Category: Software

Indians among top operators providing broadband in 2012

NEW DELHI: China, India and the US accounted for 50 or nearly half of the 106 top operators, with 27 entities based in China and 12 in India.

Media and communications analysis specialist SNL Kagan has compiled a database of 106 major operators serving no fewer than two million video subscribers or one million fixed-line broadband subscribers at year-end 2012 to facilitate a global comparison of the world‘s largest video and broadband providers.

The United States came third with 11 operators, followed by France, Germany, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico, each with five.

American cable giant Comcast Corp remained the world‘s largest pay TV provider as of year-end 2012 with 22 million video subscribers, while Chinese telco incumbent China Telecom was the top fixed broadband provider, reaching 90.1 million high-speed internet customers.

On a regional level, China‘s ongoing cable consolidation and India‘s continued DTH surge have produced many top pay-TV operators in the Asia Pacific region with gigantic subscriber bases.

At end-2012, the top 10 Asia Pacific operators each served more than 10 million video subscribers and still are on track for further growth.

Strong DTH uptake has also taken place in Latin America, where top providers SKY Brasil, Sky Mexico and America Movil‘s Claro made the most aggressive subscriber net additions in 2012 in the region. In the advanced territories of North America and Western Europe, telecom providers are outpacing incumbent cable operators in terms of subscriber growth, with IPTV services from AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, France Telecom Group and Deutsche Telekom AG registering the most net additions, while cable giants such as Comcast Corp, Rogers Cable Inc, Kabel Deutschland GmbH and Numericable SAS continued to suffer subscriber loss.

June 8, 2013
Shemaroo signs a deal with Jadoo TV

MUMBAI: Pearl Media Group Ltd (PMG) has closed an international distribution deal for Bollywood films with Shemaroo Entertainment Limited – one of the largest content houses of India.

Shemaroo is known for its strength in content aggregation and distribution in the industry across multiple platforms including new media and broadcast television among others.

PMG content acquisition and distribution, co-founder & VP Sumit Ahuja said, “We‘re excited about partnering with established distribution brand names like Shemaroo who have been leaders in bringing content to the digital space. Access to their large array of high quality content, allows us to offer our customers the best selection of Bollywood films in the market.”

“Consumers today want on-demand access to content across multiple devices. Our tie up with PMG‘s leading edge OTT platform JadooPLUS is a step in that direction. We will offer JadooPLUS customers easy and legal access to high quality south Asian content across the globe. Consumers can choose from a wide array of films that range from the latest Bollywood hits like Dirty Picture, Kya Superkool Hain Hum and I M 24 to classics like Mughal-E-Azam, Khuda Gawah, Kaalia and Shiva” said Shemaroo Entertainment director Jai Maroo.

Through this deal, Shemaroo‘s content will be offered on PMG‘s premium OTT entertainment service, JadooPLUS. The service consists of live TV and on-demand content offerings, targeting south Asian expatriates worldwide via connected devices such as smart TVs, PCs and Macs, tablets, set-top boxes, gaming consoles and mobile devices.

June 8, 2013
ICC launches app for Champions Trophy

MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) today announced the update and re-release of its official ICC Cricket App, in partnership with Reliance Communications.

The smart phone app, which will enable cricket fans from across the globe to follow all the action at the ICC Champions Trophy in England and Wales, is free to download.

Among the features expected to be the most popular are the video match highlights, including opt in alerts for wickets and personal milestones, along with live audio commentary. There will also be free behind the scenes exclusive videos from the event, player interviews and footage from every post-match press conference.

Cricket fans will also be able to use the app to vote in live polls during matches and throughout the duration of the tournament, the questions and results of these polls will be broadcast live on the global television broadcast.

The official ICC Cricket App also includes exclusive access to the innovative Hawkeye technology for all ICC Champions Trophy 2013 matches, allowing fans to analyse many aspects of the players and team performances.

The user will also have access to the live match centre on game day, which includes ball by ball text commentary and all statistical tournament information.ICC GM “ commercial Campbell Jamieson said, “We believe that the official ICC Cricket App will provide yet another invaluable platform to engage our fans at the ICC Champions Trophy 2013.”

“By giving them an opportunity to have their say on the cricket they are watching, through the Pulse polls, or by providing notifications when a new piece of video content is available, we are offering an experience that all fans can enjoy, wherever they are in the world,” he added.

The ICC Champions Trophy 2013 smartphone app was developed and produced through a partnership between the ICC, IMG Media and Moshen, a digital media and entertainment company based in Lancaster, England.

The ICC Cricket App is available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows smartphones from the official App Stores and along with a Feature Phone Nokia App.

June 7, 2013
Govt launches SMS campaign to sensitise people to fill consumer application forms for DAS

NEW DELHI: With the pace of consumers entering into agreements with local cable operators (LCOs) moving at a snail‘s pace, the government has decided to launch an SMS campaign in order to sensitise Cable TV subscribers in Phase-I and Phase-II cities about the need to fill the consumer application form (CAF).

The consumers are required to fill the CAF in order to exercise their choice of channels and make the payment for the channels of their choice only.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry has been monitoring the availability of set top boxes (STBs) with the multi system operators (MSOs). Broadcasters are already running scrolls on TV channels to inform the public about the importance of filling CAF forms. MSOs are also giving messages on their local TV channels. Analogue signals have already been switched off by almost all the MSOs and digital signals are generally being encrypted.

As part of the process, over 80 fresh provisional registrations were issued to MSOs for operation in one or more cities of Phase-II, with the condition that they would operationalise their digital head-end before the cut-off date.

After technical inspection of all the concerned MSOs which showed some had not operationalised their set ups, the ministry issues 48 show cause notices, and cancelled the provisional registration of 15 defaulting MSOs.

The ministry has been consistently monitoring the progress made towards digitization during Phase II of the process. According to the data received from the MSOs and direct-to-home Operators, 22 cities have already achieved 100 per cent target of digitisation. Another 14 cities have shown considerable progress and the achievement remains less than 50 per cent only in Coimbatore and Vishakhapatanam.

June 7, 2013
Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is the highest paid chief in new media: SNL Kagan

MUMBAI: Internet major Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is the highest paid CEO among new media companies according to SNL Kagan. She made $36.6 million last year out of which $35 million was stock and option awards.

At the bottom of the rankings, meanwhile, were Mayer‘s former boss Google CEO Larry Page and LiveDeal CEO Jon Isaac, who both received total compensation of $1.

According to SNL Kagan, Mayer easily surpassed all rival executives in the new media space in terms of total compensation.

Mayer‘s year was characterised by a hands-on push to lead Yahoo‘s turnaround strategy. Long before the company was doing things such as angling for a far younger user base with its $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition it was already in the midst of a major turnaround strategy overseen by Mayer. That strategy included a shakeup of Yahoo‘s top executive team.

Meanwhile, Yahoo also culled certain low-performing noncore assets such as Yahoo! Korea and a Chinese music service, all while stepping up an M&A strategy that saw Yahoo acquire such companies as video chat startup OnTheAir and mobile startup Stamped, while it eyed Summly, the news summarisation startup it ultimately bought in March 2013. In those dizzying 5.5 months, Yahoo additionally signed cross-promotional content deals with ‘Us Weekly‘ and ‘Rolling Stone‘ publisher Wenner Media and with NBC Sports Group, of Comcast Corp.‘s NBCUniversal Media LLC, and it overhauled both its Yahoo! Mail service, optimising it for Apple Inc iOS, Microsoft Windows 8 and Google Android mobile devices, doing much the same with a social-first revamp of its Flickr app.

Now-former CFO Timothy Morse presaged the Mayer era just as the executive took the reins, telling analysts on a July 17, 2012, earnings call that under Mayer, Yahoo would focus on bettering its technology, content offerings, mobile presence and ties with social players such as Facebook Inc. The company subsequently disclosed in August 2012 that Mayer was at work re-evaluating Yahoo‘s growth and acquisition strategy with an eye potentially toward investment rather than unquestioningly returning cash to shareholders. By April 2013, Mayer was calling that focus shift a "build, buy and partner," as she reiterated the company‘s previously stated commitment to M&A activity and to a robust mobile strategy.

Mayer‘s approach seemed to pay off for Yahoo in 2012, as the company ended the year with fourth-quarter earnings results reflecting Yahoo‘s first revenue growth in four years. All the ambitious strategising and execution, furthermore, was undertaken as Mayer gave birth to her first child right in the middle of her 2012 tenure as CEO.

Coming in behind Mayer in terms of CEO pay was eBay CEO John Donahoe, who likewise saw the bulk of his salary come in the form of equity-based compensation. Donahoe‘s base salary was $970,353, while he recorded roughly $25.7 million in stock and option awards, $2.8 million in non-equity incentive compensation and $160,420 in other salary, for a total of roughly $29.7 million.

Although Donahoe‘s 2012 was not quite as headline-friendly as Mayer‘s, he also led his company at a time of significant growth. EBay shares opened 2012 by ending the first day of trading 3 January with a value of $31.34 and climbed to close 31 December, 2012, at $51.00, a massive 57.3 per cent rise for the year.

EBay ended the year with meaningful revenue growth, capping off a year that saw the company transform its PayPal unit from an e-commerce transaction option to a bona fide real-world rival to traditional payment systems.

Donahoe was followed in the rankings by Vistaprint NV CEO Robert Keane and Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who also had the distinction of recording the largest bonus out of the top 10 CEOs by compensation, with a $3 million payout on top of his $1 million base salary, $895,000 in other salary and roughly $10.4 million in stock and option awards. In fact, just one CEO in the entire new media sector, according to SNL Kagan, got a bigger bonus than Khosrowshahi: IAC/InterActiveCorp chief Gregory Blatt, who received a $3.5 million bonus, contributing to $4.6 million in total compensation, which did not qualify him for the top 10.

Overall, the average total compensation for the top 25 new media CEOs in 2012 was roughly $9.3 million. Not making the top 25 were such high-profile executives as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Apple CEO Tim Cook made the top 25 but not the top 10, with his roughly $4.2 million in total compensation.

June 7, 2013
MSOs to crack the whip on LCOs on customer forms issue

MUMBAI: India‘s multisystem operators (MSOs) got a dressing down yesterday from TRAI boss Rahul Khullar about the lack of KYC or CRF forms giving details about their subscribers. Khullar ordered them to get their acts together, giving a deadline of 30 June 2013 for the forms to come in, failing which they would be prosecuted.

With the proverbial Damoclean sword hanging over their heads, they have decided to fall in line.

Says DEN Networks CEO S.N. Sharma: “We are all working together, to follow the directions given by TRAI. We are already in the process of collecting customer data and are positive that we will be able to meet the 30 June deadline.”

According to sources, the four MSOs got together post the TRAI meeting and have agreed to act in coordination with each other. The idea is to switch off all the set top boxes for which the MSOs don‘t have the customer details. The switch-off will be done area wise and hopefully this will force local cable operators to share the forms with MSOs. The latter have also agreed to not allow cable TV operators to switch MSOs or play one MSO against the other.

“Subscribers are bound to suffer during this exercise as they may have given the details to their operator but would have not been forwarded to the MSO. They should contact the MSOs directly to ensure that their details are registered or they can face a switch off,” emphasises InCablenet MD Ravi Mansukhani.

June 7, 2013
TRAI gets tough on MSOs on DAS customer forms

MUMBAI: That TRAI boss Rahul Khullar means business; that he does not mince any words; that he can make you squirm when he wants to is something all – who have been at the receiving end at one time or the other – know. But the heads of India‘s leading MSOs got another taste of that just yesterday, if sources are to be believed.

Khullar had summoned the heads of Siti Cable, Incable, Hathway, DEN and Digicable to the TRAI headquarter in Delhi. Four of them landed up; Digicable‘s Jagjit Singh Kohli requested to be excused. Hathway‘s Jagdeesh Kumar; Incable‘s Ravi Mansukhani; Siticable‘s Wadhwa and Anil Malhotra, and DEN‘s SN Sharma Sameer and Manchanda landed up in his chamber. They had earlier been pulled up similarly in end-March and had been warned that strict action against them would be taken under the TRAI act.

But this time it seemed as if Khullar had apparently reached the end of his patience. He did not let them get a word in – even edgewise.

“I have only 10-15 minutes to talk to you,” he thundered. “Where is the cable TV customer data that I have been demanding from you? It‘s been months since I should have got it; your deadline has long past. Now let me make it very clear to you: I will prosecute each one of you if I don‘t get it.”

Khullar went on to blast the MSOs further and set the deadline for collection of the DAS Phase I customer forms for Mumbai and Delhi. “You have till 30 June to submit those forms; failing which you can be sure you will be prosecuted under the required laws. DAS and SMS billing have to move ahead,” he urged.

Khullar apparently has also permitted the MSOs to disconnect local cable TV operators and subscribers who are continuing to play truant in the submission of the KYC (know your customer) forms.

The government mandated phase I of cable TV digitisation – with the switch-off of analogue TV signals and installation of set top boxes – which covered the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata was to be completed by 31 October. As part of that process MSOs and cable TV operators were instructed to collect information from their customers and submit the forms to the authorities.

However, sources indicate that MSOs have been rather tardy in the submission of these forms as local cable TV operators have not been complying with their continuous and repeated requests.

June 7, 2013
DC Entertainment unveils digital products

MUMBAI: Digital comic book publisher DC Entertainment which is a part of US media conglomerate Time Warner has unveiled two new digital innovations that will take its comics to the next level of interactivity. DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson and co-publisher Jim Lee unveiled DC2 and DC2 Multiverse at the opening of Time Warner‘s ‘The Future of Storytelling‘ exhibition at the Time Warner Medialab in New York.

DC2 is a new initiative that layers dynamic artwork onto digital comic panels and the aim is to add a new level of dimension to digital storytelling. DC2 Multiverse technology allows readers to determine a specific story outcome by selecting individual characters, storylines and plot developments while reading the comic, meaning one chapter of a digital comic has dozens of possible story outcomes

Nelson said, “Since we made the game changing decision to go Same-Day-Digital with the launch of DC Comics – The New 52, we very strategically built our digital business to have the broadest distribution and most extensive Digital-First content line-up, and now we‘re at the forefront of innovation.”

“DC2 and DC2 Multiverse leverages technology to make iconic characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Green Lantern even more relevant through highly interactive storytelling,” he added.

DC2 will first appear in the new Digital-First title Batman ‘66, based on the 1960s television show, and the artwork features will bring the show‘s action and retro attitude to life for comic readers. Readers will experience an expanded storytelling canvas as each comic panel tells a multi-dimensional story through layered artwork and sequences.

Digital-First title Batman: Arkham Origins, based on the upcoming video game from Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment, will be the first to showcase DC2 Multiverse. DC2 Multiverse features dynamic artwork, along with action sounds and the ability to integrate a soundtrack – all while allowing readers to determine the fate of each storyline and character, including Super Heroes and Super Villains, with multiple options and end results available in each comic chapter. Only with DC Comics‘ rogues gallery will fans be just as excited to see what happens to Black Mask as they are to follow Batman‘s adventures.

Lee said, “Digital comics have proven to be a driving force in attracting new readers; in fact, since the onset of Same-Day-Digital, our print and digital sales have both risen by double and triple digits, respectively. With Digital-First titles we‘ve created a successful formula of pairing comics with other media forms like TV shows and video games. Today‘s announcements demonstrate how we can tie innovations that organically fit and enhance comics – for example with Batman: Arkham Origins you can choose the destiny of your character by playing the game and reading the comic.

June 7, 2013
Bangladesh lifts ban on YouTube, imposed in wake of anti-Islamic video

NEW DELHI: The video sharing site YouTube has been opened to public access in Bangladesh.

The head of the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Authority (BTRA) said the ban had been lifted due to fact that a great number of people were facing problem who use the site for educational and research purposes.

YouTube had been banned in Bangladesh following the trailer of an anti-Islamic movie, made in California with private funding, released on the site.

The anti-Islamic video ‘Innocence of Muslims‘ had caused a great deal of unrest in not only Bangladesh but other Islamic countries as well.

YouTube is also banned in Pakistan due to the very same reason.

June 7, 2013
Zynga to lay off 18 per cent of employees

MUMBAI: Video game company Zynga which became famous when it created Farmville in 2009 will lay off 520 employees, or 18 per cent of its workforce, as part of an effort to stabilise finances.

The layoffs should save Zynga about $70 to $80 million a year. Zynga had managed revenue of $1.28 billion last year, which was an increase of 12 per cent. But a net income loss of $209 million was also recorded.

These cuts mean that the company will have around 2,300 employees. The company has been battling a falling share price and has also been losing users.

Its offices in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas will be closed. In his blog Zynga CEO Mark Pincus wrote,” Today is a hard day for Zynga and an emotional one for every employee of our company. We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18 per cent of our Zynga brothers and sisters. The impact of these layoffs will be felt across every group in the company.”

“None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth. But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward. The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played,” he added.

“These moves, while hard to face today, represent a proactive commitment to our mission of connecting the world through games. Mobile and touch screens are revolutionising gaming. Our opportunity is to make mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect. By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences,” Pincus said.

“Because we‘re making these moves proactively and from a position of financial strength, we can take care of laid off employees. We‘re offering generous severance packages that reflect our appreciation for all of their work and we hope this will provide a foundation as they pursue their next professional steps,” he further wrote.

“Our Farmville franchise teams continue to innovate and deliver ground breaking new social experiences like County Fair which, despite only being available on the web, is engaging 39 million monthly players. I want to thank every one of you for the spirit, creativity and energy that you‘ve invested in Zynga. You‘ve reintroduced a generation of people to gaming and through these games offered them new ways to connect with their families, make new friends and even sometimes find love,” Pincus concluded.

June 6, 2013