[India] Zee To Launch Cable-Net Service By October

["Irfan Khan" <KhanIA@super.net.pk>]

Zee To Launch Cable-Net Service By October 

By Uday Lal Pai
InternetNews India Correspondent 

[July 6, 1999--MUMBAI] Zee Television Limited (Zee-TV), the satellite 
channel major of India, will launch its nationwide cable-based 
Internet services from October 1, 1999. 

Subhash Chandra, chairman of the Essel Group, which owns Zee TV, Siti 
Cable, indicated that work on infrastructure has already started and 
would be completed in time for October launch to coincide with the 
seventh year of Zee operations. 

The Essel Group, which has pocketed a category A ISP license, aims to 
provide businesses and households across 40 Indian cities Internet 
services and a host of other services including high quality, high 
speed voice, data and video transmission. 

Zeenet (ZeeTV's Internet arm) and its sister company Siti Cable are 
in the process of wiring India through the latter's cable network. 
Siti Cable, which already provides Cable Television (CaTV) services 
to nearly 5 million households in India, is aiming to provide 
Internet services to at least 10 per cent of all CaTV households. The 
Essel Group has earmarked US$125 million in this project in the next 
4 years. 

The Zee chairman declined to comment on the pricing and marketing 
game-plan, but said that his venture into Internet service would 
concentrate on the content and access features in the beginning and 
evolve on a continuous basis afterwards. However, company officials 
have said that Siti is looking at a target of 30,000 subscribers for 
the first year, inclusive of dial-up connections. 

A normal telephone modem in India transfers data at the rate of 36 
Kbps and Zee's project envisages data transfer at a speed which is 
over 800 times faster. 

The cable network will have 40 Mbps of bandwidth at its disposal. "We 
may be able to capture 10 percent of the Internet market in the four 
major metro cities in the first two years," sources said. 
The main hurdle in the initial years is expected to be the cost of 
the cable modem which is currently retails for around US$450 to 500 . 
"Costs will, however, decline since manufacturers have agreed on open 
standards for cable modems. Prices have actually came down from $1000 
six months ago to around $ 450 currently," pointed out C. S. Arora, 
general manager of Siticable Network. 

To try and keep the services accessible during initial weeks, Siti 
also plans to rent or lease out the cable modems. But eventually, as 
prices climb down, subscribers will have to buy their own modems. "We 
do not plan to be in hardware business," said Arora. 

Currently, however, all cable modems available in India, including 
Cisco, 3Com, Bay Networks and Motorola, have to be imported into the 
country. "Maybe at a later stage cable modems will be manufactured in 
India and their prices would fall sharply," said one observer. 

The network will also offer businesses value-added services through 
application service providers. Network computer users, operating with 
a set-top-box will be able to use applications via network servers. 
Siti's competitor, the UK-based Hinduja-owned cable company In-
Networks. is also expected to get into the act shortly. 

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