Joined: 07/Feb/2007
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Posted: 19/Sep/2007 at 11:01am
TRAI PAPER SAYS TELECOM COMP.S CAN OFFER MOBILE TV
In a move that will be detrimental to cable distribution and media companies, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has said that telecom operators can offer mobile television to their subscribers while others will have to take licence to offer mobile TV.
This means that telecom companies having the United Access Service License (UASL) agreement will automatically get the licence to offer mobile TV to their subscribers without any further requirement while broadcasters and other media companies will have to take seperate licences for mobile TV if they want to offer the service.
Trai, in its consultation paper on mobile television, also says that the telecom operators will have access to television channels offered by the broadcasters as they are already included as the distributor of TV channels under the interconnection regulations of Trai.
Stakeholders have been given 12 days to respond to the consultation paper.
Mobile television refers to services offered to subscribers for viewing on handheld or portable devices such as mobile phones. The television content can be provided through the mobile telecommunications networks or by using broadcasting technologies like terrestrial and sattellite services.
Several broadcasters, including the Zee group, who had expressed their interest in offering mobile TV leveraging its strength of television channels, will now have to apply for a fresh licence to offer mobile TV.
The Trai's consultation paper has also asked stakeholders to respond to the regulatory issues of mobile TV. Currently, only public broadcaster Prasar Bharati, which is allowed terrestrial broadcasting, had conducted trials of mobile TV in Delhi. Trai, in its paper, has asked for suggestions on the use of dedicated terrestrial transmission or satellite as the best option for mobile TV transmission.
Internationally, mobile TV operators offer only a handful of channels (ranging between 14-31)due to the shortage of spectrum. Trai has sought comments on the minimum numbers of spectrum for the channels that should be blocked for mobile TV services.
The Trai consultation paper also raises questions on the foregin direct investment limits for mobile TV operators and the quantum of licence fee that should be charged from companies seeking mobile TV licences.
Joined: 07/Feb/2007
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Posted: 20/Sep/2007 at 12:13pm
RELIANCE BLUEMAGIC PLANS
Reliance Bluemagic is set to take the nation by storm when it launches, and we at SaveOnDish have got some good insight from reliable sources on what Reliance Bluemagic is going to do for attracting people towards themselves and offering its consumers with good stuff! So here we go then:
- Reliance Bluemagic will NOT be costly: Yes, thats true and confirmed, contrary to popular belief, Reliance Blue Magic is NOT going to be costly. It will be in fact cheaper than Dish TV and Tata Sky. This might be however to attract customers in the initial phase but there is a good chance Reliance Bluemagic’s subscriptions will boost due to this. The price is expected to be about 60-70% of Tata Sky’s current cost.
- Reliance Bluemagic will have a LOT of channels: When Dish TV and Tata Sky started, they had very few channels, but Reliance Bluemagic, as we have known, will have about 175-200 channels in its starting phase.
- Reliance Bluemagic FINANCING: There will be an option through which you could finance your Bluemagic. It would be done through Reliance money of course and people could pay in installments. This is done so that the people of the country who cannot afford to give all that money at once could now afford it.
- Free to Air: Reliance Bluemagic will have a little array of free to air channels which will continue to air for a specific period of time even after the subscription is over.
- Strong Distribution: As evident from a lot of posts in the Reliance Bluemagic forum in our Forums, Reliance Bluemagic is expected to have a strong Distribution network throughout the country at its launch.
- MORE packages: Reliance Bluemagic is expected to have a lot of packages from which people could choose, however at the start, we have been informed that there would be only a few of them. But plans are in place for a lot of packages in the future.
- A LOT of other features: Reliance Bluemagic is expected to come with a lot of other features at the time of its launch and also in the future. These would include a lot more active services, Internet browsing from TV, adding friends to your friends list (people using Reliance Bluemagic) and much more. Altough try to understand that these features may take anywhere up to an YEAR to start on Reliance bluemagic after its launch.
Joined: 01/Jan/2006
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Posted: 20/Sep/2007 at 1:08pm
Reliance Money => Reliance Capital!!!
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Movie-goers, DTH service providers major beneficiaries
Good news is in the offing for movie-goers and subscribers of direct-to-home (DTH) television services all over India. Movie ticket prices and DTH bills may drop sharply with the Centre and state governments launching a joint exercise to reduce entertainment tax across the country.
Entertainment tax rates vary from state to state within a 15-18 per cent range. In Delhi and Mumbai, however, entertainment tax accounts for 45-55 per cent of the cost of a movie ticket and 15-30 per cent of the monthly DTH bill.
Even a reduction of 10 percentage points in the entertainment tax may result in a reduction of Rs 20-35 in the prices of movie tickets and a saving of Rs 10-15 per month on the DTH bills, which service providers, who currently absorb this hit, may pass on to its consumers, an industry expert said.
For DTH consumers, the benefits may come in the form of further discounts on packages since the DTH companies bear the entertainment taxes at the moment.
After launching a campaign in 2,500 schools across India to woo children to its interactive educational programmes, DTH operator Tata Sky has launched an interactive cooking programme nationally.
Home-makers, particularly housewives, can now press a button on their Tata Sky remote control to find out the latest on the DTH menu. The service provider will dish out four how-to-cook recipes every day on demand.
The recipes will include snacks and continental dishes, Vikram Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, told Business Line.
With the recent inclusion of channels such as Mee Marathi, UTV's Bindas and NDTV's Good Times, the total number of channels beamed by Tata Sky has reached 140, he added.
For cricket lovers, the DTH provider has roped in cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Using a Tata Sky connection, the fans can now interact with Dhoni and get his autographed bat.
Eyeing interactive advertising as a new source of revenue, Tata Sky is making its platform available to insurance companies, mutual funds, car-makers and mobile phone service providers.
The customer would only have to press the active button to know the details of the offers being made by these companies. Marketers targeting attention-span of people beyond the 30-second commercial can make their advertising content available through information brochures on our platform, Mehta said.
Joined: 07/Feb/2007
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Posted: 20/Sep/2007 at 11:06pm
Bharti Selects TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC IP Head-End for Indian DTH Satellite Launch
Deploys Advanced Technologies to Create World Leading DTH Infrastructure
TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, today announced that Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd., has chosen its market-leading advanced IP head-end for the launch of a new Direct to Home (DTH) satellite TV service in India. Bharti Telemedia's state-of-the-art DTH system will use a range of TANDBERG Television's proven solutions including the iSIS 8000 IP head-end and MPEG-4 AVC standard definition encoders. The system is one of the first satellite DTH platforms in the world to benefit from the compression efficiencies of standard definition MPEG-4 AVC, significantly increasing transponder capacity and potentially doubling the amount of available channels.
The DTH services will be launched nationally across India and Bharti is setting up a state-of-the-art infrastructure near Gurgaon (Haryana) for the purpose of uplinking and broadcast. By using the latest MPEG-4 AVC video compression, and IP technologies, Bharti can cost-effectively deliver more channels in less bandwidth, while still maintaining high quality pictures.
Advanced IP infrastructure
At the heart of the Bharti head-end is the TANDBERG iSIS 8000 which includes best-in-class video encoding, IP multiplexing and new receiver/decoders. The system is brought together under a single control and management system, nCompass. The TANDBERG MX8400 IP Multiplexer, is a next generation DVB-S2 ready solution which will provide Bharti with an open standards, IP based head-end with support for up to 4 independent multiplexed outputs from a single unit. The combination of Reflex statistical multiplexing and this advanced multiplexing architecture ensures maximum usage of available bit-rate.
Further bandwidth efficiencies are achieved by the use of the TANDBERG EN8030 MPEG-4 AVC SD encoders, based on the company's next-generation compression platform. The TANDBERG EN8030 use a comprehensive tool-set of advanced compression video processing features, combined with new pre-processing techniques. Itdelivers the industry's leading picture quality versus performance through bandwidth improvements of up to 50% over traditional MPEG-2 based DTH services.
About TANDBERG Television
TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, delivers the multimedia technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. Whether it’s advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, the company’s award-winning solutions are used by the world’s leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, mobile TV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.
Bharti Telemedia to launch DTH service by 4th quarter
Tuesday - Aug 07, 2007
Televisionpoint.com Correspondent Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel will launch its direct-to-home (DTH) service by the fourth quarter and Internet Protocol television (IPTV) by the third quarter of this financial year.
Bharti on Monday got the letter of intent (LOI) from the government to launch the DTH service. Bharti will get the licence within 5 to 6 weeks after completing formalities such as bank guarantees and license fee.
"Our DTH will be for mass consumers and IPTV service will be for the selected consumers in the top cities of the country," Atul Bindal, President (broadband and telephone services), Airtel said.
Bindal said that right now the company is carrying out a pilot project in some 1,000 houses for its IPTV and is hopeful to start it in Delhi by the third quarter (October-December 2007). He said in the next financial year the company plans to launch IPTV in another 3-4 cities. "At most we will launch the IPTV in some 6 cities and not beyond," said Bindal.
According to the DTH licensing conditions, the service provider will be required to have Indian management and control with a maximum of 49 per cent foreign equity holding in the company of which the foreign direct investment (FDI) cap will be 20 per cent.
Joined: 26/Sep/2006
Location: India
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Posted: 22/Sep/2007 at 5:02pm
There was a full page ad in the Hindu yesterday - SUN direct to home! It boasts of free dish, no cost of set top box and just Rs.77 per month for a bunch of channels - mostly S.Indian channels. Am sure they are doing something similar in the other States also. This is after already having Sumangali Cable Vision which provides the cable net work in the States.
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