FORMER INCABLENET DIRECTORS BEGIN CABLE ADVENTURE

The three former directors of MSO, the Hinduja-run InCablenet, have set up a rival cable TV control room in a Mumbai suburb. The headend has been set up under the name of WinCable in partnership with one of the cable TV distributors of InCablenet.

Yogesh Radhakrishnan, Jagjit Singh Kohli and Yogesh Shah are promoting the network within the area and say that its operations in the city will be addressible from start up and that WinCable will provide subscribers with set top boxes. The target is to set up 10 headends at the earliest. The idea is to offer tiered services, with a bouquet of 20-25 encrypted channels. Each headend will deliver up to 70 channels.

The trio say they will put up headends in exactly those locations where InCable's control rooms are located in order to wean away its distributors and sub-operators. They have vowed to break the stranglehold that InCable has over Mumbai cable TV subscribers. The three are being financially backed by DTH wannabe Sterling Sat promoter C. Sivasankaran who has pumped in 40% equity in music channel ETN, which they launched recently. Sivasankaran also runs the Internet Access firm Dishnet, which has plans to offer World Wide Web services via cable TV in several Indian cities.

InCablenet has reacted to the launch of WinCable's service by offering discounts to subscribers who are willing to pay up for an annual subscription as compared to the monthly fees charged currently. The company, which has about a million subscribers in the city, has appointed ABN Amro Bank its financial adviser along with Booze Allen & Hamilton to help it further its cable TV plans. The group says it is keen on investing Rs 10,000 million to offer broadband services and a digital direct-to-operator channel bouquet. ABN Amro and Booze Allen will additionally help InCable in locating technical and programming partners globally.