News Broadcasting
Reliance Netway to begin Mumbai test run in two months
MUMBAI: The first thing that hits you when you enter Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC), the high security nerve centre of Reliance Infocomm located in Navi Mumbai, is the sheer scale of vision that defines the company’s broadband initiative.
The numbers speak for themselves. A whopping Rs 160 billion have been spent thus far on the broadband initiative, and Reliance is ready to pump in more if required “from internal accruals.” There will be no further external equity cash infusions, you are informed.
The high capacity optic fibre backbone that has been laid out across the country has already crossed 60,000 km, and will go up to 90,000 km by year-end. Already 1,100 cities and towns have been hooked up and that number is expected to reach 5,000 by the end of this fiscal.
And speaking of high security, this fibre network is monitored 24/7 from DAKC, and any cut or disruption can be rectified within a maximum of four hours, is Reliance’s promise. All the cities and towns are hooked via a concentric ring system (a metro like Mumbai has a three-ring network system in place). What this means is if there is a network break anywhere on this info highway, once it has been located, it can be isolated from the system, and data flow can be rerouted through another network ring).
Amit Khanna, Reliance Infocomm spokesperson, puts it succinctly when he says, “Technologically, we are running this race one year ahead of the rest of the World.”
It is on this information superhighway that Reliance Infocomm’s six business streams will run — wireless, wireline, Netway, Enterprise broadband, business process outsourcing, WebWorld and the Carrier business.
As far as the broadcast sector is concerned however, it is Reliance’s broadband plans, ethernet broadband ‘Netway’ for the home user in particular, that is the focus of attention.
Netway is still nearly a year away from commercial launch, clarifies Khanna, though a “test run” of the service that “has no parallel anywhere in the world except in Italy on a very small scale” is already on at the Reliance centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat. 3,000 households of Reliance employees at the Jamnagar oil refinery have been wired up for this purpose, says Khanna.
In another two months, the testing process will move up a gear when 5,000 homes of Reliance Infocomm employees (there are 15,000 of them working in DAKC alone) get wired up.
Reliance’s set-top-box
Suffice to say that what Reliance is committing to give its home user customers is 100 mbps bandwidth routed through a prototype set top box that will triple up as a TV remote, a phone, a keyboard and even a karaoke microphone.
With this kind of bandwidth capacity, the question is of course what is the sort of content that will be made available for home users. According to the literature provided, aside from the obvious high speed Internet which also offers Voice over IP telephony, there will also be movies on demand, music on demand and digital TV. A vast library of movies with multiple language subtitles as well as an extensive music listing is being compiled at the moment. Netway is also promising interactive TV with over 160 channels.
According to Khanna, aggressive pricing will be one of the tools to kickstart the entry of Netway into homes, the whole television watching universe of 90 million odd homes being the target. Possible introductory sweeteners could include free Internet and / or free telephony (with certain unspecified conditions of course).
And when will the actual rollout take place? The first quarter of fiscal 2005 is a realistic proposition, feels Khanna. This means that Netway has just under a year to get its channel offering as well film and music library in place.
No mean task if one looks at the difficulty the Essel Group’s DTH service Dish TV has been having in trying to get the Star and Sony bouquet channels on board. Khanna, however, expressed confidence that all the channels commonly available on cable networks would also be seen on Netway.
And what of the two links in the distribution change that currently interface between the broadcaster and the viewer – the MSO and the last mile operator?
Khanna would prefer to let the market and the consumer ultimately decide that particular question.
News Broadcasting
Rajesh Sundaram joins NDTV Profit as senior editor, assignment
The 32-year newsroom veteran has launched channels on three continents and covered everything from 9/11 to South African television
MUMBAI: NDTV Profit has bolstered its newsroom with a hire who has done rather more than most. Rajesh Sundaram, a journalist with over three decades of editorial, managerial and consultative experience across India and international markets, joins as senior editor, assignment, tasked with sharpening the network’s newsgathering and real-time response.
Sundaram’s career reads like a tour of Indian media’s most formative moments. He began at Businessworld in 1994, moved to Zee News as bureau chief across Mumbai and Chennai, then joined NDTV in 2002 as part of its political bureau during a particularly febrile period in Indian politics. A stint as India correspondent for Al Jazeera International followed, where he covered key geopolitical developments and got his first serious taste of the global newsroom.
What sets Sundaram apart, however, is his serial channel-launching habit. At NewsX, he helped get the operation off the ground. At Headlines Today, part of the India Today Group, he served as editor. At News Nation, he helped launch the Hindi news channel and its digital ecosystem. He then crossed continents to lead the launch of ANN7 in South Africa as editor-in-chief, overseeing both television and digital. Back in India, he launched Tamil news channels News7 Tamil and Cauvery News, and later served as principal consultant for the launch of Marathi channel Lokshahi. Most recently, he helped build and lead the Press Trust of India’s video service and content studio, before stints consulting for Business Today and The Himalayan Times.
Rahul Kanwal, chief executive and editor-in-chief of NDTV, left little doubt about what Sundaram is expected to deliver. “The assignment desk is where a newsroom’s intent becomes action,” he said. “Rajesh brings a rare combination of field experience and leadership in building news operations at scale.”
Sundaram has reported from across India and the world, covering elections, civil conflicts, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 US presidential election.
At NDTV Profit, he will lead the assignment desk, driving editorial coordination and real-time response across markets and breaking developments. For a business news network sharpening its focus on speed and multi-platform delivery, it has hired a man who has built newsrooms from scratch on three continents. The assignment desk is in good hands.
