Addressing a press conference on the sidelines of Bangalore IT.COM - 2000, IDA's industry development director P Ramkrishna said that the discussions with Zee Group were in an advanced stage and a deal was likely to be worked out soon. Penta Media is using the backbone of IBBM to spread its content to a global audience.

Both companies are utilising the backbone facility of the IDA to get a feed-back and response from an audience of over 250,000 people. "If the two companies find the response good, they would be using Singapore as a hub centre for providing content service other South East Asian nations", he added.

IDA will be investing $150 million to stimulate demand and supply of broadband content and services in the next few years.Singapore has one of the most IT savvy population in the Asia-Pacific region with a broadband penetration of 59 per cent and household PC penetration of 58 per cent, dial-up Internet penetration of 42 per cent and mobile phone penetration of 64 per cent.

On its part, IDA's broadband backbone will be provided free of charge for six months to Indian companies to conduct a test run of their content. Mr Ramakrishna said Singapore was really looking at Indian IT companies in the area of interactive broadband multimedia and wireless applications. "There is a huge potential for Indian wireless application companies to set up their operations in Singapore", Mr Ramakrishna said, adding that from Singapore they could easily leapfrog into countries like China which was a huge market for wireless applications.

Meanwhile, Singapore Exchange Ltd is eyeing major Indian new economy companies to list their scrips in the exchange. Singapore Exchange's senior vice president Yewmun Ho said that the exchange is having discussions with nearly 50 Indian companies in this regard.

Listing in Singapore exchange is less expensive compared to Nasdaq or other major global exchanges which are currently drawing Indian IT companies at the moment. By listing on the Singapore Exchange, Indian companies would be able to get a good customer base as many people in these region are interested in investing in the Indian IT scrips, he added.