Category: Technology

MUMBAI: US-based Corpus Inc. has acquired Recreate Solutions, a media and entertainment software outsourcing company floated by former Zee Telefilms employee Bhaskar Majumdar, for Rs 600 million.

“It is a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition price is around Rs 600 million,” says a source.

The shareholders of Recreate Solutions will hold seven to eight per cent in Corpus, the source says. Insight Capital Partners, which had made two rounds of funding totalling $6 million, holds 75 per cent in Recreate Solutions while founder- promoter Majumdar has the balance 25 per cent.

With the acquisition, Corpus will enjoy a footprint in Europe and India where Recreate Solutions has a wide range of clients. A provider of technology services to the telecom, banking and financial sector, Corpus will now be able to also offer to its big clients like Verizon solutions for IPTV and interactive TV.

“The acquisition will help Corpus enter a new vertical. The company so far was doing backend work for telecom and financial companies. The acquisition will help them to offer front end skills like gaming, IPTV and ITV. The geographical areas are also complementary as they were strong in the US while we had a presence in Europe and India,” says Recreate Solutions CEO Majumdar.

Corpus, which has several Fortune 100 clients and is eyeing a revenue of $100 million, will make the current facilities of Recreate Solutions as its main outsourcing hub, though it has a small base in Bangalore. With the acquisition of the Recreate Solutions’ team of 100, Corpus has now grown its worldwide team to 580.

The acquisition will also help tap telecom operators in India who have IPTV and other convergence plans. Recreate Solutions was in talks with some of the operators but couldn‘t make a breakthrough. “The interactive media industry is maturing across platforms. It is consolidating around companies that have viable cost structures and revenue streams that generate healthy margins.

Outsourcing of non-core technology functions is a proven method to increase profitability. Recreate Solutions is focused on providing high quality outsourced solutions that add value to clients in our service segment: Digital Interactive Content. Under the Corpus banner we will now we able to take our solutions to Corpus’s Fortune 100 client base,” says Majumdar.

Recreate Solutions has clients like Bell ExpressVu, Canada, Exit Games, YooMedia and CNBC in India. The company is also doing product development work for Espial, a company which specialises in browser solutions on the set top boxes.

NEW DELHI: GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade association for mobile operators, has approved a “3G for all” program to bring 3G multimedia services and mobile internet access to many more people in both the developed and the developing worlds.

Over the next few months, a group of operator members of the GSMA plan to establish a core set of common requirements for 3G handsets to create the economies of scale that will allow mobile phone suppliers to rapidly bring down the cost of manufacturing these high-tech devices.

This was disclosed today here at a press conference, which was attended by officials of GSMA and its Indian chapter.

“Our 3G handset initiative will allow far more people to take advantage of the video clips, mobile music, Internet access, and many other multimedia services now enjoyed by more affluent users in the developed world,” according to GSMA CEO Rob Conway.

“Our Emerging Market Handset program is a compelling demonstration of how economies of scale can be brought to bear to accelerate falls in the cost of manufacturing mobile phones,” he added.

Under the initiative, which builds on the success of the GSMA‘s Emerging Market Handset program, mobile phone suppliers will compete to design a 3G handset that meets the operators‘ common requirements.

The GSMA will endorse the winning handset, which will be widely deployed by operators participating in the program.

The GSMA‘s Emerging Market Handset (EMH) program, which has hit its goal to reduce the wholesale price of entry-level handsets to less than $30, has catalysed the creation of a new segment of ultra-low cost phones. The availability of such low cost handsets has enabled many millions of people in over 56 countries to begin using telecommunications for the first time.

Motorola, the winning vendor in the EMH program, is driving forward with its vision to connect the unconnected through this program and expects to ship more than 20 million EMH handsets by the end of 2006.

The EMH program has helped bring the wholesale cost of GSM handsets in India down by more than 25 per cent since last year, fuelling the growing use of mobile communications in rural areas.

Despite the fall in handset prices, the GSMA estimates that about a billion people worldwide won‘t be able to afford their own handset for the foreseeable future. Through its Development Fund, the GSMA is looking at how to extend the many benefits of mobile communications to these people.

The Development Fund is financing a series of pilot projects in Africa and Asia that enable local entrepreneurs to set up payphone businesses or ‘Internet cafes‘ where people can access the Internet, email or other data services.

In India, for example, the Development Fund has helped mobile operator Airtel launch a pilot project in the UP West region that equips local entrepreneurs with handsets specially-adapted to function as payphones.

Other Indian mobile operators, such as Idea Cellular, are setting up similar pilot projects with the aid of the Development Fund. The GSMA is also examining how mobile networks can be used to give rural communities in India access to email and the Internet.

MARAN WANTS 3G SPECTRUM TO BE PRICED

Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran today favoured pricing of 3G mobile spectrum, the Press trust of India has reported.

Maran who was speaking to reporters after the GSM Association‘s meet, was quoted by PTI as saying, “Government has to make some money out of it (3G spectrum)… (and) make it very competitive and does not want people to sit over spectrum.”

The minister, however, did not touch upon how 3G should be priced, leaving the matter to the sector regulator Trai. “Government will take a decision after TRAI comes out with its recommendations,” Maran said.

GSM HITS TWO BILLION MILESTONE

This weekend, the mobile phone industry will celebrate a historic milestone as it connects the second billionth GSM mobile phone user in the world, the GSMA announced.

The GSMA said that new users are signing up at the rate of 1,000 per minute (just under 18 per second) to services that include both second generation GSM, as well as third generation 3GSM services – for which there are already more than 72 million users in the world.

“This is the fastest growth of technology ever witnessed,” said GSMA chairman Craig Ehrlich.

“While it took just 12 years for the industry to reach the first billion connections. The second billion has been achieved in just two and a half years boosted by the phenomenal take up of mobile in emerging markets such as China, India, Africa and Latin America, which accounted for 82 per cent of the second billion subscribers.”

Mobile services based on GSM technology were first launched in Finland in 1991. Today, more than 690 mobile networks provide GSM services across 213 countries and GSM represents 82.4 per cent of all global mobile connections.

“We are proud to be a part of this mobile revolution. India has played a vital role in this growth being one of the fastest growing mobile market in the world,” said Bharti Airtel CMD and a board member GSMA Sunil Bharti Mittal.

China is the largest single GSM market in the world today, with more than 370 million users, followed by Russia with 145 million, India with around 80 million and the USA with 78 million users. In India, mobile has even become the fastest selling consumer product – pushing bicycles to the number two spot.

GSMA INNOVATION AWARD FOR 3GSM

The GSM Association today also announced a new mobile innovation competition for young, small and start up companies across Asia that are developing technologies, applications and content for the fast moving mobile space.

Unveiled today following the GSMA‘s board meeting in New Delhi, the Asian Mobile Innovation Awards will include two categories — for Most Innovative Mobile Application or Content and the Most Innovative Technology.

“Asia is a hot bed of innovation for the mobile world, there is an astonishing array of talent dedicated to developing new ideas for the market. However, it‘s a complex market with many players and small players with interesting or astonishing ideas have to fight hard to be heard,” said Conway.

The competition, which is now open for entry, will culminate at Asia‘s premiere mobile communications event, the 3GSM World Congress Asia 2006 (Singapore, 16-20 October), attended by leaders from region-wide mobile operators, manufacturers and leading players from across the mobile value chain.

MUMBAI: After paying a whopping $2.6 billion to acquire Skype last year, eBay has announced its first major business plan: to integrate the internet tele-calling service with its customer feedback system.

Starting 19 June, sellers in 14 selected categories will be able to add a free “Skype Me” button to their listings. Potential buyers, who are looking for more information directly, can then communicate with the seller using voice, text chat, or both through the new facility.

How does this work? Sellers will be able to embed simple “Skype Me” icons alongside product listing to allow users to contact them using a new feature, “Ask a seller a question.” The feature is free and designed to allow people to answer quick questions before completing specific purchases. When a potential buyer clicks the “Skype Me” button on the Web page, buyers can instantly be put into contact with the seller via a web-based voice call, a text message, or both.

eBay‘s North American auction business president Bill Cobb said in a statement that, the company was set to begin a trial programme on its U.S. site to evaluate how Skype can be used to connect sellers to buyers seeking product information before they buy. “Skype represents a tremendous opportunity for our sellers to connect even more closely with their buyers,” Cobb said.

Eyebrows were raised when eBay spent such a humungous amount to acquire Skype which had revenues less than $100 million. The recent move provides part of eBay‘s strategy as it targets to double Skype‘s revenues.

MUMBAI: The Boston-headquartered global market research firm Yankee Group has announced the results of its 2006 European Mobile Multimedia Survey, an examination of European mobile multimedia trends providing valuable insight into current consumer behavior.

Some of the major highlights include:

— User demand for mobile TV is modest. Only 11 per cent of respondents said they are very interested in the service. Once confronted with the reality of how much the TV service is likely to cost (i.e., EUR 15 or US $19 per month), 85 per cent of respondents said they are less interested in the service.

— Full-track music downloads continue to dominate the headlines, while in reality user interest remains low. Only 5% of respondents are prepared to pay more than a 20% premium for full-track downloads. However, the typical premium today is 100%. Alternative music-related services are more interesting to the user and more likely to generate revenue in the short term.

— The industry must do more to convince users that browsing and downloading is safe and affordable. Almost 40% of respondents said fears over price dissuade them from downloading more ringtones.

However, mobile operators are overcoming the technical barriers to delivering many of their services. Picture messaging–which in the past was dogged by unreliability and poor ease-of-use–seems to have solved those problems. Respondents‘ main barriers to using picture messaging are the price and they do not see any need to send pictures, states an official release.

“The survey results illustrate that mobile operators have some pretty substantial barriers to overcome to drive growth in value-added services,” says Yankee Group Wireless/Mobile Europe senior analyst Matt Hatton. “Operators are pinning their hopes on advanced applications such as music and TV to drive revenue growth, but they still have a lot of technical, pricing and marketing issues to overcome to drive adoption. They‘ll get there, but maybe not through the services they think.”

This survey enables service providers, device manufacturers, content providers and infrastructure vendors to understand the status of mobile multimedia services in Europe today, and to identify the barriers limiting consumer adoption. It analyses customer opinions about current and forthcoming services such as mobile music (including ringtones, ringback tones and full-track downloads), video/TV, gaming, video telephony, MMS and mobile browsing, adds the release.

NEW DELHI: In a bid to streamline the cable industry, sector regulator today released the proposed standard forms of interconnect agreements for CAS areas between broadcasters and multi system operators and between MSOs and local cable operators (LCOs).

The reason for this being suggestions from the industry stake holders to the government that a standard form of interconnect agreements be formulated.

On 10 March, 2006 the Delhi High Court had directed the government implement CAS in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai within a month’s time.

Subsequent to this order, a series of meetings were taken by the information and broadcasting ministry.

Taking note of suggestions emanating from the meetings, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has decided to finalise a standard format for interconnection agreements for CAS in consultation with the industry.

Accordingly, a draft of the standard forms has been placed on the website of Trai today. The draft agreements contain a number of sections and provisions.

One of them relate to revenue sharing. The actual revenue share percentages have been left blank in the draft and are proposed to be filled up after getting comments of the stakeholders.

Trai has also asked for feedback on the following:

• Should there be a uniform revenue share percentage between all broadcasters and MSOs and MSOs and LCOs. If yes, what should be the revenue share percentages? What is the methodology, data and principles on which these are based?

• Should the revenue share percentages be different for different broadcasters? If so, should the rates for different broadcasters prevailing in Chennai be adopted in other CAS notified areas?

• Is there any other alternative method of arriving at the revenue share?

A draft regulation has also put on the website for comments containing the provisions for the standard agreements as well as a clause for prohibiting minimum subscriber guarantee. The deadline for sending comments is 27 June.

MUMBAI: Optibase Ltd., a provider of advanced digital video solutions, has announced that it will demonstrate its IPTV and digital video solutions at Broadcast Asia 2006, which will be held in Singapore from 20 – 23 June.

The company will showcase Optibase‘s flexible model design providing customers with future-proof video solutions to meet the evolving requirements of Telcos and service providers.

Visitors to the Optibase booth will see the following demonstrations:

• A turnkey solution for IPTV with Optibase MGW-1100 integrated carrier grade TV streaming platform, Orca Interactive‘s middleware service delivery platform and BitBand video servers streaming MPEG-2 video. Optibase can deliver turnkey all-in-one solutions, in addition to its encoders or transcoders, by providing systems integration and bringing together components from IPTV ecosystem partners.
  


• Live encoding of MPEG-4 AVC High Definition (HD) resolution technology, providing efficient HD bandwidth utilization without compromising video quality and allowing the use of existing MPEG-2 content which requires no additional decoding or processing equipment. MPEG-4 AVC HD is currently the only format that enables Telcos to provide high definition channels to DSL subscribers.
  


• MPEG-2 HD encoding and decoding through Optibase MovieMaker 200 HD, designed for professional quality ingest of HD for broadcasting, video on demand (VOD), ad insertion, program initiation and post-production studios, as well as for integrators working on high-resolution military simulation or surveillance projects.
  


• Also, on display at the Optibase booth, a professional digital video ingest system co-developed with Venaca Inc. leading provider of media asset management solutions. When part of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, the integrated solution enables top quality video capture, Edit Decision List (EDL) creation, annotation archive retrieval, editing and asset management at the same time.
  


• “With MPEG-4, operators can reach more people with IPTV services, delivering additional streams to each home. Telcos want to deliver services like HDTV in order to stay competitive with satellite and cable, Optibase‘s MPEG-4 technology and our proven interoperability with leading STBS, will enable Telcos to deploy advanced HDTV that will help them generate revenue and sustain subscribers,” said Optibase vice president marketing Yossi Aloni.

Optibase will also discuss the recent announcement that it was selected by India‘s state-owned major telecom, MTNL, to provide encoding solutions for the first IPTV deployment to go live in India.

MUMBAI: Britain‘s media regulatory body Ofcom has published its Communications Market: Digital Progress Report for the first quarter of 2006 i.e. January-March.

The report shows that digital television was viewed by 72.5 per cent (18.2 million) UK television per households – up from 69.5 per cent at the end of last year.

The take-up of digital television is growing faster than expected. Ofcom’s last Digital Progress Report had forecast that an extra 1.7 million homes would take-up digital television this year. By the end of March almost 800,000 extra households had already done so.

The number of free-to-view digital households (Freeview plus free-to-view satellite) is estimated to have grown by 9.7 per cent from January to March to over 7.7 million.

Freeview has for the first time overtaken traditional analogue television on primary sets in the home. Almost 7.1 million households have Freeview on the primary television set compared to around 6.4 million who are yet to take-up digital television.

Freeview sales for January to March were up 40 per cent on the same period in 2005 at over 1.2 million, making this the third successive quarter in which sales have exceeded the 1 million mark. Estimates suggest that 38 per cent of Freeview sales are intended for secondary television sets in the home.

Ofcom notes that digital satellite is the UK’s most popular digital television platform viewed by 8.3 million, or 30 per cent of homes of which almost 7.7 million subscribe to BSkyB pay services and 645,000 receive free-to-view satellite services.

Just under one million BSkyB households view pay television on more than one television set through BSkyB’s Multiroom subscription service. The number of cable television households increased slightly over the quarter and is currently just over 3.3 million. Over 70,000 digital cable subscribers were added during the quarter, mainly as a result of analogue subscribers transferring to digital services.

MUMBAI: US internet service provider AOL and Warner have announced that ‘In2TV‘ which claims to be the largest offering of television series available online for free, has launched two new channels.

Gone But Not Forgotten TV showcases shows that have been cancelled. Get Real TV is a reality TV channel offering some of the most sought-after unscripted, relationship and court series in this arena. ‘In2TV‘ also adds twelve new series including many episodes that have never aired on television and more than a dozen new video features.

Gone But Not Forgotten TV has got in its line up recently aired series. These short-lived shows can be seen with never-before-seen episodes, clips, trivia and games. Wanda Sykes stars in Wanda at Large. This is a sitcom about an outspoken comedian-turned-news reporter that aired a couple of years ago.

Michael Richards, who starred in Seinfeld returned to television with The Michael Richards Show. He played a bumbling detective. The sitcom was Richards‘ debut project post Seinfeld and In2TV is premiering the never-broadcast original pilot episode.

Center of the Universe stars John Goodman as a father raising a family despite his extended brood‘s mettlesome antics. Jean Smart, Ed Asner, and Olympia Dukakis also star in this 2005 sitcom. One of the shows that Get Real TV will air is ElimiDate. This is a survival dating show. The Will is a cut-throat reality competition accentuating the love and greed in every family.