The Bangalore-based E-Connect is Zee Telefilms' wholly-owned subsidiary. The company plans to invest Rs 400 crore over the next two-and-a-half years. Sunil Jasuja, the Chief operating officer of the company, speaks to Sibabrata Das of The Financial Express. When will you be offering internet services on your SitiCable network? Will it be exclusively on SitiCable?
We have already started the internet service over cable at Bangalore and are in the process of setting up the infrastructure in Delhi and Mumbai and we will announce the service soon. We are using the Siticable network for this service.
What is the infrastructure you are building up before you start services on SitiCable?
We are installing the CMTS equipment at the headends of Siticable to start the services at Delhi and Mumbai.
Will you be using the fibre backbone till the last mile or just connecting the head-ends? What is the difference in quality? What is the international trend?
The last mile is never optical fibre. The last mile is normally the telphone lines, Cable, DSL etc. The fibre only provides the backbone to the network.
Who will bear the cost of the cable modems? What will be its price? Are you still waiting for the price to fall? At what price do you think you can attract the customers?
As of now there is a security deposit which has been charged to the customers. However, we are in the process of working out a pricing model for customers.
The cable modems' pricing has reduced by about 40% in the last 6 months and we expect it to fall further. In addition, with the coming of the DOCSIS standards, there will be a lot more vendors manufacturing these modems and hence pricing is bound to go down further.
When is the DOCSIS standard going to be developed? What will be its advantages?
DOCSIS modems are already in the market and cost about US$200 FOB USA. The advantage of these is that we are not tied up to any proprietory technology and hence a customer may buy any DOCSIS complaint modem. In addition, there will be a lot more manufacturers of these modems and hence will drive the prices down.
What will be the monthly fees that you will charge the customers?
We will announce the pricing structure shortl. The pricing, however, shall be very aggressive.
You will initially be launching the dial-up Internet services. When and in how many cities? When will the second phase start and in how many cities? Please provide details about that (infrastructure, pricing and technology).
Initially we will launch the services in Bangalore, Delhi and Bombay and further expand to the other metros and mini metros.
What will be your cutting edge over competition?
We are investing very heavily in the international bandwidth and will have an international gateway as soon as the licenses are issued. In addition, we are the the only company to have tested the cable route over the last six months and have paying customers for these services.
Have you started web casting the Zee programmes? What will be the cost incurred? Please provide details of the process and technology involved?
Zee has over 17000 hours of original programming and we are in the process of making this content web friendly. We shall launch this shortly. However, we shall not be restricted only to the Zee content.
Please give details on the content acquisition. Have you started acquiring content? Reasons for it. Will the portal have foreign content ?
There are a number of companies both domestic and international who have approached us for providing content on our portal. We are in the process of finalizing this. In addition we are building our own content very fast.
What plans do you have for set-top-boxes? How does it work?
Set-top-boxes currently available in India are the telephone boxes which use the telephone to connect to the internet. The constraints of this mode is that the resolution of the TVs are not as good so as to display the internet content which so far is predominantly for computers.
In addition these boxes have no storage capacity and hence you can browse but not store any information.
Everybody is talking about Internet through cable. How is the industry moving? What are the problems it is facing? Why is there a delay in other networks as well?
Internet over the cable is still in its nascent stages and the standards have just been formed. Even in US the cable penetration is about 4-5% of the total internet market. However, as the prices of the modems go down this market is likely to pick up.
We see a huge potential in this mode of delivery. The advantages are - it is much faster, you don't spend on telephone expenses and the connection is on all the time.