Dhaka, Nov 22 (UNB)- A total of 55 lakh subscribers have joined the 4.5G network operator, Robi recently. 

Within less than seven months of the inauguration of Robi 4.5G services, its network is now covering 99.4% of all the thanas of the country. 

The company has created the largest 4.5G network of the country with more than 7,300 4.5G BTS sites. 

Besides, being the only operator to use the U/L900 spectrum technology, made Robi as the undisputed champion in the indoor coverage arena. 

Commenting on this great achievement, Robi’s Managing Director and CEO, Mahtab Uddin Ahmed said “I, on behalf of the entire Robi management, would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our customers for placing your trust on us and allowing us the honor of serving fifty five lakh 4.5G subscribers in the country.” 

Robi took the commanding lead in the industry in rolling out the 4.5G network by launching the service in all the 64 districts of the country on the very first day of the commercial launch of the service on the 20th February, 2018. 

Rather than making a one-off statement with this bold move, the company continued to honor its commitment to spread the 4.5G network in urban as well as the rural market.
 

London, Nov 21 (AP/UNB) — In the battle for online privacy, U.S. search giant Google is a Goliath facing a handful of European Davids.

The backlash over Big Tech's collection of personal data offers new hope to a number of little-known search engines that promise to protect user privacy.

Sites like Britain's Mojeek , France's Qwant , Unbubble in Germany and Swisscows say they don't track user data, filter results or show "behavioral" ads.

These sites are growing amid the rollout of new European privacy regulations, numerous corporate data scandals and even comments by high-profile tech executives such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, which have combined to raise public awareness about the mountains of personal information that companies stealthily collect and sell to advertisers.

Widespread suspicion in Europe about Google's stranglehold on internet searches has also helped make the continent a spawning ground for secure search sites. Europe is particularly sensitive to privacy issues because spying by the Nazi-era Gestapo and the secret services in the Soviet Union is still within living memory.

"For us, it's all about citizens and citizens have the right to privacy," said Eric Leandri, chairman of Paris-based Qwant. He said that view contrasts with the mindset across the Atlantic, where internet users are seen as consumers whose rights are dictated by the terms of their agreements with tech companies.

Traffic numbers show interest is rising. Qwant handled nearly 10 billion queries in 2017, more than triple the previous year. On a monthly basis, it's getting 80 million visits while requests are growing 20 percent. Leandri says the site now accounts for 6 percent of search engine market share in France, its biggest market.

Qwant is even getting official support. Last month the French army and parliament both said they would drop Google and use Qwant as their default search engine, as part of efforts to reclaim European "digital sovereignty."

The site doesn't use tracking cookies or profile users, allowing it to give two different users the exact same result. It has built its own index of 20 billion pages covering French, German and Italian. It plans to expand the index to about two dozen other languages, for which it currently relies on results from Microsoft's Bing.

Mojeek, based in Brighton, England, operates on similar principles and has so far cataloged 2 billion webpages. The company says it gets 200,000 unique visitors a month and search queries have quintupled over the past year.

Germany's Unbubble is a "meta-search" engine, sending encrypted queries to more than 30 other search engines and hiding its users' locations. It promises neutral search results rather than ones filtered by an algorithm catering to personal biases.

To be sure, Google's in no danger of toppling. The company based in Mountain View, California, accounts for three-quarters or more of global market share, depending on whom you ask, and rules the mobile market with its Android operating system.

Some privacy search operators say an equally big motivation behind these startups is to avoid "filter bubbles," in which internet content is pre-selected for users by the likes of Google and Facebook based on previous searches and other data.

"The main idea is to provide neutral information and allow people to depend less on machine learning-based filters," said Unbubble founder Tobias Sasse. "If you are using Google today, perhaps you'll notice that there is always the same mainstream information," preventing people from seeing the "great diversity" online, he said.

Netherlands-based Startpage anonymizes Google search results, stripping out ads and tracking. Another British startup, Oscobo , does anonymous searches for U.K. users, with results licensed from Yahoo/Bing. Outside Europe, there's also U.S. site DuckDuckGo .

Some of these sites rely financially on donations, others from "affiliate advertising" — links from Amazon, eBay or other shopping sites that pay a commission but don't target or track users. That's different from Google's behavioral, or targeted, ads that come up based on your search history, which many find creepy and invasive.

Mojeek has private investors. Founder Marc Smith, who began in 2004 with two servers in his bedroom, is "very much anti-advertising," said Finn Brownbill, Mojeek's head of marketing. "It's a necessary evil and we'll look for whatever route we can to avoid it."

In Switzerland, a country whose banking sector became a byword for secrecy, Swisscows has grown rapidly, handling 20 million search queries a month, up from 14 million a year ago, said founder Andreas Wiebe.

Even so, Wiebe said there was plenty of skepticism when he started the site. "In 2014, I had people talking to me (saying) 'you're crazy'," and that the project would be dead within a year. Instead, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations of U.S. government surveillance the following year gave it a kickstart.

Swisscows has built its own German-language web index. For other languages, it uses Bing but queries and results are run through a firewall that strips out personal identifiers such as IP addresses.

Along with a conventional list of results, Swisscows also has a nifty grid of keyword tiles to narrow down search results by context.

The site's servers are buried in former military bunkers deep inside the Swiss Alps. Funding comes from donations and Wiebe's software company Hulbee. He plans next year to launch a secure messaging app, Teleguard, with a paid business version he hopes will help fund the site.

Jiuquan, Nov 20 (Xinhua/UNB) -- China launched a new space environment research satellite and four nanosatellites on a Long March-2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 7:40 a.m. Tuesday.

The satellites have successfully entered their preset orbit, according to the center.

Shiyan-6 will be used for conducting space environment exploration experiments. The term nanosatellite refers to a small artificial satellite weighing between 1 and 10 kg.

It was the 292th mission of the Long March rocket series.

Dhaka, Nov 19 (UNB)- Leading digital services provider, Robi and highly reputed local brand, Maximus, have teamed up to introduce a co-branded 4G smartphone, Maximus D1 in the country.

The most unique feature of the co-branded smartphone is the dual 4G SIM card slots. The 5-inch HD display smartphone at just tk 4,590 only; this is the lowest priced 4G device currently available in the market.

The co-branded smartphone comes with Robi’s exciting internet bundle offer. Customers by purchasing the smartphone will be able to enjoy 4 GB data, out of which 2GB can be used as 4G data and the remaining for any purpose.

The validity of the data pack will be 30 days from the day of activation.

Customers can also enjoy up to 2.5 GB free data with 7-day validity, every-time they recharge 50 taka to 300 taka on their Maximus D1 4G smartphone.

The phone is available at the Robi Walk-In-Centers (WIC), Robi’s e-commerce platform robishop.com.bd and digital distribution channel of Robi, DigiRed.

The 4G smartphone is available in six colors: Thunder Purple, Gold, Rose Gold, Red, Blue and Brown.

Combining a 1.4 GHz quad processor and a 5-inch HD display with up to date Oreo 8.1 Android™ experience, the Maximus D1 offers technology and features that customers can depend on. With an optimized 2200 mAh lithium-ion battery capacity, the handset offers long hours of continuous entertainment – in the form of crisp HD videos, clear photos, social media, and web browsing. The phone has 5MP rear and front camera.

Dhaka, Nov 16 (UNB) -The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the Centre's response on a plea for removal of vulgar and sexually explicit content from online platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and others.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V. Kameswar Rao listed the matter for further hearing on February 8, reports NDTV.

The petition was filed by NGO, Justice for Rights. Advocate Harpreet S. Hora appearing for the NGO sought a law or guidelines for regulating such contents available like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other similar platforms.

The petitioner said online platforms offered vulgar, sexually explicit, pornographic, profane, virulent, religiously forbidden and morally unethical contents in order to attract more subscribers and generate profit.

The NGO alleged that most of the contents available was in violation of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.