Worldspace launched its services in Pune on Tuesday and plans to launch in 17 Indian cities by February this year. The Worldspace Service was launched in Bangalore in September 2000 ad since then around 10,000 receivers have been sold, Mr Sebastian said. The company is looking at a receiver base of 2,50,000 in a year's time when it completes the national launch and looks at offering the service for advertising.

The multimedia service, which enables downloading without a telephone, will be launched during the second half of the year, Sebastian said. The PC card, which will enable this is getting ready and will be made available at Rs 5,000. The company has signed up with BPL Indigo for four channels which include a women's channel and a channel targeting the metros. Another tie-up with Asianet is being signed for offering two regional channels in Tamil and Telugu. Asianet is already offering Worldspace programming in Malayalam and Kannada. Worldsace on its own is also setting up one dedicated Indian channel which it plans to take across the globe, Mr Sebastian said. As of now most of the content from India is music-based and for offering news content Worldspace would be talking to All India Radio. AIR already has a tie-up with Afristar, where it offers its external broadcast service along with the Delhi FM for the African market.

For sales and distribution of the digital receivers, Worldspace has a tie-up with BPL. The imported receiver sets, being manufactured by Hitachi, JVC, Sanyo and Panasonic, are being sold at a range of Rs 4,950 to Rs 11,000. The high price is basically due to nearly 100 per cent taxation on the sets. The tie-up with BPL is likely to manufacture these sets by July this year, Mr Sebastian said.