Category: Software

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable & Datacom Private Limited, a part of the Rajan Raheja group, has set up operations in Lucknow and Gwalior.

Hathway‘s association with its joint ventures will soon see the rollout of the MSO‘s broadband and digital services in the two cities, a company release says.

Hathway‘s cable TV is already available in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Pune, Nashik, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Vijaywada, Mysore Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Kanpur and Jhansi.

The MSO is currently offering digital cable services in New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore Hyderabad and Jalandhar.

NEW DELHI: Just days ahead of Nokia launching its low-cost handset and within a week of Vodafone getting clearance to pitchfork itself into the Indian market, Indian telephony major Reliance Communications announce the launch of its cheapest ever handset at just Rs 777 a set, with no fine-print and on hidden costs.

However, this is not the launch of the Classic range, but re-pricing of the existing sets already selling, as became clear.

Decidedly a major thrust at penetrating deep the rural market and also picking up the low-end subscribers in urban areas, SP Shukla, president, Personal Business, Reliance Communications said through a countrywide videoconference that this would truly revolutionise the Indian wireless telephony sector.

“Never before and never again,” Shukla said would such an unbelievably priced handset be made available. “This is for the moment the lowest price anyone can afford, even Reliance,” Shukla said in response to a question from scribes in Delhi.

The videoconference had wired in scribes from Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Lucknow, Bhopal and Delhi, while the Mumbai press was told this earlier in a press conference this afternoon.

Expectedly, Shukla would not budge on issues of investment levels, but said that there would be three in a range of Classic brand handset, the lowest of which would be priced at Rs 777, and the highest at Rs 888.

Shukla said that subscribers are free to choose the tariff plan they wanted and accordingly, the initial price offer would fetch benefits as a catch-fast measure by reliance. The benefits could be in terms of free minutes or length of validity, he added.

“Reliance has been the first with its new business initiatives in most things related to mobile telephony, whether it be the One India plan, Capital City offer, lowest tariff rates and so forth, and competitors have copied our innovations, Shukla said.

“So the obvious question was: where could we score higher, and taking cues from journalist friends, who know the market pulse best, we felt that we ought to give a handset at a price which makes people decide on the spot to go for it,” he explained.

The additional cost a subscriber would need to make was the SIM card, which could be as low as just Rs 99, with a talk time of Rs 100, Sajiv Kanwar, CEO, Dlhi and Haryana explained to scribes in Delhi.

One question from Kolkata seemed to have upset Shukla, and that was of his claim that it is the second largest handset marketer in the country and its sales bettered the next three sellers put together.

Asked who they were and what was Reliance‘s annual and month-on-month sales, Shukla refused to divulge what he called sensitive business details, but held that its sales last year had been 12 million handsets.

Asked what the intriguing “never before and never after” price meant, and whether Reliance, as usual, would soon raise the price, Shukla said: “I do not make predictions, all I can say is that if you are planning to buy my set, buy it fast.”

Classic is a brand name, he told and company sources said that of the 16 in the Classic range, some were manufactured in China, some in Taiwan and others elsewhere.

Reliance officials fought the ‘reliability factor‘ of Chinese goods, saying that even the best brand name in the world is manufactured in China. “The reliability of these sets come with the reliability of Reliance as a brand, I can assure you,” Kanwar told media persons here.

Asked why Reliance does not get into the manufacturing of handsets, Kanwar said that it did not make business sense, because then the company would have to manufacture for the entire available space in the Indian market to get the economies of scale to bring down prices further than this.

To an query from Bhubaneswar whether many features had been cannibalised to reach this unbelievable price, Shukla held that these phones have all the feature that there are in any mobile and there are no reductions.

“We looked at the market and leveraged economies of scale and passed on the benefit to the customer,” Shukla said when asked how Reliance could give handsets at such a price.

Asked the obvious questions whether Reliance was pre-empting the targets of Nokia and Vodafone, Shukla said that Reliance has only one target, service to the subscribers, and parried issues of competition from the foreign players.

MUMBAI: Big 92.7 FM, in association with OnYoMo, a player in the field of local search technologies, announced the launch of its mobile search service on Big 92.7 FM‘s shortcode 5454.

People can send their query for search of hotels, hospitals, ATMs to 5454, and after 15 minutes they will get all relevant information just at the click of the cell phone.

With this latest offering, Big 92.7 FM aims to take local connect to the next level by addressing local issues. It will allow all users/listeners to access complete actionable local information in a systematic and efficient manner. Says an official release.

Introduced initially in the metros of Mumbai, Delhi/NCR, Bangalore and Chennai, the service and will soon be extended to other towns/cities in the coming months.

MUMBAI: Online TV platform Joost which has been founded by Skype‘s creators has been formally launched.

Media reports state that it will be open for any user to download the Joost TV application later this month, bringing broadband quality on-demand TV to broadband-enabled users anywhere. Existing beta testers will soon be able to invite an unlimited number of additional participants, ensuring Joost still retains some exlcusive cachet before the final entry of Joost into the wider world for anyone to try.

Joost operates by distributing streaming video of shows user-to-user, over the Internet.

Consumers choose a channel via a software interface on their desktop that resembles a remote control. Like regular TV, it is free for viewers, and will be ad-supported.

Joost has also signed programming deals with Turner Broadcasting System, Sony Pictures Television and Hasbro. Joost will air episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken from Turner‘s Adult Swim network along with Larry King Live and other CNN content.

Sony reports state will run episodes of old shows like Charlie‘s Angels and Starsky And Hutch on Joost. Time Warner‘s Sports Illustrated will run photo shoots and programmes about its swimsuit issue. The National Hockey League will broadcast vintage games and game highlights; and

Hasbro. will run old episodes of Transformers” and G.I. Joe. Joost had earlier signed deals with Viacom, Warner Music Group and CBS. It has advertising trials with firms like Coca-Cola, Nike, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Visa.

MUMBAI: The standoff between US media conglomerate Viacom and the world‘s most valuable media firm Google over the latter‘s social netwoking video site Youtube shows no signs of abating.

It was in March that Viacom sued Google for massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties. The suit seeks more than $1 billion in damages, as well as an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.

Google has now responded to the suit. Google has denied all claims made by Viacom, other than the obvious fact that it had acquired YouTube and the fact that its users are allowed to upload video to the site.

Viacom‘s complaint Google says threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression. Google and YouTube respect the importance of intellectual property rights, and not only comply with their safe harbor obligations under the DMCA, but go well above and beyond what the law requires.

Viacom meanwhile responded saying that it was obvious that YouTube has knowledge of infringing material on their site and they are profiting from it. “It is simply not credible that a company whose mission is to organise the world‘s information claims that it can‘t find what‘s on YouTube.”

Google contends that it has not violated the rights of the media conglomerate based on a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), enacted in 1998. “Viacom‘s complaint in this action challenges the careful balance established by Congress when it enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA balances the rights of copyright holders and the need to protect the Internet as an important new form of communication,” Google said in a 12-page response to the lawsuit.

Google media reports state says that it has instituted tools to help copyright owners to identify clips that may violate their rights. The tools, such as digital hashing prevent YouTube users from repeatedly uploading a video once it has been removed from the site.

Reports add that no matter who wins the lawsuit experts predict that the case will have long-term effects on the user-generated content phenomenon and online video distribution. For its part, Congress will have to take another look at the DMCA.

MUMBAI: Business magnate T Ananda Krishnan, Malaysia‘s second richest man, is looking to buy out Maxis Communications, the South East Asian country‘s biggest mobile-phone operator.

Krishnan‘s investment company Usaha Tegas and its affiliates hold a 46 per cent stake in the telecom giant, which is valued at $ 9.6 billion. Mopping up the remaining 54 per cent would cost Krishnan a reported $ 5.1 billion. The buy offer is expected to be made by 3 May.

India is reportedly a big part of the strategy involved in Krishnan‘s intention to take complete control of Maxis. The telco is lining up spends in the region of $3 billion over the next five years to expand its network in India.

Maxis said this month it plans to spend $3 billion in the next five years expanding its network in India to counter slowing growth at home.

NEW DELHI: The CNN-IBN news channel is to be converted into a free to air (FTA) channel in CAS-notified areas of Kolkata from 15 May.

The news channel, owned by Global Broadcast News Limited and distributed by Zee Turner, was until now a pay channel in Kolkata. CNN IBN will however, continue as an encrypted pay channel in the Cas notified areas of Mumbai and Delhi. A point of note here is that rival NDTV 24×7 went from pay to FTA in CAS zones of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata as of 23 March.

Meanwhile, ETV-Marathi distributed by Ushodaya Enterprises Limited has been converted into a Pay (Encrypted) channel in CAS notified areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai from 26 March. It was an FTA channel in these areas until now.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, in a press release issued today, also said that movie channel Pix distributed by SET Discovery had become an FTA channel in CAS notified areas of Chennai from 1 January this year.

The information was provided by Trai while updating its list of pay and FTA channels in the Cas notified areas.

MUMBAI: VSNL has partnered with StarHub which is Singapore‘s info communication company, to provide roaming wireless broadband service to high value travelers during their stay in India.

This service will allow seamless roaming and usage within the VSNL wireless broadband network in India wherein visitors can access high speed wireless broadband using their home country account and identity. This will allow all StarHub customers whether mobile, broadband or cable, to use wireless broadband service at over 200 Tata Indicom Wi-Fi hotspots across India. Very shortly, other global Wi-Fi operators will be added to the list of roaming partners.

“This is yet another initiative from VSNL to continuously offer innovative customer solutions. Global travelers will never feel disconnected in India,” said VSNL vice president marketing and technology for retail broadband business Prateek Pashine, while announcing the launch of this service.

VSNL, a global communications services provider, is the only Indian member in the wireless broadband alliance a global consortium of world‘s leading wireless operators.

VSNL operates over 200 Wi-Fi hotspots, spread across the major cities and include leading chain of hotels, major domestic and international airports, popular café chains, restaurants, bookstores, stadiums, educational institutions, railtel cybercafés and leading shopping malls in India.

MUMBAI: Hathway Cable and Datacom Private Limited, a part of the Rajan Raheja group, has launched in its digital cable TV services in Nasik.

Previously the cable operators had entered Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Jalandhar. “To be a single point access provider bringing into the homes and workplace the converged world on information, entertainment and services,” states the company in an official announcement.

Hathway has launched Digital Cable TV Services in Nasik. Mumbai-Nasik link is connected on the Railtel fibre at a distance of approx 200kms using Dense Wave Divisional Multiplexing (DWDM)technology which allows multiple services on a single fibre offering 138 Video Channels + 10 radio Channels = 148 Channels .The digital service from Nasik has been expanded to neighbouring areas viz. Devlali, Bhagur and planning to expand to further areas in the near future.