Wimax gets its wings from Pune.

Pune:Citizens can now access the internet from their laptops while sitting in Sambhaji park on J.M. road. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) successfully took its first step towards making Pune the first ‘unwired’ city of the country here on Monday.

The ambitious Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax) project announced by municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer last year took off on Monday for areas near Sambhaji Park and the PMC headquarters.

The project, which is being implemented by both Intel Technology Private Ltd and Microsense, the technical advisors and service providers respectively, will be extended to an area of 20 sq km area including Deccan Gymkhana, Aundh, Baner and Model colony within four months. The entire city will be covered in the next 12 to 18 months, said Kareer at the function to launch the project.

DD, Nokia to pilot mobile TV in metros

Chennai: Public broadcaster Prasar Bharti and world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia are all set to pilot a mobile TV in metro cities, which will enable cellular phone users watch Doordarshanchannels on their handsets.

Nokia India has entered into a tender with DD to launch the service, which will make DD channels available on select high-end Nokia handset models.

During the pilot phase, Doordarshan will test the reception quality of the broadcast coverage. Attendant things like a revenue structure or advertising opportunities will come later. It will also help Nokia and Doordarshan gauge the acceptability.

DD is doing the deliberations and the pilot for the mobile TV will start soon in the metros. "An extensive planned commercial launch will take some time," Vineet Taneja, Director (multimedia business), Nokia India said.

Among the handsets, the N92 series is capable of catching television signals, Nokia officials said. The series will soon be available in India.

The officials said it was for Doordarshan, which has put up a mobile television platform, to set a time frame about commercial launch of their TV on Mobile.

Analysts in the know, however, say it remains to be seen how revenue models are worked out.Adoption of mobile TV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with big implications for users, content providers and advertisers.

WiMax ready for rollout

After much talk, tests and trials, WiMax seems to be finally ready for commercial use in India. WiMax, high-speed internet access over a wireless connection, is a low-cost way to provide internet connectivity in places where laying cables is difficult.

Chennai-based Aircel is planning to take its WiMax network national while the Tata-owned VSNL will roll out retail WiMax offerings later this year. Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is also ready to start WiMax services, having undertaken pilots at 14 locations.

VSNL as well as BSNL have partnered with Aperto Networks, developer of the world's most advanced WiMax base stations and subscriber units, to deploy multi-service broadband wireless systems.

UTStarcom Scores IPTV Deal with India's MTNL

UTStarcom, Inc. announced a three-year contract through its partnership with AKSH Optifibre Ltd. to deploy its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV solution with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) in India.

The contract represents the first commercial IPTV deployment in India and AKSH Optifibre Ltd. is the first company to launch IPTV in India. AKSH is the pioneer in optifibre fiber and cable technologies and their main product is a Fiber-to-the-Home solution.

The service, which will utilize MTNL's existing broadband network as the content delivery backbone, will consist of traditional broadcast television, video- and music-on-demand, videoconferencing capabilities and time-shifted TV, allowing users to access television content on any channel up to one week in the past. All MTNL broadband subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai are anticipated to have access to the service, which launched in December 2006.
"By pricing the basic level of service at 125 rupees, we hope to attract a large number of our broadband subscribers to our IPTV service and drive revenue growth through the additional value-added services, like time-shift capabilities and video-on-demand, enabled by UTStarcom's RollingStream," Sinha added.

All matches our property: Govt makes ordinance

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved an ordinance that makes it mandatory for private broadcasters to share live feed, without advertisements, of sporting events of national importance with public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan and All India Radio.

The government will introduce a Bill in the Budget Session of Parliament to make the ordinance a law.This ordinance applies to matches in India and abroad. A committee will be formed comprising members of Prasar Bharati and the Board of Control for Cricket in India to determine the technical feasibility of feed encryption, which restricts the DD feed to India.

Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting P R Dasmunsi hoped that the ordinance would be notified before the start of the India-Sri Lanka series, which starts on February 8.

After the ordinance comes into effect those who don’t have cable connections in their home and radio listeners would be able to receive live feed of Team India's One-Day matches, wherever it plays.

But the Test matches would not be shown live.However, for Test matches, the government has said live feed would be required only for matches played in India while for those played abroad, the highlights would be sufficient.

The decision is bound to irk private broadcasters.Private broadcasters like Nimbus and Sony TV have paid thousands of crores for rights to matches in India and the upcoming World Cup.
They will now have to give the feed free to Doordarshan. In return DD will give them 75 per cent of the ad revenues to the broadcaster."The revenues will be shared on a 75:25 basis, with the big portion going to the private broadcaster," Dasmunsi said.

Set-top boxes for Rs 1,000 soon

New Delhi January 29, 2007: A digital set-top box can be yours at one-third the price you pay now. Indian manufacturers like Bharat Electronics, and TVS are likely to manufacture set-top boxes for less than Rs 1,000. A digital set-top box is a technology interface required for encrypted television signals for conditional access system (CAS) and direct-to-home (DTH) services. Currently, the bulk of set-top boxes being supplied in India for CAS or DTH services are being imported and cost Rs 2,800-3,300. However, the government is planning various incentives to encourage Indian companies to manufacture them. The government is expected to re-impose Customs duty on imported set-top boxes and slash the 13 per cent countervailing duty currently being charged on all components required in a set-top box could be slashed by less than half.

BSNL may club broadband services with One India plan

In what could be a bonanza for net surfers and die-hard talkers, BSNL is looking at bundling broadband services with its popular One India scheme that offers STD at Re 1 per minute.

At fixed rentals of Rs 340 per month, users will not only get to call across India for just Re 1 per minute, but can also surf at high speeds of 2 Mbps. BSNL has managed to mop up over 1 crore subscribers from its One India plan, launched in February last year.

“By offering broadband with One India at an extra charge of Rs 160 per month, BSNL is looking at earning additional annual revenues of Rs 160 crore. New users signing up for One India will also take up broadband. This is likely to take BSNL’s annual broadband revenues to over Rs 600 crore,”

BSNL charges a monthly rental of Rs 180 for the One India plan. “This will be increased to Rs 280 and an additional Rs 60 per month will be rental for modem. The final decision is likely to be announced by May this year,” the source added. BSNL is betting big on broadband to push fixed line subscriber base and revenues. Its broadband user base is 9 lakh, annual revenues of Rs 400 crore.