Interesting Facts

According to the Indian Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, smartphone sales in India reached 100 million by the end of December, 2015. (India is growing at a phenomenal pace and the government is looking to expand rural development with broadband being laid out in rural India. According to data from analyst firm CyberMedia Research (CMR) 94% of feature-phones (as opposed to smartphones) sold in India were priced below 2,000 rupees  £21.)

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has banned 1,600 words it deems to be obscene. (The words and phrases banned include 1,109 English words and another 568 in Pakistan’s national Urdu language, which in itself is interesting - do Pakistani people prefer swearing in English? (I know they do in Wales.) Now, I realise that there is a ban list on the forum, but it's limited to indecent language, and there certainly aren't 1,600 words on the list! In addition my list doesn't include everyday words like “idiot” (try imbecile) or “barf" (try throw up - I'd like to see them ban throw and up).) Here's a list of the banned words - Parental Advisory.

According to a survey by Sandler Training in the USA, the prospect of making cold calls for a week as a salesperson is more unappealing than giving up sex for a month. (Only having root canal work was deemed worse than making sales calls to businesses people did not know. From five options presented, one-third of the people said having root canal work was the worst, followed by cold calling at 23 percent and giving up sex for a month at 18 percent. Other results were, 15 percent picked being a surprise guest on a reality television show and 13 percent chose speaking in front of an audience.)

Nordic telecoms operator TeliaSonera has opened the first mobile phone network in the world to use faster LTE wireless technology – otherwise known as 4G. (LTE (Long Term Evolution) is 10 times faster than current networks for things like looking at internet pages and able to support more users. They are up and running in Oslo and Stockholm. Having just returned from the UK, where the only place I found free WiFi was in a pub in Derbyshire, I'm very jealous.) Source - Euronews