BPL Broadband's offer of franchises as well as partnership deals with link cable operators has already attracted private operators in Kerala, at least those who have not already aligned with either the Rahejas or Siticable. The market leader, Asianet, remains untouched as it has direct-to-home connections. A similar process has been set into motion in Karnataka, giving cable operators a choice between old veterans like Zee's Siticable, the Hindujas' INcable, the Rahejas and the new entrant.

But this is not the end of its operations. BPL Broadband, a division of BPL Innovision, plans to lay optic fibre cable (OFC) in southern India and Maharashtra in the next two years. "Our intention is not to enter the cable TV market, but to get into the VoIP and other related areas in preparation for the policy changes that everyone is talking about. Within about a year, there will be two to three basic service providers. The customers will have a choice of Zee, Hindujas, and others apart from us.

The customer will be king," Raman Kutty Nair, chief of business development at BPL Broadband, said. Nair's statement comes in the wake of BPL Innovision business group CEO and chairman, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, announcing his company's strategic partnership with U.S.-based major Nortel Networks. It is on Nortel's platforms that the group plans to "cover the last mile to make the consumer feel like the King," as Chandrasekhar put it. BPL's proposals are described by some big-time cable operators as "good business propositions, but one of them is quite disturbing". That one is a franchise arrangement with anybody interested in setting up cable operations in the area which, in other words, means a new set of competitive operators. But what they find attractive is a partnership deal in which the local operator has a share of 49 per cent with investment and technology to be brought in by BPL Broadband. The cable operator would take care of the cable TV, while the company would bring in value added services from theInternet to tele-shopping to VoIP, if the government finally relents.

The third is direct-to-home OFC, a proposal that could be matched by the others in the market given the fact that most of them have laid 15 to 20 km of OFC in the city. The proposal has set off a serious effort by the other networks to turn their attention to the ubiquitous next-door cable operator. "We will grow with the cable operator. After all, we have worked together with him for seven years. Basically, the consumer will reap the advantage," said a senior executive at Siticable.

-- IANS