(19 December 2007 10:00 pm)

BANGALORE: Global communications technology firm UTStarcom today announced that state-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) has successfully launched its multiplay broadband Internet services in India.

UTStarcom has been the turnkey provider for this deployment, with full responsibility for the network design and planning, deployment, and service roll out and maintenance of the network. It was in March that UTStarcom was awarded a contract from BSNL for the deployment of 1.3 million lines of its iAN-8000 multiservice access node (MSAN) solution in approximately 900 cities throughout India.

BSNL can now focus on offering other value added services -- such as IPTV, VoD, VoIP, VPN service, multicasting over VPN and others -- to its customers over the existing broadband network.

BSNL had been unable to get into agreements with the likes of ESPN Star Sports, Sony and Zee after the broadcasters raised questions regarding a clause in the downlinking guidelines, Kolkata's Telegraph has reported.

"We have not managed to strike a deal with Zee and ESPN-STAR Sports but the other broadcasters will provide us content," Telegraph quoted Vinayak Hadkar, vice-president (access and distribution) of India Online Ltd, the third party content provider for BSNL's IPTV service, as saying.