Tech

Airtel has introduced two new international roaming plans for users in India that offer voice calls and data in 189 countries. They are available with validity options of 10 and 30 days. Overseas travellers on Airtel postpaid connections can enjoy in-flight benefits with one of the newly released plans as well. Both new offerings are said to extend support for unlimited data. The plans are claimed to be automatically activated upon the user’s arrival in a foreign country. 

Airtel Introduces New International Roaming Plans With Unlimited Data

Airtel has announced two new international roaming plan options for postpaid users in India. They are listed on the official site and were initially spotted by tipster Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings). The plans are priced at Rs. 2,999 and Rs. 3,999, and are valid for 10 days and 30 days, respectively. Both plans are claimed to offer unlimited data. 

Both the Rs. 2,999 and Rs. 3,999 plans will allow users to enjoy 100 hours of all time per day, including incoming and outgoing calls. The latter pack is extending the ability to access in-flight network benefits as well. These include support for 100 minutes of outgoing calls, 100 free SMS and 250MB of data. The in-flight benefits are valid for 24 hours.

Airtel notes that the postpaid users using the Rs. 2,999 and Rs. 3,999 international roaming plans will not need to change their SIM cards to avail of roaming benefits. The benefits are said to be activated automatically once the users reach their overseas destination. 

Notably, Vi, a competing telecom operator in the country, recently introduced international roaming packs, including prepaid and postpaid plans, for the Gulf region. They are supported in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and are available in validity options of 20 and 40 days.

Tether has announced that it recently upgraded its on-chain threat detection capabilities. The issuer of the USDT stablecoin said that Hadron, its real world assets (RWAs) tokenisation platform, has been equipped with on-chain intelligence tools from Chainalysis. With the new partnership, Hadron will have access to compliance tools created by Chainalysis, as part of Tether’s efforts to upgrade its risk identification and fraud detection abilities.

Tether Seeks to Attract Institutional Investors to Engage With Hadron

Hadron lets individuals convert their real world assets into digital tokens. These assets could be real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, and funds. Tether CEO Paolo Ardonio said that the company has made tightening security a top priority for Tether.

“By integrating Chainalysis, we’re offering institutional-grade transparency, compliance, and risk mitigation without compromising on decentralisation or control,” Ardonio said in a prepared statement.

Tether claims Hadron is now capable of flagging suspicious activities and ensuring KYC compliance to filter out sketchy users. By upgrading its security measures, Tether expects to attract institutional investors to engage with Hadron.

Tokenisation is the conversion of real, physical properties into blockchain-based digital tokens. RWA tokenisation improves the liquidity factors of the physical assets without affecting their utility value and core attributes. Tokenised tokens of RWAs can then be used for trading or shared ownership deals.

Citing a 2022 report by the Boston Consultancy Group (BCG), Tether’s announcement said that the valuation of tokenised illiquid assets like physical art, real estate, and private equity could exceed $16 trillion (roughly Rs. 13,56,19,920 crore) by 2030. Dubai’s government agencies are also experimenting with the integration of RWA tokenisation into its real estate industry.

Tether observed the opportunity to leverage its market reputation to launch Hadron last year, attempting to be among the first major Web3 firm to offer secure tokenisation services.

When Tether launched its Hadron platform in November 2024, it said the platform will offer users other features like risk management and secondary market ecosystem monitoring. Hadron’s website claims that it lets users tokenise their assets, offer the tokenised assets to potential clients, and coordinate issuances, redemptions as well as transfers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reportedly working on an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can generate code in real-time. As per the report, the project is internally being called Kiro, and it can tap into AI agents to complete complex coding tasks. The tool is said to be a comprehensive system capable of writing code, designing user interfaces (UIs), identifying glitches and bugs, and optimising existing code. It is said that the agentic tool is similar to Amazon Q, but broader in scope and capabilities. Amazon is reportedly planning to launch Kiro in June.

Amazon Is Reportedly Working on Coding Agent Kiro

According to a Business Insider report, Amazon’s cloud computing platform AWS is developing an AI system with agentic capabilities that can handle end-to-end coding tasks. Citing an internal document obtained by the publication, the report claimed that Kiro can leverage AI agents to analyse user prompts and databases to generate code in “near real-time.”

Kiro is said to be developed as both a web app and a desktop app, which can connect to first-party and third-party AI agents. This means the tool operates as an AI agent orchestrator and is not limited to just the AI agents that Amazon develops. Additionally, the report claimed that the application can also connect to knowledge bases, extensions, and more, to draw information from them to complete tasks.

While the report did not specify, if the tool can also connect to repositories, it can understand and learn from the existing code base and adapt itself to write code that matches the style. Notably, Kiro is said to accept multimodal input, and developers can prompt it with visual diagrams and other contextual information.

The software development tool can perform a wide range of tasks. It can reportedly design technical documents, identify bugs and fix them, and optimise code for specific functions. The report did not mention the languages it can generate code in or whether it can transition code from one language to another.

Based on the report, it appears Amazon is also dipping its toes into the recent trend of vibe coding. The term refers to a new style of coding where, instead of writing code themselves, developers instruct generative AI systems to write, edit, test, and even deploy the code. This shifts the developers’ role into a director who oversees and guides the project and brings the vision into the final product.