ITV

Tag: rides

  • Flag Telecom rides on high-speed broadband users

    MUMBAI: Flag Telecom, a Reliance Infocomm company, has gained from a strong demand for its bandwidth by broadband service providers across the globe. The network support and communication services company has seen a 500 per cent surge in orders for wavelength capacity on its trans-Atlantic optical fibre submarine cable quarter on quarter in the first half of 2005.
     
     

    Flag has signed major contracts this year for additional capacity with six international carriers and one global Internet content provider. Says Flag VP Marketing Chris Wood, “Volume growth has been driven by the increased use of broadband services by businesses and by the deployment of ever faster delivery speeds of 2Mbits/s and beyond to the home. Our success in the marketplace stems from the design and deployment of our optical fibre network that has demonstrated service quality and performance benefits over other competitive systems. This, coupled with close control of costs and pricing, has enabled us to offer highly cost-effective solutions to our customers and to cement long-term mutually-beneficial relationships with them.”
     
     

    The demand has increased more than 60-fold over the last seven years as services have moved from voice and low-speed data to high-speed broadband. Carriers have also been looking to replace capacity on older submarine cable systems with capacity on the latest generation of optical fibre cables such as ours, Flag Atlantic-1 (FA-1). This may not yet be the market upturn many have been forecasting but it is an encouraging migration to quality.”

    Flag Telecom owns and manages an extensive optical fibre network spanning four continents and connecting key business markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the US. It also owns and operates a low latency global MPLS based IP network, which connects most of the world’s principal
    international Internet exchanges.

    Flag’s cable network spans the globe and the company has an acknowledged reputation for a centralised end to end network management underpinned by exceptional quality and service support.

  • Alpha Marathi rides on event based shows

    MUMBAI: Not serials and not news. It is event based shows that is helping catapult Alpha Marathi, the regional offering from the Zee family, among the top watched channels in Maharashtra.
    Combining ground events and public ceremonies into televised attractions, the channel is striking the right chord with Maharashtrian viewers, and now boasts GRPs of 174, ahead of ETV Marathi’s GRP of 145 and DD10 Sahyadri’s 108 (all day GRPs, all Maharashtra, for week ended 30 August) in the crucial TG of females 15 plus, SEC ABC. 
    The channel’s live coverage of the Janmashtami celebrations in the state as well as the Ganesh festival featured among the top 10 shows on Marathi channels, recently. The Alpha Mahakarandak, a one-act drama competition for colleges has spawned interest in the channel in various towns in Maharashtra. Also, the show Campus – a fair war, based on the drama festival figures in the top 10 shows for Marathi channels, pulling in TVRs of over four, a good score for a regional channel. 
    Nivdak Pu La, an old show telecast on Doordarshan a decade ago, topped the ratings stakes some weeks ago for Alpha with a TVR of 4.12. Although business head Nitin Vaidya is loath to admit as much, Alpha Marathi’s viewership in some timebands is behind only that of Star Plus and Sony in Maharashtra, and ahead of flagship channel Zee TV.
    The rising popularity of shows like Nakshatranche Dene (poetry reading sessions attended by celebrities), soaps like Wadalvaat and Avantika and the regional news capsules has Alpha Marathi delivering 51 per cent viewership from SEC A and B, says a beaming Vaidya, quoting TAM statistics. The return of Zee to TAM data could not have come at a luckier time for Alpha, when the figures supplied by the rating agency help it to assert its status among the three contenders – DD’s Sahyadri, ETV Marathi and Alpha itself. 
    Vaidya now has his sights set on luring in the advertiser with some hard facts. Apart from planning a first time outdoor campaign in the state to build brand awareness, the channel is targeting media planners and ad agencies with statistics of huge citizen participation in its ground ventures which it says, translates into viewership. Retail advertising is flowing in to the channel, courtesy local businesses, which understand the pulse of the local viewer. 
    While retail is equally important for the channel, it is the big business the channel is now targeting, bolstered as it is with a solid viewer base and TAM figures. While Mumbai and bigger cities continue to be Alpha Marathi’s strongholds, the ground events are now an effort to penetrate into the smaller towns, where ETV remains a close second in C&S homes.