Sales of BlackBerry devices have dropped in India following uncertainty over whether the government would allow access to the smartphone's encrypted email and messaging services beyond the Aug 31 deadline.

Many dealers IANS spoke to said their sales have declined in recent days as customers find it dicey to invest in Blackberry phones.

"Blackberry is popular because of the services it offers. If that is not there, why would any customer spend such a huge amount of money for it?" asked Jatin Sharma, a Blackberry dealer in Punjabi Bagh, Delhi. He said sales of Blackberry phones in his shop have declined by almost 50 percent after the government said it would close down any service of Blackberry which security agencies do not get access to by Aug 31.

The phone's Canada-based maker Research In Motion (RIM) has also been told that it should deploy an interception server in India with the Indian Service Provider having a definitive tracking system.

Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services, a Taiwanese telephone company said Friday.

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, which jointly operates four cables in the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines, said service has been slow since the typhoon pummeled Taiwan last weekend. Voice calls and Internet data traffic will be fully restored later Friday, it said.

Meanwhile, two of the Philippines' largest telecommunications providers said their international call and broadband services have suffered partial disruptions since Wednesday because of damaged undersea cables connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Chen Hui-yen, an official at Chungwa, said the disruption to communications had been contained as Internet traffic and voice calls were rerouted to other cable networks.

Bamboo has a long history of economic and cultural significance, primarily in East Asia and South East Asia where it has been used for centuries for everything from building material to food to medicine. There are some 1,000 different species of bamboo growing in very diverse climates throughout the world, including the southeastern United States.

Bamboo's environmental benefits arise largely out of its ability to grow quickly - in some cases three to four feet per day - without the need for fertilizers, pesticides or much water. Bamboo also spreads easily with little or no care. In addition, a bamboo grove releases some 35 percent more oxygen into the air than a similar-sized stand of trees, and it matures (and can be replanted) within seven years (compared to 30-50 years for a stand of trees), helping to improve soil conditions and prevent erosion along the way. Bamboo is so fast-growing that it can yield 20 times more timber than trees on the same area.

A reseller of IPStar rural broadband satellite services has left users in the lurch, discontinuing services late last week after wholesale supply was cut off.

Service provider LiSP was forced to disconnect satellite customers late last week after an unidentified wholesale supplier of IPStar, thought to be LiSP-related company Wholesale Broadband, cut the service - with IPStar confusing the issue by washing its hands off responsibility for the service cut while indirectly offering affected users a free interim service.

LiSP, which describes itself as an ISP serving Lithgow, Blue Mountains, Bathurst and Bourke in NSW, left nothing more than a phone recording for customers informing them of the issue after connections were stopped without warning. Along with partner company GoBush Broadband-based in the NSW regional centre of Dubbo-customers contacting the providers were told to contact IPStar directly to reconnect internet services.

Phranakorn Auto Sales, the distributor for Proton cars in Thailand, will launch the new CNG-powered Proton Persona here Tuesday.

It will be the fourth Proton model entering the kingdom since Proton made its debut here at the end of last year with the Savvy, Gen-2 and Satria Neo models.

A Phranakorn executive said this would be the first Persona model to be fitted with pre-installed compressed natural gas (CNG) kits and was likely to attract car buyers looking for energy-saving models due to the current high oil price.

The Persona model, a winner of the Frost and Sullivan 2008 Best Model of the Year, has received bookings of more than 54,000 units to-date in Malaysia since its launch in August 2007.

Tata Group will launch the brand new Tata Xenon 1-ton pickup at the 29th Bangkok International Motor Show. The launch of the Thailand-made Tata Xenon is to be the chairman's second launch this year after he personally launched the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, at the Delhi Auto Show in January.

Tata Motor (Thailand) Co last year set up a factory in Samut Prakan province, which borders Bangkok, to manufacture 1-ton trucks for the domestic and export market. Production of the Tata Xenon with a Dicor engine using common-rail diesel technology began earlier this year.

The Tata Dicor 2956cc common-rail diesel engine is capable to produce 114 horsepower and a 300nm torque. The first model introduced will be equipped with 5-speed manual gearbox.

Avoid buying Kingston memory distributed by Ingram Micro. We love Kingston memory; we use Kingston memory modules in most of our computers.

It not happens that often, but it happens sometimes, a memory module broke down, we think no problem the memory module is 2 years old and we have life-time-warranty on Kingston.

But to our surprise, life-time-warranty is less then 2 years at Panthip Ingram-Micro service center. So we, paid extra for believing we bought something like 5 to 6 years warranty and ended up with nothing other then what you get with regular cheapest memory modules.

Thai mobile phone operator, Advanced Info Service (AIS), and its parent company, SingTel, are negotiating with Apple to bring the popular iPhone handset to Thailand.

"We are negotiating on details, including a revenue sharing standard. Apple needs a local operator to promote iPhone," confirmed AIS' assistant vice president of wireless business marketing, Prattana Leelapanang.

Apple's existing revenue sharing model is unlikely to work in Thailand, according to AIS' Chief Marketing Officer, Sanchai Thiewprasertkul, meaning that negotiations with Apple will likely prove complicated. Some 90% of Thai mobile phone customers use prepaid airtime, a different situation from many European and North American markets where postpaid services dominate.

Skype is up and fully operational again after a software bug left many users unable to log on for two days. Skype Ltd, a division of online auction company eBay Inc, said it would explain what caused the problem in more detail.

Skype a computer program, which allows it users to make long-distance phone calls via the Internet, is used by an estimated 220 million people worldwide.

The worldwide outage began Thursday. Users said they could not log on and make phone calls or send instant messages. Skype said the issue was a problem with its software.

New regional analysis indicates manufacturing shifts in Southeast Asia. China is the global epicenter of electronics manufacturing.

For years, most manufacturers have flocked to Shenzhen, Guanzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi and Beijing to maximize revenues and minimize cost structure.

Accordingly, iSuppli projects that 52.4% of all contract manufacturing revenues resulted from services offered by the likes of Foxconn, Flextronics, Quanta and Compal in China.