Category: Software

NEW DELHI: With the highest ever net addition of 1.8 crore customers a year in 2006-07, a rise of 59 per cent in revenue and a net profit rise by 89 per cent year-on-year, Bharti Airtel today announced that it would invest another 3.3 to 3.5 bn dollars in capex in India in the coming year.

Of the amount, 70 per cent would be spent on mobile connectivity and of the another 30,000 new base stations It plans to set up across the country, 70 per cent would be in the rural areas, which is what is really pushing the market, a buoyant Sunil Bharti Mittal said today.

Mittal added that Bharti Airtel has truly served the country‘s economic growth and that India today plays a key role in world telecom. He added that the new telecom story is on in which more minutes are being added every day and this comes from not just the new connections, but increase in telephone use by existing numbers.

Largely, India‘s unbelievable low tariffs have been responsible for this, and Bharti is fast approaching the magic figure of 23 per cent market share and can boast of one billion minutes a month.

Rajan Mittal explained that the thrust of growth is the rural areas and small towns. He added that there has been Rs 32,000 crore investment already, and the company runs a 40,000 km of fibre optic network. The new areas for fibre optic network will be in the northeastern parts of the country.

Interestingly, asked about competition from Vodaphone entering the Indian market, Sunil Mittal said: “You asking them or me?, but went on to say that Bharti would maintain its market share lead all the same.

“Some other weaker players would have to yield that space, but we shall remain where we are,” Mittal said.

Bharti would participate in the 3G auction once the government clears the stage and allocate spectrum and would become early players in the segment, and also on the Wimax front, the company is watching the field and would take up the best technology, Akhil Gupta, one of the presidents of Bharti said.

Regarding the government‘s decision to cap the number of players in each circle, Mittal said: “We are agnostic to the increase in the number of players, but we insist that there must be sufficient spectrum available for the existing players.”

Mittal said that Bharti looking for expansion outside the country, and the capex that has been committed already is not for that. “If there are good opportunities we shall look at funds and see how it works out.”

In terms tariff, however, Mittal did not feel that there is no scope for further reduction at all, and this is rock bottom.

Agreeing that the tariffs were lowest in the world, Mittal said that 20 per cent of the tariff was in taxes, cess and license fees.

“The government is likely to rationalise this structure, and as and when this happens, we shall pass on the benefit to the subscribers,” Mittal promised.

NEW DELHI:The inadequacies in the war against piracy and counterfeit became evident at the Ficci seminar on the issue when the Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy, H K Dua clarified that an inter-ministerial group to combat piracy has been formed two months ago, though the chairperson of the government‘s Core Group, film actress Shabana Azmi was unaware of it till then.

Delivering her key note address, Azmi had expressed sadness that the Core Group‘s recommendations – especially that of setting up the inter-ministerial group – had been made months ago but nothing has been heard of that.

A little later, addressing the audience, Dua said it has in fact been set up and work was going on, though he admitted: “Work has started, but it remains incomplete.”

Central to a proposed action plan presented by Azmi was involving children, which has paid off very well in tackling issues like global warming and fight against plastics. Azmi said that during a school presentation against piracy, she had symbolically crushed hundreds of fake DVDs under a bulldozer she drove herself.

“Children loved that, but unfortunately, when the same students were asked to write an essay on the subject, they responded very poorly,” Azmi despaired.

She explained that the children could not be faulted because neither teachers nor parents adequately understood the issue, and said that the need was to underline the word counterfeit as an act of theft and as vile an act as any other criminal offence.

Azmi made an emotional approach that would work if children understood that parents buying counterfeit material were encouraging thieves, and called for a widespread campaign on these lines.

Azmi was candid, however, to mention that though creative artists like her, music makers, lyricists and filmmakers and producers are the hardest hit by counterfeit, yet, Bollywood was guilty of never making a concerted and sustained campaign on the issue.

Azmi revealed also that among the other measures suggested by the Core Group were setting up a complete digital cinema environment, and that the Group had demanded tax holidays and 100 per cent depreciation for the digital cinema industry.

It may be recalled that Ficci itself had in its prebudget wish list had stressed creating digital cinema environment and demanded several benign tax measures for that, but after the budget proposals, slammed them as “There is nothing in it for us”.

Thus far goes the finance ministries commitment to protect Indian media industry against piracy, for nothing has been done so far in remodelling tax structures to incorporate the demands of the industry.

Azmi said that another recommendation of the Group was that copyright laws must embrace digital download access, so that people could access legitimate content at affordable prices.

Dua did not clarify the government position on these other two issues.

However, he said that while there was once a situation when India did not have adequate legal teeth to tackle the problem of piracy, this is not the case today.

Listing the various recent legislations and amendments to older ones tackling piracy, Dua said: “There are adequate laws but not adequate action.”

He stressed that the action has to be at the states level, where the illegal activities take place, and regretted that even now, state police forces treat piracy complaints as a civil matter and comes last in their prioritisation, after maintaining law and order and dealing with crime.

Piracy is not taken as a serious offence by the police, though it is killing off legitimate industries and hurting people employed in them.

“This is murder, but economic murder, theft, but not of property, but something even deeper, the source of property,” he said, adding that if a mere 10 per cent of piracy in the IT sector could be reduced, it would save the country five billion dollars and protect 1,15,000 jobs.

He spoke also of the indirect and not so visible implications of piracy. “Once black money is generated, it has to be sued somewhere, so there is more counterfeiting and the link of all sorts of illegal activities add up to funding for terrorism as well.

Dua said that the major charter of the inter-ministerial group has been enforcement at the state level.

Dua also revealed that though US and other countries are accusing India, China, etc., of pirating their IPR products, the government had pointed out to the US trade representative during her recent visit to India that Indian films were getting pirated in the US too, and they need to do something about it.

There was a demand that dedicated cells to tackle piracy issues must be set up within the police forces in the states because the regular forces are too stretched to handle this specialised criminal offence.

Dua clarified on this issue that the inter-ministerial group had stressed an Intellectual Property Cell in every state, to be headed by the IP secretary concerned, and added that programmes for piracy-related.training of judicial officials and police personnel have been started already.

Speaking for Ficci, V K Topa said that workshops for judges have already been held at Kolkata, Delhi and Bhopal and there is another one coming up in June in Bangalore.

Ficci is also working with Kolkata High Court to probe the possibilities of setting up special anti-piracy courts which could fast-track the judicial process and hand out swift and exemplary punishments to offenders.

In his vote of thanks, V J Lazarus of India Music Industry said that the government has been extraordinary in its support for the movement, and it is now time for industry to do whatever it could to make the war a complete victory.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today dismissed the special leave petition filed by TataSky in the case against Sun TV, stating that since the Madras High Court has taken cognizance of the matter and issued notice to TataSky, the SLP could not be allowed.

The two-judge Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and DK Jain said the parties were free to approach the sector tribunal TDSAT for an early hearing if they felt the issue needed urgent resolution.

TataSky had filed an appeal with the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunals earlier asking it to order Sun TV to give its signals to the DTH player on an a la carte basis and would be paid for the actual number of TataSky viewers, and not its entire subscription base.

The tribunal had passed an interim order that Sun should give the signals, but Sun TV had not complied with it and instead, moved a modification application saying that TataSky must first make it clear and prove that it would also actually give the signals to its subscribers on an a la carte basis.

Upon this modification application, TDSAT had strictly warned Sun that its interim orders had to be complied with first and ordered Sun to give the signals to TataSky within seven days.

In the meanwhile, Sun TV had approached Madras High Court for a stay on the TDSAT order for giving signals to TataSky.

The Madras High Court had issued the stay saying that since a modification application is pending with TDSAT, the enforcement of its interim order was not warranted.

Senior counsel for TataSky Arun Jaitley had said that the case was urgent and the court said that the parties could approach TDSAT for an early hearing.

The next hearing of the case on the modification application is slated for May 1 and for the final hearing TDSAT has already fixed the date as May 11.

MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT is focussing on digital cable TV for expansion and has made investments of Rs 350 million towards this over the last four months.

The company is pumping in a further Rs 300 million for purchase of digital set-top boxes as it plans to launch digital service in new cities. HTMT currently offers digital cable TV in Mumbai and Delhi.

“We have put in around Rs 350 million since December and have ordered for fresh set-top boxes which would cost us a further Rs 300 million,” says the company‘s director-in-charge Ravi Mansukhani.

IndusInd Media and Communications Ltd (IMCL), which houses the consolidated cable and media businesses of HTMT, is also planning to launch digital cable TV service in Bangalore. “We have installed a digital head-end in Bangalore and would start testing soon,” says Mansukhani..

The service would be extended to Mysore later with a hook up from the Bangalore digital head-end through the fibre optic route, he adds.

The other cities earmarked for digitalisation are Ahmedabad and Baroda. “We plan to have a digital head-end in Ahmedabad and link up Baroda through fibre optic. We have already upgraded the network and once Bangalore stabilises we will launch in these cities,” says Mansukhani.

IMCL is looking at alliances with cable TV operators to expand in new territories. While it will offer support to cable networks for digital rollout and set-top boxes, operators can take exclusive care of their analogue business. “All our expansion will be on the digital side of the business,” says Mansukhani.

Hinduja TMT Ltd, which has 63 per cent stake in IMCL, has started trading again after spinning off its ITES-BPO functions into a separate company. The company holds cash of Rs 5.11 billion and owns a 47-acre property in Bangalore. It has a paid-up capital of Rs 205.3 million and networth of about Rs 5.87 billion as on 31 December 2006.

BANGALORE: The US had Maps in the US in the Flash version, now the Indian edition with superior feature in Ajax was launched by Yahoo in Bangalore today, along with a totally new product conceived and launched in India first – Yahoo! India Our City beta, a Web 2.0 application, which currently features data of twenty cities in India, with a lot more to follow shortly.

Yahoo plan to provide a ‘rich and dynamically updated perspective of a city as seen and experienced by people at large’. Users could browse OU City to explore photos, videos, events, news, weather, blogs etc. besides sharing information, and there’s a regional language version too. This product aggregates both editorial and user generated content.

Yahoo! India Maps is an offering akin to the one in the US and provides street level search functionality along with street map, satellite map and additional features of hybrid maps. 170 cities, 4785 towns and over 220,000 villages have reportedly been covered by Yahoo!, with the map data having been provided by CE Info Systems. Some of the features include finding a place using it’s old names or the most popular one if there are multiple places with the same name.

Besides the above Yahoo! Co- founder David Filo also announced major restructuring in the Yahoo for the Research & Development Center in Bangalore. As part of the global reorganization at Yahoo!, the International group has been structured into 3 regions – Asia, Europe & Emerging Markets. Yahoo! sees India and Emerging Markets as the next big opportunity. A release says that the India team is well-positioned to leverage this opportunity as they enjoy the advantages of the location in relation to time zones (Bangalore); critical mass of talent accumulated over the years; ability to produce end to end products; and the fact that India is one of Yahoo!’s top priorities.

While speaking with Indiantelevision.com’s Tarachand Wanvari on the sideline of the press conference, Filo revealed Yahoo! initiatives in the mobile space. ”Mobile in general is one of the areas as a company we are very focused on. Though, first we are focused on building a lot of PC applications, mobile is very important to us. We have Yahoo! Go and we have recently launched ‘One Search’ which is search on mobile devices. In general we have a very a very strong market share in mobile applications, both in the US and in other markets including India and we continue doing whatever is necessary.” Added Filo” Today we are focusing around the ‘Yahoo! Go’ effort and every aspect of that, everything like search to things like flickr, to news, to sports, to finance, to applications like email and messaging. Those are all the areas we’re focused on today. We certainly are looking further on at things like video and TV but that depends on networks having bandwidth and capacity. We are exploring that space”

Filo also revealed that Yahoo was working on IPTV and how Yahoo! would aggregate content. “One of the things that we have done over the years, is that we’ve built a lot of relationships across the board, whether it’s movie studios, music labels or television networks, we pretty much have relationships with all of them and that’s something that we’ve built over all these years through our music property, through television. We are one the biggest today, we stream more video than anyone else and it’s all legal. People like U-tube and stuff that are using user generated stuff, a lot of which is illegal, but you look at all our relationships, all our content – it’s all legal that we’ve agreements with the studios. We can leverage all those relationships, and when we start IPTV which we’ve been working on, we can get the content legally, share revenue with them.”

Filo said that Japan and Korea were the only two countries where Yahoo was really experimenting with IPTV since both these countries had had high speed internet access for the consumer, the technology was still in the nascent stage even in the US.

NEW DELHI: A new revenue sharing issue cropped up today in private conversation between some prominent attendees at the Ficci seminar on piracy and IPR, and it is likely that bodies of cable operators and film producers might meet in Bombay to discuss this weekend or early next month.

The seminar had film actress Shabana Azmi as the chairperson and on the sidelines, Roop Sharma, president of the Cable Operators Federation of India proposed to Azmi that since there is such a lot of talk pirated films being shown, and LCOs being involved, why not develop a revenue sharing model through Cas and legitimise this so that there is clean money in it for all.

Azmi, chairperson of the government‘s Core Group on piracy, was hugely receptive of the idea and wanted immediate forward movement on it. She did not want to delay the process and said: “We should fix up the meetings now.”

She said she would talk to concerned filmmaker bodies from Delhi over mobile so that the meeting could be organised this weekend, saying that everyone would be interested in this.

Azmi said she would see if someone from the Bollywood side could work out a revenue sharing model and also asked Sharma to do so.

On this Sharma suggested that since the model would be Cas-based, the model of revenue sharing proposed at the meeting could be taken to Trai and get it officially approved by the sector regulator, and Azmi said that would be appropriate.

Another prominent personality, Sushil Kumar Agrawal, managing director of the Ultra Group, also attending the seminar, said that he would help coordinate the meeting.

However, he pointed out that if the meeting does not take place by Saturday, then it would have to be pushed beyond this month with Maharashtra‘s state day holiday falling in between, so the meting could also be called in the first week of May.

V K Topa, advisor to Ficci and who deals with the IPR cell, also joined the meeting and Agrawal said that it would be better if Ficci convenes the meeting, for Ficci is organisation neutral and participation would be on a larger scale and without mutual suspicion.

Topa has said Ficci could easily do that and said he would take this up.

Sharma told indiantelevision.com that she was sure that everyone would join. “Revenue sharing through Cas means business growth on a clean path in an area where there has been always suspicion and mutual mudslinging between producers and LCOs.

She said she would coordinate with other LCO organisations apart from the one she heads.

But this would be operational in the tiny Cas universe of some 15 lakh HHs at the moment, so what about that?

Sharma said: “Cas is getting extended to 31 other cities and in any case, we have today just initiated the move and it will be six months or so before issues are resolved between all of us and a revenue model becomes accepted by all.

“By then Cas universe would have grown vastly to benefit the producers by ensuring meaningful scale of operations.”

BANGALORE: ‘Get on the bridge’ is the AOL tagline, a bridge that connects people. AOL, a division of Time Warner, the world’s leading media company, today announced the launch of www.AOL.in, a website that offers e-mail, AOL Messenger, mobile services, videos, news, sports, entertainment among other features.

AOL.in is the first service worldwide to offer AOL’s next-generation e-mail service. AOL’s e-mail includes unlimited storage, leading safety and spam protections, and mobile access.

A promotional campaign with creatives by Saatchi & Saatchi will kick off by 10th or 15th of May according AOL sources. Print and outdoor media, along with selected portals such as Rediff, ndtv will be used initially, though Bangalore already has a few AOL billboards promoting AOL. Going regional with regional language content is on the anvil according to AOL LLC President & COO Ron Grant. The media buying is by Madison. Television commercials are not on AOL’s Indian avatar immediate horizon.

AOL.in has received a good response from the advertisement fraternity according to AOL LLC vp and chief spokesman Andrew Weinstein. ICICI Credit Cards, futurebazaar.com are some of the few Indian brand names that are already visible on the portal, along with a few from the US.

Among the features of the new www.AOL.in Web site:

The AOL Messenger product has features like offline messages, picture sharing, personalization, grouped messaging and simultaneous multiple IDs, an integrated Google search that offers users the power of the Internet’s leading search engine without leaving the site.

The other features include:

Video content in many channels with a superior video experience.

News and entertainment channels include Bollywood, CityGuide, Cricket, Education, Gurus, Hollywood, International Music, News and Sports.

AOL is also launching a full mobile communications and infotainment suite that includes:

WAP Mail that allows users to access their AOL Mail on their mobile device.

A service extending AOL Messenger onto users’ mobile devices via SMS.

Downloads like wallpaper, ringtones, games, animations, and videos.

GPRS services are available on wap.aol.in. SMS services will run on the short-code 51515.

NEW DELHI: Even as the Foreign Investment Promotion Board is slated tomorrow to consider the Vodafone‘s deal to buy controlling stake in Hutch-Essar.

Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran has said his Ministry is clear there has been no breach in licensing conditions by either of the parties.

Giving a clean chit to the deal in a television interview, the Minister said however that the FIPB was the right authority to go into details of the shareholding pattern.

Both Mr Maran and Commerce Minister Kamal Nath had met Finance Minister P Chidambaram yesterday, reportedly to discuss the deal.

Finance Ministry sources confirmed to indiantelevision.com that the two minority shareholders of Hutch-Essar — Hutch-Essar Managing Director Asim Ghosh and Max Group chief Analjit Singh — besides officials of Hutchison and Vodafone will meet Finance Secretary Ashok Jha today to clarify queries that the Finance Ministry may have.

The FIPB had earlier this week put off to Friday a decision on the deal for the third time in a row, this time because of lack of clarity over the foreign shareholding in the company.

After the meeting, Mr Ajay Dua who is Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had said the Law Ministry‘s views had been received on April 23 and had been circulated among the members.

Refusing to comment on whether his Department had given its views on the issue of foreign shareholding pattern in Hutch-Essar which is the country‘s fourth largest mobile company, Dua added that there had to be collective decision by all the participants of FIPB.

Earlier, doubts had been raised over the minority stake of 12.6 per cent held jointly by Ghosh and Singh, and the Reserve Bank of India was examining the issue. It is however learnt that the Law Ministry has cleared Hutchison, which has sold a direct 52 per cent stake to UK‘s Vodafone for over 11 billion dollars.

NEW DELHI: The Government favours the entry of foreign telecom operators in the country to take advantage of the additional 42.5 MHz spectrum becoming available for third generation mobile telephony and introduce competition.

A new 3G Spectrum Allocation Plan is also expected to be announced by the Department of Telecommunications after additional spectrum become available by July.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran also told newspersons in an informal chat that 9 million broadband connections will be rolled out by the year-end, of which 7 million will be contributed by BSNL and MTNL.

He said broadband connections posted a growth of 70 per cent to touch 2.3 million at the end of March, as compared to 1.35 million last year. The broadband subscribers were 2.21 million in February last, thus adding 0.09 million subscribers in the month of March.

He also said rural areas of the country will have a total of 50 million telecom subscribers this year by setting up 8,000 transmitting towers in rural areas. The overall telecom base of the country will reach 250 million by August from 206.83 million at present. The towers will be installed through the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund during the current calendar year.

A total of 10,000 towers will be set up in rural areas by 2009-10 and the USO administration had been asked to draw up a fibre to village (FTV) plan, he said.

Maran said the total telephony subscriber base (wireless and wireline) stands at 206.83 million at the end of the fiscal year, with an annual addition of 66.51 million subscribers during 2006-2007.

The wireless services subscriber base at the end of March this year stood at 166.05 million as compared to 98.78 million in the same month last year, registering a growth of 68 per cent. According to figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the month added 3.53 million wireless subscribers as against 6.21 million subscribers in February this year.

Meanwhile, the Minister said a penalty of Rs 1,000 per subscriber will be imposed on the telecom operators for non-verification of customers’ identity, the process for which has already begun.

NEW DELHI: In an era when television channels are urging viewers to use the SMS to send in their votes on crucial questions, MSN India and Windows Live India is conducted a series of polls on issues of interest to online consumers.

According to one such poll, 83 per cent of those who responded to a poll on the state of Indian cricket have said they are not happy with the team selected for the Bangladesh tour.

Interestingly, a majority of the 17 per cent who are happy want to know why Sehwag has been retained.

MSN India and Windows Live India have been conducting a series of online polls ranging from topics of national importance and sports to lifestyle and relationships. They reflect the voice of the Indian Online users.

After India‘s World Cup debacle and the subsequent resignation of Greg Chappell as coach, Ravi Shastri was appointed as the cricket manager for the Bangladesh tour. At the time, Shastri had said that a young team would be selected for the Bangladesh tour.

However, the only new face in the Indian squad for the ODI matches is Bengal‘s Manoj Tiwary. The selectors have recalled youngsters like Piyush Chawla, Gautam Gambhir and RP Singh, but have retained Sehwag for the one-dayers. In the Test squad, there is no new face.