DTH
Nortel, Vodafone Spain to demonstrate the evolution of 3G
MUMBAI: Communications services provider Nortel and Vodafone Spain will be demonstrating mobile calls at 3.6 megabits per second at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 in Barcelona, Spain. The event takes place from 13 to 16 February.
At these rates customers have access to higher speed broadband than the majority of European fixed broadband connections operating at two megabits per second, providing truly mobile broadband connectivity while 1.8 megabits per second will initially be rolled out commercially.
Nortel has upgraded Vodafone Spain’s UMTS network covering the World Congress location in Barcelona to deliver live HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) services to a select number of customers’ handsets and laptop datacards across the 3GSM world congress event. Both Vodafone Spain and Nortel will use the HSDPA network to support demonstrations for customers and organisations about the mobile services that they can expect to benefit from when the solution is rolled out.
In addition, further demonstrations of the potential of UMTS services in spare spectrum at 900MHz will be given at 3GSM to illustrate its potential use in delivering better mobile broadband coverage. Vodafone and Nortel support the authourisation of 900MHz for UMTS services in various European regions,
including Spain, to increase the availability of mobile broadband services.
UMTS in the 900 MHz band is a cost effective way of delivering high-speed mobile coverage by providing up to 60 per cent site reduction savings in rural areas as well as improved quality of service through enhanced in-building penetration by 25 per cent in urban areas.
Corporate demonstrations of HSDPA and UMTS will use 3G datacards in laptops to show how employees can use mobile broadband to stay connected to corporate networks and benefit from secure connectivity that provides instant messaging, large file data transfer as well as new applications for the mobile workforce.
Demonstrations of the consumer applications for HSDPA will involve new handsets with high quality live TV, High Definition video on demand, MP3 streaming and presence awareness amongst groups of friends. Vodafone director global radio and access networks Fergal Kelly says, “Vodafone has seen a huge increase in the number of 3G (UMTS) users in Spain in the last few months, with Christmas being a very busy period
“Providing a clear evolution of these services in both speed, by upgrading to HSDPA with Nortel, and coverage, through the potential use of the 900MHz spectrum in Spain is vital to highlight where our services are moving and how we are going to continue to delight our customers into 2006 and beyond.”
Nortel VP GSM/UMTS portfolio Alain Biston says, “As we lead the transition of HSDPA from the laboratory into live, commercial, deployments, we are working hard with operators such as Vodafone to highlight the personal and work benefits increased broadband mobile coverage can bring.
“At 3GSM World Congress, we are aiming to show how to bring true Enterprise mobility and connectivity to Europe as well as how to deliver the entertainment services of the future.”
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
