Speaking to The Financial Express, Miller said his company is open to the idea of a long-term partnership with All India Radio for programming and also helping the public broadcaster to go digital. Miller said the corporation has strategic partnerships with public service broadcasters in several countries in the region including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. "We are open to having a strategic partnership with AIR if it so desires," he said.

Miller said BBC can offer its progamming content to up-coming private FM operators at virtually no cost. To begin with, it will be for features and entertainment programmes and can be later extended to news and current affairs as and when it is allowed to be aired by private FM operators. This would be on a non-exclusive basis.

BBC's radio services in all regional languages are now also available online, said Miller. The company's efforts are directed at driving internet traffic from India to its websites in the UK.

Miller said that in recent years the thrust of BBC in India has been more on the television front. This is all set to change in the coming months with the company pushing its programming content to other forms of media - radio and online. Miller said BBC has around 30 million audience for its radio services in India. The service is available in several Indian languages including Urdu, Bengali, Hindi and Tamil apart from English.

Miller said the opening of the FM radio station offers a great opportunity to BBC to extend its programming reach. "We intend to partner with the new players to help develop FM radio broadcast in India," he said.

Miller said that BBC worldservices has progamming budget of around 150 million pounds. If there is increase in demand, sizable amount of the fund can devoted to programming for Asia.

He said there were no immediate plans for starting any other regional language programming. BBC had earlier conducted pilot projects with Telugu language programming. However, it could not continue due to funds crunch.