NEW DELHI: A new premium quality international live concert channel is being launched early next year by Pioneer Channel Factory Limited which has been running the Bollywood music channel, MTunes HD for over two years.
MTunes earlier tied up with Techzone to provide its digital platform for the channel’s content through SMS and CRBT services.
KOLKATA: The process of shifting from analogue to digital feed is not without its share of problems; a key issue being the resultant tug-of-war between local cable operators (LCOs) and multi system operators (MSOs) over access to the subscriber management system (SMS).
The Digital Addressable Cable TV Systems (DAS) requires MSOs to establish a subscriber management system (SMS), where details of all subscribers, along with their choice of services including channels and bouquets, are maintained.
While cable and entertainment analysts feel, “This brings in addressability and consequently, complete transparency in the whole system,” LCOs have a different take on the matter. They are of the opinion that once MSOs start billing consumers directly, they may end up losing control over their hard-won subscribers. Hence, they’re now asking MSOs to allow them access to the SMS to avoid such an eventuality.
Says Rajiv Sharma, lead analyst (telecom and media), HSBC Securities: “LCOs are worried about losing control over their subscribers if MSOs bill directly. They are of the view that MSOs should allow LCOs access to subscriber management systems, which are similar to what is being done for airline ticketing.”
A city-based cable op told indiantelevision.com, on condition of anonymity, that he had worked very hard for the last 20 years and it would be very unprofessional if his business and database were to go out of his hand and to the MSO whom he would then have to depend on totally.
Meanwhile, an MSO questioned as to how he could allow LCOs access to the SMS which his company had spent a few crores on. Typically, it’s the MSOs that invest in infrastructure including network, encryption, ERP, call centers and SMS.
Director Manthan Broadband Services pointed out the benefits of SMS as enabling subscribers exercise their choice of services and budget their bills accordingly. “It also helps us in managing their accounting and billing of the services rendered effectively in the long term,” said he.
Cable analyst Namit Dave suggested that MSOs and LCOs should work hand-in-hand for mutual benefit. While Sharma pointed out that the battle between MSOs and LCOs was sending out wrong signals to the investor community. “Gross billing remains a deterrent for MSOs and we anticipate some delay as we don’t expect clarity on the entertainment tax issue anytime soon,” he said. News is Hathway has suggested it expects to move to gross billing not before phase I i.e. the fourth quarter of the current fiscal.
A world-class networking company that provides innovative, reliable Internet solutions for customers ranging from telecommunications service providers, small- and medium-sized businesses to home users, today introduces ZyXEL UAG4100 Unified Access Gateway–a new hospitality gateway that delivers best-in-class services and achieves high customer satisfaction for businesses in the hospitality industry. Upon the success deploying N4100 in over 8,000 hotels worldwide, the ZyXEL UAG4100 provides an advanced gateway with larger scalability to help generate revenues.
Nowadays people are used to enjoy Internet connection anytime, anywhere, and a majority of them often carry more than one mobile device around. Most of the existing networking infrastructures in hospitality environments cannot catch this trend, resulting in intermittent connection and customer complaints.
The UAG4100 supports dual radio frequencies, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, to serve two times of users than legacy Wi-Fi gateways. The design of dual radio automatically switches to 5GHz when 2.4GHz band is fully occupied, and digests traffic flow to avoid unstable data transmission due to the shortage of bandwidth. The UAG4100 also adopts a management platform that can handle up to 300 wired or wireless users simultaneously while prioritizing the bandwidth usage of each account. It ensures Internet connection quality, prevents bandwidth abuse and therefore increases customer satisfaction with better Internet surfing experience.
The UAG4100 Unified Access Gateway helps hospitality businesses confronting the regulatory compliance challenges by recording user account information, MAC addresses, source and destination IPs, etc. for government auditing if requested.More and more governments are seriously requiring publicly accessible Internet services to record online traffics with regulations like the widely known EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC). It requires businesses to retain Internet usage records for a certain period of time. Hospitality businesses need to comply with these data retention regulations to avoid legal fines and regulatory penalties; but this can become a significant burden for the owners if they do not have the right equipment.
The UAG4100 takes advantage of embedded billing functions, and premise owners can utilize it to generate optimal access privileges to customers. Billing features include Web portal authentication, user-agreement login and RADIUS server authentication. The ZyXEL UAG4100 further supports SMS ticketing feature that passes the username and password required for logging into the mobile devices owned by a particular user. Subscribers can conveniently keep the information on their devices while preventing the risk of losing printed tickets.
In order to cover larger venues, more access points are to be deployed. To the venue owners, accomplishing deployments quickly without affecting business operations is the biggest concern. Integrated with a WLAN controller, the UAG4100 helps installation of access points without pre-configuration. When a UAG4100 establishes connection with access points, the settings will be applied to each access point immediately, and Wi-Fi monitoring as well as management can be centrally performed via the UAG4100. It eliminates the hassles that would have come with Wi-Fi deployments.
Celebrate the grandness of Diwali with Star Gold this year with ‘Blockbuster Diwali Bonus’ contest. Starting 14th October to 8th November 2013 at 9pm, Star Gold will give you the opportunity to win Rs One Lakh every day with just one single SMS.
With the ‘festival of lights’ round the corner, Star Gold has lined up a series of blockbuster movies for four weeks that guarantees to be a daily dose of wholesome entertainment for your family. From comedy to romance to thriller to action, Star Gold promises to be the one stop destination for a fun family entertainment week during Diwali.
Viewers can send in their answers to a simple question asked during the movie to qualify to win a prize money of Rs One Lakh every day.
Announcing the launch of the contest, Hemal Jhaveri, Executive Vice President, Star Gold said, “Following the success of our annual property Twenty20 contest, it gives us immense pleasure to introduce another property to engage with our audiences this year. This festive season we are committed to entertaining and rewarding our audiences with the Blockbuster Diwali Bonus, where viewers can win Rs One Lakh just with one sms. We hope to make the festive celebrations grander, happier and brighter for our audiences.”
The contest is being promoted across the Star network besides other channel genres including Bollywood entertainment, news, kids and music. In addition, radio in key markets and viewer engagement activities on Social Media will drive reach for this initiative.
With a line-up of movies like Housefull 2, Dabangg 2, Bol Bachchan, Ready and much more Star Gold will be the choice of many families this Diwali. So sit back, relax and earn your Diwali Blockbuster Bonus with Star GOLD this festive season.
Tune in to Star Gold from 14th October to 8th November, every Monday to Friday at 9pm, to be a winner.
MUMBAI: Looks like Star India is having the last laugh in an ongoing legal battle with mobile service operators and MVAS providers – Idea Cellular, Akuate Internet (Cricbuzz) and OnMobile Global.
In a significant ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld Star India’s claim to mobile and digital rights for cricket matches and asked the defendants to maintain status quo as on 13 March. The apex court directed Idea Cellular, Cricbuzz and OnMobile Global to deposit Rs 10 lakh per cricket match in the court, before disseminating live scores, while clarifying that a match would include a test match, a one-day match as well as a T-20 match. This money won’t flow to Star India but will go to the court until the matter is decided.
The Supreme Court also directed the firms disseminating live alerts to maintain true and lawful accounts of the receipts in respect of the SMS alerts they provide to their subscribers, with the same to be made available to the court on a monthly basis.
The Supreme Court didn’t take into consideration an earlier order of a divisional bench of the Delhi High Court that ruled against Star India’s stand. The apex court on 30 September saw merit in Star India’s argument and asked the parties to maintain status quo as on 13 March, when a single bench of the Delhi High Court had ruled in favour of Star India.
It all began last year when Star India filed a case against CricBuzz and OnMobile Global over the reporting of cricket scores. Initially, the Delhi High Court ordered CricBuzz and OnMobile Global to deposit Rs 15 lakh per match, apart from maintaining statements of accounts and filing them in court. Earlier this month though, a division bench of the High Court ruled that mobile operators, content aggregators and other entities were free to provide SMS alerts and ball-by-ball commentary.
The HC bench arrived at this decision after taking into consideration the right to freedom of speech as also the concept of ‘hot news’ which means that Star’s rights to report information (read: scores) via mobile – licensed from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) – are ‘exclusive’ only till such time as the news (read: scores) is ‘hot’ or in other words ‘fresh’.
A critical statement in the Delhi HC judgment read: “Neither Star nor BCCI can be permitted to say that mentioning ‘mobile’ rights and auctioning them, would ipso facto legitimise the parceling away of right to disseminate information, without first establishing that the right or exclusive domain over such rights existed in the first instance.”
In the wake of the HC decision, Star was left with little option but to appeal to the Supreme Court.
And now that the apex body has upheld Star’s position on mobile and digital rights, Star India president – sports Nitin Kukreja says: “The interim order is a testament to the fact that the honourable Supreme Court sees merit in Star India’s argument on mobile and digital rights. We have always maintained that lack of clarity on digital rights has been severely compromising the ability of rights/event owners to invest in creating great experiences for sports fans. This clarity is essential for event owners, who put in all the effort and investment in creating/setting up these exclusive properties to monetise untapped/new revenue streams, which but for the lack of clarity/legislation, would have accrued to them in the natural course of matters.”
As things stand, Star is the clear winner but only time will tell if all the back and forth was worth it.
MUMBAI: Seven in ten (69 per cent) Indians admit they say things in that they would not say voice-to-voice or person-to-person; compared to 43 per cent globally, finds a new poll conducted by Ipsos OTX – the global innovation center for Ipsos.
“Text or Email is comparatively an impersonal medium and people feel less hesitant to speak their mind. Perhaps that is the reason why majority of Indian would rather avoid saying things in person or over phone,” said Ipsos – head marketing communication Biswarup Banerjee.
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“For example people prefer to share sensitive comments like – “I love you.” “Our relationship is over.” “You are fired.” “I failed in exam.” in writing rather than saying over the phone or face-to-face to avoid embarrassment when they are physically involved,” added Banerjee.
Demographically in India, age appears to be the most significant variable as those under the age of 35 (75 per cent) are considerably more likely than those aged 35-49 (67 per cent) and those 50-64 (52 per cent) to text/email things they won’t say out loud. Education is also a significant factor as seven in ten (69 per cent) of those with a high level of education say they do so compared with 100 per cent among those with low education. Both Indian women (70 per cent) and men (68 per cent) feel more comfortable texting or emailing sensitive subject rather than voicing it out.
Strong majorities in China (90 per cent) and South Korea (80 per cent) say they text or email things they would not say over the phone or in person. Seven in ten of those in Indonesia (76 per cent), India (69 per cent) and Saudi Arabia (67 per cent) say so. Following next are Turkey (58 per cent), Brazil (48 per cent), Japan (46 per cent), South Africa (45 per cent), Argentina (42 per cent), Mexico (42 per cent) and Russia (39 per cent). Only three in ten or less in most of the countries surveyed say they reserve some communication for text or email: Canada (34 per cent), Australia (33 per cent), France (33 per cent), Great Britain (32 per cent), Poland (32 per cent), Belgium (31 per cent), Italy (31 per cent), United States (30 per cent), Germany (25 per cent), Hungary (24 per cent), Spain (24 per cent), Norway (22 per cent) and Sweden (22 per cent).
Ipsos conducted this study among 18,502 adults in 25 countries in the month of August.
New Delhi: Multi System Operators (MSOs) can now collect duly filled consumer application forms (CAFs), along with choice of channels and services and entry of complete details in their subscriber management systems (SMS) in 38 cities covered under phase-II of DAS implementation, by 15 November.
Extending the deadline, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said ‘this is the last and final extension.’ The earlier deadline set by TRAI was 20 September.
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A meeting was held in TRAI with leading MSOs on 25 September to review the progress in this regard. The authority observed that there is still substantial pendency on this account. The MSOs cited the enormity and complexity of the task involved as the prime reason for the pendency and requested for an extension in the time -line for completion of the task.
The extension is being given to achieve full coverage by 15 November, and ‘with a view to minimise consumer inconvenience that could result from MSOs disconnecting set top boxes immediately’.
Consumers were requested by TRAI to cooperate and submit the CAFs, complete in all respect, to the respective cable operator/ MSOs in accordance with the revised deadline of 15 November, as ‘this is truly the very last opportunity’.
In event of failure to do so, MSOs will have no option but to switch off the signal to those consumers who have not submitted their CAF, otherwise such MSOs would be in breach of the law.
Zee Khana Khazana, India’s first 24 hour food channel has attained the numero uno spot in the food and life style category. With 1214 Avg- GTVT (‘000s), Zee Khana Khazana has left behind other channels for the second week in a row. Zee Khana Khazana is in the number one position in Hindi speaking Markets, TG – F (15-44 yrs), SEC AB Digital households.
The brand new content is fresh, simple and showcases ease in replicating cooking methods and dishes at one’s home. Through this exercise, the channel aimed to become the one-stop shop for ‘simple yet delicious’ cooking with its engaging and instructive approach. With chefs of great repute and interesting concept based shows, Zee Khana Khazana has managed to scale new heights. The channel has been reaching out to their audiences with various mall activations, contests and interesting opportunities to be a part of some shows.
A delighted Amit Nair, business Head Zee Khana Khazana said “We are very pleased with the audience response to our channel. It is indeed a humbling experience to see our recent brand refresh and repositioning exercise beginning to yield fruit. We have some more exciting shows / events lined up for our viewers and look forward to endearing ourselves with our unique and refreshing content.”
All the shows on Zee Khana Khazana are interactive with the audience being offered the chance to get in touch with the channel’s Chefs / Anchors via a call or SMS or email thereby taking the engagement level a notch higher. The channel web site also sports a fresh new look, with an easy to navigate interface and acting as a one stop shop for recipes and a food guide.
Zee Khana Khazana is currently available on Dish TV, Videocon D2h and across all digital cable homes in the country. It will soon be available on other DTH platforms as well.
For more information please log on to – www.zeekhanakhazana.com
NEW DELHI: A total of 69,491 video spots were released to cable and satellite television channels for the first and second phases of the Bharat Nirman Campaign, including 3,660 spots to Doordarshan.
Radio aired a total of 107,532 spots including 12,600 by All India Radio across 92 stations and 94,932 spots across 216 private FM stations. This was apart from 6,048 spots aired on 36 community radio stations.
These figures were revealed by Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari at the launch of the online portal for the Bharat Nirman Campaign which provides an interactive digital platform for the creative campaign on various schemes and programmes of the campaign.
The Minister also launched All India Radio`s free News SMS service. The service provides AIR news headlines free of cost to its subscribers on mobile telephones. There are two or three headlines in each SMS, which also carried a public service information message.
The event was attended among others by I&B Secretary Bimal Julka, DAVP Director General G Mohanty, Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar, Director General (Media and Communications) Neelam Kapoor, and All India Radio Director General L D Mandloi.
AIR News Services Division Director General Archana Datta said there will be three updates everyday. She clarified this would not replace the news on phone which people would continue to get.
People willing to subscribe to the service can SMS “AIRNEWS <space> their name” to 08082080820. They can also give a missed call to 08082080820 to subscribe to the service. So far 200,000 people have subscribed to the service.
Anurag Srivastava, Joint Secretary in charge of New Media said the digital platform is both in English and Hindi with creatives in 11 regional languages. The portal enables the user to get information about the Bharat Nirman and the Flagship schemes at a single place. There were six tabs on the home page on certain schemes like Aadhar card, Food Security, Real Estate, Street Vendors, Direct Benefit Transfer, and land acquisition.
It also has live integration with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The portal has apps for mobiles and tablets to provide easy reading. The website is available at www.bharat-nirman.in.
The first phase of Bharat Nirman was launched in May and the second phase in August. The 360 degree communication approach used all formats of media such a TV, radio, print, outdoor publicity and special outreach programmes.
A total of 9.7 lakh spots were screened in the two phases over 8,231 empanelled digital screens in theatres.
A total of 27,870 advertorials were carried across about 1,450 newspapers including 9,000 strip ads.
Outdoor displays for the Bharat Nirman in the two phases were put up at 7,715 sites.
The multi media campaign was supported by a strong media outreach programme through eight Public Information Campaigns (PICs) in rural areas conducted by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) with support from the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), the Directorate of Field Publicity (DFP) and the Song and Drama Division. So far, four PICs have been supported by the ‘Jamunia’ Sound and Light Show.
The Song and Drama Division is also developing a new production taking forward the theme of ‘Priya Power’ which is scheduled to be launched in mid-September at the Red Fort grounds, New Delhi.
In addition, Prasar Bharati conceptualised different programmes such as serials, interviews of eminent personalities and success stories/achievements of flagship schemes. Doordarshan has been airing a serial named Poorva Suhani Aaye Re every Wednesday and Thursday at 10.00 pm and All India Radio has come up with a serial named “Priya”.
The Minister said a scientific approach has been undertaken to monitor and evaluate the Bharat Nirman Media Campaign.
Later asked about the Indian Shining campaign of the previous government, he said the Bharat Nirman campaign was not linked to elections as it had commenced as early as 2007. India Shining on the other hand was a shoddy attempt on the eve of the polls, he said.
He said that while new media was a highly empowering tool, it had to be ensured that it was developed with certain responsibility.
He said the Press Council of India had been asked to go into measures that can be taken to ensure the safety of mediapersons.
KOLKATA: As part of its ambitious plan to install nearly 3,000,000 set top boxes in the eastern region by end-2014, Kolkata-headquartered cable TV multi-system operator (MSO) Manthan Broadband Services has inked a long-term contract with IBM India for the maintenance of its subscriber management system (SMS).
Sources close to the deal peg its value at approximately Rs 120 crore where IBM has been developing the software for Manthan’s SMS for the past one and a half years.
Indiantelevision.com has learnt that apart from IBM, firms like Magna Quest and Ericsson were also part of the race to win the coveted 10-year contract with Manthan.
When contacted, Manthan director Sudip Ghosh confirmed the news and said: “The system will enable subscribers to exercise their choice of services and budget their bills accordingly. It will also help us manage their accounting and billing of services rendered more effectively in the long term.”
The investment would ensure the best infrastructure including network, encryption, ERP, SMS and call centre, Ghosh said.
An IBM official too concurred: “We are offering a lot of solutions to the company. Yes, we have signed the deal.”
deally, the Digital Addressable Cable TV System (DAS) requires all MSOs to establish a SMS where details of subscribers, including their choice of services like channels and bouquets are maintained. In reality however, many MSOs were not implementing this feature effectively. Also, local cable operators (LCOs) were not providing completed subscriber application forms to their linked MSOs. Reason why the Telecom and Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) directed all registered MSOs and their associated LCOs to ensure SMS was made fully operational. “This would bring in addressability and consequently, complete transparency in the whole system,” opined several cable and entertainment analysts.
Manthan, created back in 2002 through a merger of the operations of nine cable TV operators, today caters to 30 lakh households in the east. The MSO has penetration in areas like Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Baraipur and Chandannagar among others.