814: The Kandahar Attack
MUMBAI: The ministry of information and broadcasting is cracking the whip on another series. This time it has summoned Netflix India content head Monika Shergill to Shastri Bhavan relating to “objectionable” treatment of the series IC814: the Kandahar Hijack which is based on the real life hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999 by Pakistan terrorists.
Created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, the show is inspired by the book ‘Flight Into Fear: The Captain’s Story’ Devi Sharan, who was the captain of the flight and journalist Srinjoy Chowdhury
IC814 has raised a stink on social media as hundreds of social media users have objected to the Pakistani terrorists names being changed to Bhola and Shankar while the real names were
Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim and Shakir. Several X-ers have complained that the changing of the names has been done to protect the Muslim community and besmirch Hindus.
The furore could end up being a storm in a teacup. NDTV.com, quoting a home ministry statement dated 6 January 2000, has shared that the hijackers had come to be known as Chief, (2) Doctor, (3) Burger, (4) Bhola and (5) Shankar to the passengers in the plane as this how they addressed each other.
The incident was unfortunate as the Atal Behari Vajpayee government (which was in power then) had to release three imprisoned terrorists Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar in exchange for the lives of the passengers of the hijacked plane.
iWorld
Airtel crosses 650 million customers to cement its place as world’s second largest telco
The Indian telecoms giant, now spanning 15 countries, is chasing the top spot with satellites, smartphones and mobile money
NEW DELHI: Numbers like these do not come around often. Bharti Airtel has crossed 650 million customers, making it the world’s second largest telecom operator by mobile customer base, according to GSMA Intelligence. Only one rival sits ahead of it. The gap, Airtel intends to close.
Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, was characteristically measured. “Achieving the milestone of 650 million customers to be the second largest operator globally is a great responsibility for us to serve our customers better every day,” he said. “Every customer interaction is an opportunity to earn trust and deliver value.”
The scale of the operation is striking. In India, Airtel serves over 368 million mobile customers and was the first operator to launch 5G Plus services. It now reaches over 13 million homes with high-speed internet and a further 15 million households through its Digital TV offering. Its enterprise arm, Airtel Business, runs mission-critical infrastructure across cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and SD-WAN, underpinned by over 400,000 route kilometres of subsea fibre and a string of green data centres. The company has also announced a push into non-banking financial services, using its data insights to offer personalised credit products through the Airtel app.
Africa tells an equally ambitious story. Airtel Africa serves over 179 million customers across 14 countries, with Airtel Money, its mobile financial platform, counting over 52 million users. In a continent where traditional banking remains out of reach for millions, Airtel Money is not a product. It is infrastructure.
Beyond terrestrial networks, Airtel is reaching upward. Partnerships with Eutelsat OneWeb and SpaceX give it access to a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, pushing high-speed, low-latency broadband to remote maritime, aviation and rural areas that cables will never reach.
Airtel’s networks now cover over two billion people across 15 countries. The company that began as an Indian mobile operator has become something rather larger. At 650 million customers and climbing, it is not finished yet.
