Category: Software

NEW DELHI: A scheme for creation of a National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for providing Broadband connectivity to Panchayats at a cost of Rs 200 billion for the initial phase was approved by the Union Cabinet today.

The objective of the scheme is to extend the existing optical fibre network which is available up to district / block HQ’s level to the Gram Panchayat level initially by utilising the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). An amount similar to that being spent by the Government is likely to be made by the private sector complementing the NOFN infrastructure while providing services to individual users.

In economic terms, the benefits from the scheme are expected through additional employment, e-education, e-health, e-agriculture etc. and reduction in migration of rural population to urban areas.
 
According to a study conducted by the World Bank, with every 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration, there is an increase in GDP growth by 1.4 per cent. NOFN will also facilitate implementation of various e-governance initiatives such as e-health, e-banking, e-education etc. thereby facilitating inclusive growth. It will also provide high bandwidth connectivity for electronic delivery of
services to citizens.

The proposed NOFN will enable effective and faster implementation of various mission mode e-governance projects amounting to approximately Rs 500 billion initiated by the Department of Information Technology as well as delivery of a whole range of electronic services in the above areas by the private sector to citizens in rural areas.

MUMBAI: BBC Worldwide has announced that all episodes of The Office are now available to purchase and download in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, France and Germany for the first time on iTunes.

David Brent, the awkward and unnerving boss of fictional paper merchants Wernham Hogg, first graced screens in The Office back in 2001.

The series, written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, is now celebrating its 10th anniversary with a wealth of awards, international remakes and broadcasts the world over under its belt.

To date, video viewing of the seminal British comedy classic has been exclusive to DVD where global brand sales are almost 4 million.

The Office Series 1, Series 2 and all the Christmas Specials will become available to purchase and download from iTunes to own in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, France and Germany.

Gervais said, “It‘s been the most amazing 10 years of my life. Who‘d have thought mucking around at work and watching docusoaps through the 90s would be so lucrative?”

MUMBAI: Global Internet movie subscription service Netflix will expand to the UK and Ireland in early 2012, offering unlimited TV shows and movies streaming instantly over the Internet to TVs and computers for one low monthly subscription price.

Upon launch, Netflix members from the UK and Ireland will be able to instantly watch a wide array of TV shows and movies right on their TVs via a range of consumer electronics devices capable of streaming from Netflix, as well as on PCs, Macs and mobile tablets and phones.

Further details about the service, including pricing, content and supported devices, will be announced closer to launch.

Netflix has been streaming to U.S. members since 2007, adding Canada in 2010 and 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in September 2011.

People interested in becoming members of Netflix in the UK or Ireland can go to www.netflix.com to sign up to receive an email alert, letting them know when Netflix has launched in their country.

NEW DELHI: Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd. (BECIL) has presented a dividend cheque of Rs. 10.236 million to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni.

The cheque was presented by BECIL chairman & managing director Harkesh Gupta for the financial year ending 31 March 2011. Those present on the occasion were I&B Secretary Uday Kumar Varma, and Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) Arvind Kumar.

The Minister said the organisation was playing a critical role in facilitating the infrastructure facilities for different projects in the broadcasting sector. She reiterated that the organisation would have to strive to achieve higher goals and deliverables as a consultancy firm and turnkey solution provider in the future.

BECIL, a Government of India Enterprise under the administrative control of the Ministry with all its shares owned by the Government, has been a profit making outfit ever since its formation in 1995 and has been consistently paying dividend to the government on the equity employed. It is a “Mini Ratna” and ISO Certified Company.
 
During the Financial Year 2010-11, the turnover of the company has touched an all time high of Rs1.3156 billion and has earned a profit of Rs 82.8 million. The turnover as compared to last year has increased 330 per cent and profit by 204 per cent. The dividend paid today is 75 per cent of the paid up equity.

BECIL is a premier consultancy and turnkey solution provider in the specialised field of broadcast engineering. It has many firsts to its credit like establishment of first teleport in India, first to establish all digital private FM broadcasting station at Bangalore, first to set-up multi channel FM transmission stations in India combining up to seven FM channels, first to design and establish HDTV studio set-up for the Presidential Secretariat and Lok Sabha TV among others.

In the current year, the company is executing major projects worth over Rs.1.2 billion, some of which are:

SITC of VSAT Monitoring and Analysis System (for M/s Antrix
Corporation) – Rs. 300.2 million

SITC of VSAT Monitoring System (for DRL Hyderabad) – Rs. 249.2 million

Supply of 1000 kW MW Superpower Transmitter (AIR Chinsurah) – Rs. 271.5 million

SITC of Broadcast Equipment (for Consortium of Educational
Consultants) – Rs. 88.2 million

Upgradation of TV Studios (for Jamia Millia Islamia) – Rs. 69.8 million.

Setting up of HDTV Studios for National Institute of Open Schooling- Rs. 47.2 million

SITC of DTT Antenna System and Strengthening of Tower at 15 sites (for Doordarshan)-Rs. 46.5 million.

MUMBAI: Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) has appointed industry veteran Aine Healy as VP and head of UK.

Based at PFT’s London facility, Aine will lead the sales, operations, technology and strategic business development efforts in the UK for the global digital content services provider.

She comes to PFT with more than 20 years experience in the broadcast operations and post production industries. She has spent the past decade as CEO of Intermission Studio, a state-of-the-art digital facility which she founded in Ireland, after having worked as Broadband Studio manager at eircom, operations manager at TV3 and head of transmission at Tara Television. She has also held senior roles at TG4, Orbit and RTE.
 
PFT has witnessed significant global growth over the past year on the back of major project wins, including several prestigious contracts in the UK and a strong pipeline of new
prospects.

COO Ganesh Sankaran commented: “Aine’s appointment is an integral part of our growth strategy, building on our recent successes in the UK – a key market for PFT. Aine’s background, and her entrepreneurial experience as a founder and CEO, give her a vital insider insight into the challenges the M&E industry faces, and a deep understanding of the evolution it is going through.”

PFT has also recently announced the appointment of Kapil Gupta as VP of programme management as part of the expansion of its management team.

PFT provides unified multi-platform content operations solutions to organisations that deal with content and are keen to exploit it across platforms.

MUMBAI: Sun18 Media Services has introduced three of its channels – Colors, CNBCTV18 Prime and History Channel – in high-definition (HD) formats.

The HD channels are available on Airtel Digital TV, Dish TV and Videocon d2h apart from digital cable provider Hathway Cable & Datacom.

Colors HD and CNBCTV18 PRIME HD channels will be running ad free in the first phase of launch.
 
Sun18 North COO and Viacom18 head – international business Gaurav Gandhi said, “Sun18 welcomes the addition of the 3 HD channels to its portfolio. HD broadcast offers a distinct and superior audio-visual experience to the television viewer and that coupled with strong content from our network channels like Colors, CNBC TV18 Prime and History make it an extremely compelling consumer proposition. We believe that over the next few months DTH platforms will expand their HD bouquet and digital cable too will add HD as an additional offering for its consumers. Sun 18 is working with all potential partners to make these three services available pan-India.” 

MUMBAI: Times Television Network has launched its three channels – Times Now, ET Now and Zoom – in the UAE.

The channels will be available on Etisalat platform, a leading telecom operator and TV services provider in the Middle East.

Making its maiden foray in UAE, Times Television Network will be available to the viewers as part of eLife TV Asian Choice Basic package.
 
Times Television Network MD and CEO Sunil Lulla said, “The launch of our channels Times Now, ET Now and Zoom in the UAE now extends our international reach to 26 countries worldwide. Dubai is a large and important market since it has a significant Indian population and we are happy to partner Etisalat for our launch.”

Lulla added that the channels‘ feeds will be open for advertising shortly. “We look forward to helping brands use the opportunity to reach out to the Diaspora,” he added.

e-vision CEO said “At Etisalat, we always endeavour to provide the refreshing and relevant content to our customers. The addition of these new channels will further enrich our bouquet of services, while offering unmatched entertainment to our viewers.”

MUMBAI: Den has promoted Shailender Nath Sharma to the position of chief executive officer with immediate effect. Earlier, he was president, operations since 2007.

Den has also elevated Mohammad Ghulam Azhar to the role of chief operating officer. He was earlier president, strategy and business development since 2007.

As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, the Sameer Manchanda -promoted multi-system operator (MSO) plans to invest Rs 2 billion in the first phase of digitisation. Den has ordered for two million STBs, in addition to 500,000 that is already lying with it.
 
“Our backend infrastructure is in place as we knew that the government is going to mandate digitisation. We will require to seed 1.5 million STBs in Delhi and 700,000 in Mumbai. We have recently acquired a small network in Kolkata and will need to service that market too,” Azhar had told Indiantelevision.com in an earlier interview.

MUMBAI: Consumers in the US are embracing all the various video platforms available to them.

According to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report for the second quarter of Q2 2011, roughly half (48 per cent) of Americans now watch video online, compared to 10 per cent for mobile and 97 per cent for traditional TV. Even with already near-universal usage levels, traditional TV viewing saw an increase of two hours 43 minutes per month—with New Orleans taking the lead as the city that watches the
most primetime TV.

Over the past two years, since second quarter of 2009, timeshifted TV viewing jumped 31 per cent with near-constant growth. Americans spend more than quadruple the time per week watching timeshifted content on a TV (via DVR, video on demand or DVD playback) as they do online
video.

Americans in the age group 25-64 years spend the most time watching timeshifted content but Americans 65+ and kids 2-11 are catching up, with heightened growth in time spent in recent quarters. Both groups experienced double-digit growth in time spent over last year, while those middle demographics remained relatively the same.

White consumers are the most likely to have a DVR and, compared to all DVR households, timeshift more content than other ethnic groups.

How are Americans Tuning In? Subscription shifts underscore that Americans are putting a new emphasis on broadband. Nearly three-fourths (72 per cent) of US TV homes pay for both a cable-plus TV subscription (cable, satellite or Telco) and broadband Internet. In fact, households with both cable-plus and broadband saw year-over-year growth of nearly seven per cent.

How Does Geography Factor? Just as there are viewing differences across age, gender and ethnicity, there are regional differences as well.
 
According to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report:

– The south spends the most time watching TV, with New Orleans taking the top spot.

– Baltimore has the highest video game console penetration.

– Dallas has the highest DVR penetration.

– Consumers in the Pacific (West) Region spend the most time watching video on the Internet while the East South Central region spends the most time on the Internet

– Miamians are most likely to have a mobile phone in their pockets.

– Bostonians have the highest Internet-enabled computer penetration.

MUMBAI: The Wall Street Journal has announced plans to launch a German-language news site (wallstreetjournal.de) and suite of digital products designed to build its presence in Germany, Europe‘s largest economy.

The new offering will deliver trusted reporting and analysis to a local audience of individuals and companies seeking a global business view combined with a strong regional market sensibility.

The move is part of the Journal‘s worldwide digital expansion which combines global news with locally focused coverage. The company‘s portfolio of local language sites currently includes WSJ China and WSJ Japan.
 
Dow Jones editor-in-chief Robert Thomson said, “Germany is an economic powerhouse and its relative importance in our increasingly complex world is growing. But that means German businesses, professionals and leaders must have instant access to the highest quality news from around the globe. There is no doubt German readers are distinct and discerning and we will do our utmost to satisfy their demands.”

The January 2012 launch will expand Dow Jones‘ current German language news offering, which includes a German language newswire service. The site, together with mobile and tablet applications, and mobile Internet site, will feature a mix of free and subscriber-only content from The Wall Street Journal and across the Dow Jones global network, as well as news and analysis written by reporters based in Frankfurt, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Hamburg.

The Wall Street Journal has appointed Knut Engelmann as managing editor, Germany, newswires and wallstreetjournal.de, charged with overseeing a new combined news operation serving both Dow Jones Newswires and the German language Web site. Prior to joining Dow Jones, Engelmann spent 16 years at Thomson Reuters, most recently as Wall Street editor and global company news editor based in New York. He has also run Reuters‘ news operations in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Balkans from Frankfurt.
 
Engelmann said, “We‘re proud to bring more of the world‘s best business news coverage to Europe‘s largest economy. German readers know the Journal for its trusted analysis and content and we‘ll deliver compelling, exclusive coverage to them every day.”

Dow Jones in Germany MD Dr. Matthias Paul takes on an additional role as publisher of the German-language Web site and will be responsible for developing and expanding The Wall Street Journal‘s digital business in Germany. Dr. Paul, who has been with Dow Jones since 2004, was previously responsible for Dow Jones‘ Energy & Commodity business,
as well as its custom publishing business serving industry and
financial clients in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Dr. Paul said, “Our global strategy is to develop in regions where we see opportunities to grow our business and support local market growth. We‘re developing an already successful local-language media platform to provide a new service for our German-speaking readers and the advertisers who seek this valuable audience.”

Advertisers will be able to reach The Wall Street Journal‘s uniquely attractive audience through digital advertising formats adapted for the German market, and will benefit from the proven effectiveness of the Journal‘s multi-platform delivery.