The wwwcitibank.com website reportedly houses pornographic content. The Citigroup is taking the two companies to court for trademark infringement. IEG says it has nothing to do with the site; it was just a host for another site (created by its franchisee), that is being redirected to the wwwcitibank.com URL. The moment it found out that the content on the website was unsavoury; it erased it from its servers and refused to have anything to do with it.

Citibank is not buying thisargument, however, and is seeking to bring both the firms to court.

The instance highlights the dangers that await corporate India courtesy the World Wide Web. While Hindustan Lever has registered its domain name Hindustanlever.com with Internic (located at www.networksolutions.com) the shortened URL Hindlever.com has not been taken up as yet. It is just waiting there like a sitting duck to be lapped up by a greedy individual seeking to arm twist the company. If someone were to register the Hindlever.com domain name and fill it with nude pictures or other offensive content, what would Hindustan Lever do? Go to court. Instead of going through a protracted legal process later, why does it not book all permutations and combinations around its name? The cost is just $70 per domain name registration. This writer is not seeking to further Internic's fortunes, nor is he getting any commissions from the company. Rather, it makes sense to book URLs, which could help a company avoid a lot of heartache and expenselater.

Indian World Wide Web surfers may be in for a bit of a shock as Ambani.com doesn't lead to the Reliance website. Ambani.com is registered in another company's name; the Reliance website is Ril.com. Ditto with Birla.com. A Calcutta-based firm has booked the domain and when one tries to get into the site, a sign comes up saying it is under construction. The Godrej group has registered the Godrej.com domain but has not done so with Godrejboyce.com and the Godrejgroup.com. Colgateindia.com leads to a strange site, which looks like a site of a domain squatter. Tatasons.com is the website of a Pune-based shop, while Tatta.com is going abegging.

This apart someone can also play tricks by registering a domain name such as wwwtata.com and place any content on it. An individual trying various combinations for getting to the Tata site from his browser may well land into these domains. Procter & Gamble wisely has registered even its brand Oldspice.com. While brands such as Lux.com and Rexona.com are with otheroutfits. Who stands to lose? Large companies themselves.

Rediff-on-the-net has already faced a problem and is suing a company. Hence, it is advisable that Indian firms register all possible permutations around their brands. That is if they are interested in avoiding litigation later.Internet savvy.

We all know that internet is growing by leaps and bounds globally. But is it becoming an increasing part of our lives? The US Internet Council thinks it is.

In a report entitled `State of the Internet: USIC's Report on Use & Threats in 1999', it says that 32 million office workers logged onto the World Wide Web in 1998 as against 19 million in mid-1997. These figures are based on a study by The Strategis Group.

The figure for those dialing in for internet access from home has also gone up from 19 million to 37 million every day. As many as 34 million homes are logged on to the web for 65 million hours daily. More than 60 per cent of web hosting servers are in the US, is what the USIC pointsout.

There are some 43.2 million computers attached to internet, the organisation says, citing research conducted by Network Wizards. This will more than double by 2001 to 100 million worldwide, the USIC predicts.

And guess what the figures for e-commerce are? Business transactions over the web are expected to leap frog to $978.4 billion in the next three years. What were the numbers for last year? A paltry $27.4 billion. Clearly, there's moolah waiting to be made.

Hello out there

Iridium, the global satellite telephony service, has been limping along worldwide and even in the Indian market. The reasons: Prohibitively high sticker prices, and a slow roll out of handsets and pagers. Well, the inconvenience of a shortage of handphones is likely to be sorted out soon.

Japanese manufacturer Kyocera Electronics which had been tardy in releasing its line of Iridium phones finally introduced them this week. Kyocera had a bagful of assembly line troubles and handset glitches, which it had to sortout, a process that led to delays of several months.

The Kyocera line has six offerings. Among them: An Iridium-only hand-set, an adapter that integrates with three Kyocera cellular phones for access to the Iridium satellite network, and an Iridium pager. Motorola, the biggest backer of Iridium has been manufacturing handsets and pagers ever since the service started in November.

Hopefully, with Kyocera rolling out its instruments, the service will start kicking up volumes now, leading to a consequent fall in prices. And a further increase volumes. At least the firm is betting on that.

The writer is the editor of The Indian Cab&Sat Reporter. Feel free to e-mail with your comments to television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com