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Digital broadcasting set to transform communication landscape by 2015: RRC-06

Published

20 years ago

June 17, 2006

MUMBAI: The conclusion of ITU‘s Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) in Geneva saw the signing of a treaty agreement that is a major step in implementing World Summit on the Information Society objectives. The digitalization of broadcasting in Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Islamic Republic of Iran by 2015 represents a major landmark towards establishing a more equitable, just and people-centred Information Society.

The agreement will herald the development of ‘all-digital‘ terrestrial broadcast services for sound and television. The digital switchover will leapfrog existing technologies to connect the unconnected in underserved and remote communities and close the digital divide.

“The most important achievement of the Conference,” remarked ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi, “is that the new digital Plan provides not only new possibilities for structured development of digital terrestrial broadcasting but also sufficient flexibilities for adaptation to the changing telecommunication environment.”

The Regional Radiocommunication Conference was chaired and brought to a conclusion by Kavouss Arasteh of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The agreement reached at RRC-06 paves the way for utilizing the full potential of information and communication technologies to achieve the internationally recognized development goals. The date of transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting in the year 2015 is intended to coincide with the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals.

The regional agreement for digital services has been reached in the frequency bands 174 – 230 MHz and 470 – 862 MHz. It marks the beginning of the end of analogue broadcasting.

The Conference agreed that the transition period from analogue to digital broadcasting, which begins at 0001 UTC 17 June 2006, should end on 17 June 2015, but some countries preferred an additional five-year extension for the VHF band (174-230 MHz).

The digital dividend
The switchover from analogue to digital broadcasting will create new distribution networks and expand the potential for wireless innovation and services. The digital dividend accruing from efficiencies in spectrum usage will allow more channels to be carried across fewer airwaves and lead to greater convergence of services.

The inherent flexibility offered by digital terrestrial broadcasting will support mobile reception of video, internet and multimedia data, making applications, services and information accessible and usable anywhere and at any time. It opens the door to new innovations such as Handheld TV Broadcast (DVB-H) along with High-Definition Television (HDTV) while providing greater bandwidth to existing mobile, fixed and radionavigation services. Services ancillary to broadcasting (wireless microphones, talk back links) are also planned on a national basis and need to be extended.

The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07), which will meet in the autumn of 2007, will deal with the regulatory aspects of the usage of the spectrum for these services.

Terrestrial digital broadcasting carries many advantages over the analogue system:

Expanded services

Higher quality video and audio

Greater variety and faster rates of data transmission

Consistency of data flows over long distances

More spectrum efficiency means more channels

This agreement, which paves the way for a new paradigm of wireless digital communication technologies, is expected to be extrapolated by other regions and countries and influence a global shift away from the analogue system that has been in place for the past 45 years.

During the five weeks of deliberations which began on 15 May, RRC-06 took decisions to allow iteration of the complex software tools used by the ITU secretariat as a basis to generate the draft plan that will facilitate the coordinated and timely introduction of digital broadcasting. The Plan assures that an outstanding 70‘500 digital broadcasting requirements, including stations, will become a reality within the planned area. It succeeded in creating a level playing field as a new basis for competition.

The first session of this Conference (RRC-04) took place in May 2004 and established a solid, comprehensive and technical basis for the agreement, including the framework for the intersessional studies. It has already resulted in the accelerated introduction of digital terrestrial broadcasting in many countries. “Digital technologies are now transmitting high-resolution images of the Soccer World Cup from Germany to fans around the world who are watching the matches with excitement,” said Utsumi. “Digital terrestrial broadcasting is now a reality with a bright future.”

A complex process
Conference chairman Arasteh said that RRC-06 was a technically complex process comprising voluminous computational calculations and data processing tasks, electronic document handling and the use of five working languages. He added that ITU, although facing these challenges for the first time, could provide the Conference with adequate technical and regulatory expertise and support for the full satisfaction of the participating delegations.

More than 1000 delegates representing 104 countries met in Geneva to adopt the treaty agreement that will replace the analogue broadcasting plans existing since 1961 for Europe and since 1989 for Africa. The new digital Plan, based on broadcasting standards known as T-DAB (for sound) and DVB-T (for TV), covers a wide area of the world including Europe, countries of the CIS, Africa, Middle East and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A major challenge faced by the conference was to find ways for digital and analogue broadcasting to co-exist on the radio-frequency spectrum during the transition period without causing interference.

Cooperation with EBU and CERN
A key ingredient for the success of the Conference was the unprecedented level of cooperation between ITU, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

The complex planning activities conducted at this conference and during the intersessional period were based on the software developed by EBU, which includes hundreds of thousands of programme lines. In preparing the Plan for digital terrestrial broadcasting, ITU experts performed meticulous calculations within a limited timeframe using two independent infrastructures: the ITU distributed system with 100 PCs and the CERN Grid infrastructure that is based on a few hundred dedicated CPUs from several European institutions.

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Moltbook, the AI-only social network, sparks hype, doubt and fear

Published

1 month ago

February 3, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

CALIFORNIA: Moltbook, a Reddit-style social platform built exclusively for artificial intelligence agents, has emerged as the latest obsession in Silicon Valley, drawing intense attention for its explosive growth and surreal bot-driven interactions.

The platform hosts more than 100 communities where AI agents post, argue and joke about topics ranging from governance theory to esoteric “crayfish debugging” concepts. Within days of launch, Moltbook recorded tens of thousands of posts, nearly 200,000 comments and more than 1 million human visitors observing the activity.

Yet the numbers and the autonomy are under scrutiny, as per media reports. A security researcher has suggested as many as 500,000 accounts may trace back to a single address, raising doubts about Moltbook’s membership claims. Many posts could also be the result of humans instructing their AI tools to publish content, rather than bots acting independently.

The platform runs on agentic AI, powered by an open-source tool called OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot. Unlike chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini, these agents are designed to perform tasks on users’ devices, from sending messages to managing calendars, with minimal human input. Once authorised, they can interact freely on Moltbook.

Some tech figures have hailed the platform as a glimpse of a post-human internet. Head of crypto custody firm BitGo Bill Lees, called it evidence that “we’re in the singularity”.

Academics are less convinced. Petar Radanliev, an AI and cybersecurity expert at the University of Oxford, said the idea of agents acting independently was “misleading”, describing Moltbook instead as automated coordination within human-set constraints. Columbia Business School assistant professor David Holtz, dismissed the spectacle as “thousands of bots yelling into the void and repeating themselves”.

Beyond hype, security worries loom large. ESET global cybersecurity advisor Jake Moore, warned that granting AI agents access to emails, private messages and files risks prioritising efficiency over privacy. Andrew Rogoyski of the University of Surrey said high-level system access could lead to serious damage, from erased data to compromised company accounts.

Even OpenClaw’s founder Peter Steinberger, has felt the darker side of attention, with scammers hijacking his old social media handles after the platform’s rebrand.

For now, Moltbook remains a strange digital zoo: part experiment, part spectacle, where AI agents banter about philosophy, productivity and, occasionally, their fondness for their human operators.

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Apple appoints Avtar Ram Singh as head of international marketing

Published

1 month ago

February 2, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

CALIFORNIA: Apple has handed a bigger global brief to a long-time insider. Avtar Ram Singh has taken over as head of international marketing for the App Store, Apple Arcade and the Apple Games app, deepening his remit across one of the company’s fastest-growing businesses.

“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as head of international marketing, App Store, Apple Arcade and Games App at Apple,” Singh said while announcing the move.

The promotion crowns nearly seven years at Apple, where Singh has led services marketing across Southeast Asia and India and previously served as head of marketing for Southeast Asia content and services, business lead for Apple Podcasts in the region and interim marketing lead for the App Store internationally.

His new portfolio spans three pillars of Apple’s services push. The App Store, which Apple positions as a safe and trusted discovery platform, now attracts more than 850 million average weekly users globally. Since 2008, developers have earned over $550 billion on the platform.

Apple Arcade, the company’s gaming subscription service, offers unlimited access to a catalogue ranging from brain teasers to big-name franchises. The recent addition of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII Arcade Edition brings a AAA PC title to iPhone, iPad and Mac from 5 February.

Then there is the Apple Games app, unveiled at WWDC as a unified destination for games from the App Store and Arcade. It aggregates titles in one place, surfaces personalised recommendations, tracks events and achievements, and lets users compete with friends or connect controllers for a console-like experience.

Singh arrives with a hybrid background in strategy, data and creativity. His career spans digital and social media marketing, business intelligence, content, editorial and analytics across culturally diverse markets. He has worked on brands including P&G, Accor, Audi, UBS, Nikon, Samsung, Sony, Pizza Hut, HBO and Singapore Airlines-linked businesses such as Scoot.

Before Apple, Singh led strategy at Falcon Agency, focusing on performance marketing and ROI-driven digital frameworks. He earlier ran the social practice at Publicis Singapore, where he oversaw operations, business development and regional social strategy for multinational clients. His career also includes roles at Ogilvy-linked Circus Social, Rocket Internet ventures Lazada and Zalora, and research firm IDC in Bangkok, where he analysed technology markets and won early awards for collaboration and client retention.

At Apple, he has been close to several service launches and expansions, including Apple Fitness+ in Singapore, Apple Creator Studio, global podcast subscriptions and new App Store marketing tools.

The timing is notable. Apple’s services business has posted record years, and gaming is becoming a sharper battleground as platforms chase engagement and recurring revenue. Singh’s brief sits at the intersection of content, community and commerce.

In a market where attention is scarce and loyalty scarcer, Apple is betting that sharper storytelling and smarter marketing can keep users inside its ecosystem. Singh now holds the megaphone. The real test will be how loudly the world listens.

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Cloud nine in the capital Bharathcloud plugs Delhi into its AI plans

Published

1 month ago

January 30, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Bharathcloud is bringing its cloud closer to power. The Hyderabad-based sovereign AI cloud services provider has opened its Delhi office, marking its formal entry into North India and setting the stage for its next phase of growth.

The expansion comes as India’s digital transformation fuels rising demand for AI-ready cloud infrastructure, driven by wider adoption of artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things and data-heavy applications. With the new office, Bharathcloud plans to onboard more than 100 employees in 2026, strengthening its workforce to support customers across government, enterprises, MSMEs and social sectors.

The Delhi presence is expected to sharpen the company’s engagement with organisations seeking secure, scalable and cost-efficient cloud platforms that comply with India’s data sovereignty requirements. It also positions Bharathcloud closer to policy, public sector and enterprise decision-makers in the region.

Founded in Hyderabad, Bharathcloud offers AI-ready cloud infrastructure including Kubernetes-as-a-Service, zero-trust security architecture and multi-level data protection frameworks. Its platform supports AI and ML workloads, blockchain application migration from hyperscalers and distributed data management, with an emphasis on reliability, low latency and operational continuity.

“With the Delhi expansion, we are positioning Bharathcloud to engage more closely with AI-driven enterprises and technology hubs in North India,” said Bharathcloud co-founder Rahul Takallapally. He added that the move would help nurture local cloud and AI talent while accelerating the adoption of secure and resilient AI infrastructure across sectors.

The company currently operates in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Chennai, employing over 200 people and serving more than 1,500 clients across manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, IT and media. Aligned with national initiatives such as Digital India and Make in India, Bharathcloud continues to focus on building indigenous AI-cloud infrastructure to support data localisation and the country’s growing appetite for next-generation digital solutions.

With its Delhi office now live, the company is signalling a clear intent: to make sovereign, AI-ready cloud infrastructure not just an alternative, but a mainstream choice for India’s north as well as its tech capitals.