This article throws light upon the top five services provided by internet in India. The services are: 1. E-mail 2. Advertising and Entertainment 3. Electronic Commerce 4. File Transfer 5. News.
Service # 1. E-mail:
Electronic mail is probably the most popular and frequently used service on the Internet. In fact, the start and development of the Internet was probably due to the requirements for Electronic mail services. E-mail services have been around for over twenty years, although the original e-mail services were quite primitive compared to the services offered to today.
Initial e-mail services consisted of simple file transfer protocols and this simple viewpoint placed certain limitations on the e-mail users. For example, sending drawings, voice, graphics, etc. was not possible originally.
Similarly, enclosing a separate file as part of the message usually gave very poor results. Also, the sender was never sure whether the email was delivered to the addressee and received by him/her or not. Similarly, forwarding some else’s mail was not possible.
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In 1984, CCITT promulgated the X400 standard for mail. However, ARPANETS technical body suggested two protocols, RFC 821 for transmission and RFC 822 for the message format. But X400 remained the official protocol. Unfortunately, X400 was very poorly thought out and drafted.
As a result, even though it was the official protocol, it was swamped by RFC 822. M.T. Rose has discussed the problems of using X400 in great details in his book. The Internet Message (Englewood Cliff), and explained very lucidly the reasons for the lack of acceptance of X400. Readers interested in finding out more about X400, should read the above book.
Present day e-mail services offer several facilities and there are several vendors that offer e-mail services without using Internet. Some of these vendors in India are Sprint-RPG, Access Mail and VSNL. However, we shall concentrate on the e-mail services offered on the Internet. On the Internet, several free e-mail services are offered.
Examples of these are: Hotmail, yahoo, Gmail, aol, etc.
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These seem to be the most popular at present. In order to use these, Let us take Hotmail as an example and see how to use it. After getting to the web, ask for the address “Hotmail(dot)com“. The home page of “Hotmail(dot)com” will open. Go to the box that says “Sign up here” and click. Hot mail will open details of the queries that are to be answered to become a new user.
This query is in two parts and some of the answers are optional. The queries will include your choice of your login name and password. Answer these queries and submit.
If your chosen login name is accepted, then you have become a Hotmail user. If not, alternative login names will be given. Select any alternative login name given (or another personal choice) and resubmit. Once this is accepted, you have become a Hotmail user and your address is the last address accepted by the system.
Options that you may go in for include names of agencies and news services that will be willing to send information to you free. You can block all or some of them if you want. Alternatively, you can have your own e-mail service. This service can be made available to you by your own server.
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The e-mail services available on the Internet permit you to forward your mail to one or more recipients, send and receive mail, save some mail, send attachments, download files from the Internet and forward them as attachments, save e-mail addresses, create signatures and so on.
These facilities make using e-mail services very useful. Along with other services on the Internet, email makes both advertising and selling both rapid and easy.
Service # 2. Advertising and Entertainment:
These two services offered on the Internet are gradually becoming more and more popular. Many sites on the Internet offer businesses an opportunity to advertise on their site.
For example, all the free mail services allow advertisements on their site. In addition, many businesses have their own site and they advertise on these sites. They invariably have an e-mail address to which users can write and get their queries answered.
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Also, there are many such sites that provide answers on line. Many such sites give details of their products; the user can look at these details and select. They also provide what is often called “shopping cart services” where the user can select and keep different products until the shopping has been completed and the user is ready to pay for all the purchases made.
The methods of payment will be discussed when we discuss electronic commerce in the next section.
This method of shopping will become increasingly popular and provides a window into the future as to how shopping will be done in the future. The popularity of advertising on the Internet is growing very rapidly and many services such as shopping, ordering and paying on the Internet from distant places are now being provided.
Some additional facilities that can be provided on the Internet, that is not available with other forms of advertising, are audio and video clips. A large number of advertising agencies, catering to advertising on the Internet, have come up recently. In addition, there are a fair number of agencies that create web pages and put it on the net.
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They also undertake to provide server space for those who wish to start their own site on the Internet. Information Technology strategists must take the growing influence of the Internet on today’s business into account, before formulating an Information Technology plan.
Entertainment is another area that has benefited from the growth of the Internet. Today there are a number of web sites that provide audio and video facilities and they try to make their site popular by advertising about it on the Internet. They earn money from fees by the members who view their site.
On these sites they show movies, for example, for their members. Whenever a new visitor comes to their site, membership is offered for a week, for a month, or even just for the current show. The payment is usually accepted by these sites through credit card.
This form of payment and the security involved will be discussed in a later section, when we discuss electronic commerce. This method of entertainment is becoming quite popular on the Internet and it has raised some social questions.
As a result of sites being able available for viewing by users all over the world and the possibility of making money from users throughout the world, a lot of pornographic sites have come up. There is a great deal of discussion going on throughout the world on this subject because there are a large number of Internet users who are children. For pornography to be freely available to such users is definitely not desirable.
On the other hand, this will restrict the choices of others who feel that their right to view anything is more important. Consequently, such people have resisted any attempts to remove these sites. Programs such as “net nanny” have come up to try to block such sites from youngsters.
Unfortunately, such programs have had only limited success because of the nature of the problem. The debate so far remains inconclusive. However, the popularity of such sites indicates that the field of entertainment on the Internet should become immensely popular in the years to come.
Service # 3. Electronic Commerce:
Electronic commerce is gradually gaining in popularity as people on the Internet, in particular, begin to discover the advantages of electronic commerce. It is still in its infancy and to make it popular many issues have to be addressed. Given below is a comprehensive discussion on the various issues involved in making it popular so that its advantages can be gained by a large number of people.
The following discussion on electronic commerce is based on the views presented on the Internet on this subject and the executive summary thereof, available on the Internet. This executive summary was put forward in July 1997. With the advent of electronic commerce we are on the verge of a revolution that is as profound as the change in the economy that came with the industrial revolution.
Soon electronic networks will allow people to transcend the barriers of time and distance and enable them to take advantage of global markets and business opportunities not even imaginable today. No single force embodies our electronic transformation more than the evolving medium of the Internet.
The Internet has emerged as an appliance of everyday life, accessible from almost every point on the planet. Students across the world are discovering vast treasure troves of data via the World Wide Web. Doctors are utilizing telemedicine to administer off-site diagnoses to patients in need, via the World Wide Web.
As the Internet empowers citizens and democratizes societies, it is also changing classic business and economic paradigms.
New models of commercial interaction are developing as businesses and consumers participate in the electronic marketplace and use the Internet for their benefit. New businesses can now be started more easily, with smaller investments requirements, by using the Internet’s worldwide network to sell their products.
Business and moneymaking, both obviously related, are two activities that have interested mankind deeply since time immemorial. It is natural, therefore, that these two activities are the prime reasons for the growth in importance of the Internet.
One of the problems of shopping on the Internet, for the seller, is the matter of how to get the customer to pay for the purchases and, for the buyer, how the payment reaches the seller and is not diverted, in between, by someone else.
In case the buyer pays by credit card, the buyer would also like to ensure that the credit card number is safe and does not come into the possession of any unscrupulous person.
These are the matters that have had to take care of when planning and designing facilities for electronic commerce. There are several other issues that have to be considered before a final decision is taken on the subject of electronic commerce. We shall discuss all these issues below.
Internet technology is having a profound effect on the global trade in both products and services. World trade involving computer software, entertainment products (motion pictures, videos, games, sound recordings), information services (databases, online newspapers), technical information, etc. has grown rapidly in the past decade.
An increasing share of these transactions occurs online. Commerce on the Internet has been dramatically revolutionized by dramatically lowering transaction costs and facilitating new types of commercial transactions.
The Internet will also revolutionize retail and direct marketing. Consumers will be able to shop in their homes for a wide variety of products from manufacturers and retailers all over the world.
They will be able to view these products on their computers or televisions, access information about the products, visualize the way the products may look in a particular environment (seeing the selected curtains hanging in a room, on their screens, for example) and order and pay for their choice, all from their living rooms.
Commerce on the Internet totalled more than Rs. 1,00,000 crores by the end of the year 2000. For this potential to be realized fully, governments must adopt a non-regulatory, market-oriented approach to electronic commerce, one that facilitates the emergence of a transparent and predictable legal environment to support global business and commerce.
Official decision-makers must respect the unique nature of the Internet and recognize that widespread competition and increased consumer choice should be the defining features of the new digital marketplace.
Many businesses and consumers are still wary of conducting extensive business over the Internet because of the lack of a predictable legal environment governing transactions.
This is particularly true for international commercial activity where concerns about enforcement of contracts, liability, intellectual property protection, privacy, security and other matters have caused businesses and consumers to be cautious.
As use of the Internet expands, many companies and Internet users are concerned that some governments will impose extensive regulations on the Internet and electronic commerce.
Potential areas of problematic regulation include taxes and duties, restrictions on the type of information transmitted, control over standards development, licensing requirements and rate regulation of service providers. Indeed, signs of these types of commerce-inhibiting actions already are appearing in many nations.
Pre-empting these harmful actions before they take root is essential to increase commerce on the Internet. Governments can have a profound effect on the growth of commerce on the Internet. By their actions, they can facilitate electronic trade or inhibit it. Knowing when to act—and equally as important—when not to act, will be crucial to the development of electronic commerce.
Service # 4. File Transfers:
File transfers are facilities available on the Internet that do not concern the average net surfer. Using the FTP program, files can be moved from one machine on the Internet to another machine. This facility means that not only articles and games but even databases can be moved.
The advantages of this facility can be discerned from the fact that it is possible for a multi-location company to use the Internet, instead of their own network, to maintain updated files and to answer queries from any of their locations based on the information on these files. For example, consider a transport company that collects packets from its customers to deliver them to other locations.
If they use truck transport then they can record the data pertaining to each consignment as it is loaded on trucks. This data may be updated at each point at which the packet is transhipped. One way to do this is to connect the LANs at each location into a Wide Area Network and to enter and update the transactions on line.
This will require the company to establish communication lines between all the centres and to establish a Wide Area Network. However, with the current cost of communication facilities, particularly in India, this will be an expensive option.
The cheaper alternative is for the company to establish a website and to retain its database on the server hosting its site. This database can be updated from time to time from each location by accessing the Internet. Queries from this database can also be answered through the Internet. File transfers play a significant part in this process.
FTP or File Transfer Protocol is used to access files on the Internet. File transfers can be done using either an FTP server or an HTTP server. Local files could be accessed as web pages, thus eliminating the need for an FTP server.
In the given example, the only problem may be the use of multiple copies that are created for files that are accessed very often. This is one application on the Internet that should grow with time and become very heavily used in the future.
Service # 5. News:
While discussing this feature earlier, I have mentioned that it is a futuristic concept. However, while the concept of downloading newspapers to the machines at the user’s address may be in the future, news items are already circulating on the Internet. If you use the Internet’s e-mail service, you will find that many news groups will be willing to send you free news and that too on a continuous basis.
The use of multimedia facilities is a major advantage that the Internet offers. Today, many news groups exist and some of these may be important to a business organisation. For example, a firm of stockbrokers may be interested in the latest value of stocks and securities in certain bourses around the world.
Their basic business may depend on this information and they may like to be kept informed of the changes in the prices of stocks and securities throughout the world, continuously.
For an organisation conducting a business of this nature, a permanent agreement with one or more news groups that can keep them continuously informed, may be very useful. Similarly, special news groups may be important to many organisations and businesses and it is natural that such newsgroups will continue to grow.
The web provides them with a method to disseminate their news efficiently. The web also aids them in providing permanent customers and occasional users.
Therefore, until the futuristic plans of downloading a newspaper on the user’s machine at the user’s address becomes a reality, the growth of news services will continue to be boosted throughout the world, simply because of the presence of the Internet and the capabilities that it has to offer to help in the dissemination of news.
The current growth of the Internet indicates that the dissemination of news will continue to remain a major activity on the Internet in the foreseeable future.