The government in the western Indian state of Maharashtra has doubled the entertainment taxes that cable TV operators have to fork out to its coffers. Taxes were levied at the rate of Rs 5,10, and 15 per subscriber, depending on the subscriber‘s location. These have been doubled. The purpose to enhance the state‘s revenues. The government made these announcements in the state budget for 2000-2001 announced yesterday.
Maharashtra is amongst the leading cable TV viewing states in India. And there is alarm that other state governments may also make similar moves in their budgets.

Fears have also risen that the imposition will actually lead to a rise in subscriber fees because cable TV operators will not be interested in forking out the higher duty from their pockets. Currently, cable TV subscriber rates in Maharashtra range between Rs 75 and Rs 125 a month. These are expected to go up by about 25 per cent at least with the average cable TV fees rising to Rs 125, unlike Rs 100 that is the average currently.

Marginally, probably. Normally, cable TV operators tend to under-declare their subscriber base to the tune of 70 per cent to subscription channels and to government as they want to stem the outflow of money from their end. Since there are no audits or subscriber declaration compulsions to a cable TV authority, they fudge their numbers to reduce their burden. That will likely continue here too. If the tax authorities insist on tax payments based on last year‘s entertainment tax disclosures, the cable operator can easily turn around and say that he has lost subscribers to rival or smaller operators or they have not renewed their subscription.

Chennai-based Pentamedia Graphics Limited is slated to launch its Internet television venture called NumTV (New Millennium TV) in the US on 14 April 2000. www.numtv.com or NumTV is an entertainment portal catering to the Asian diaspora worldwide. Its objective initially is to bring India in all its colours to Asians across the globe.The company, which started its test run in December 1999, has so far invested close to $20 million in infrastructural facilities, which are spread across in three cities namely Los Angeles (US), Singapore and Chennai (India).

Says Pentamedia Graphics director V Sundararjan: "NumTV.com is specially being developed for those who are away from home as well as for those who would love to see their favourite programmes live at home, at any hour of the day and in any part of the world. NumTV will be webcasting 40 Asian Channels (including 25 Indian channels), latest news events, sports, attractive programmes, movies, music (including live coverage)."

He adds, "The demand for the programmes by the consumers could also increase and we are trying to give them complete entertainment on the net. The programmes are being made available to the viewers who wish to watch at their convenience and cater to the different time zones across the globe."

Unlike other dotcom companies, NumTV is looking at integrating newspaper dailies on the Internet. Says Sunderarjan: "We are looking at having newspapers and magazines and journals on NumTV.com and providing rich content to the news and feature stories. What we mean by rich content is that the stories and features would be accompanied with some good animation and graphics. The content would be changed to suit the stories. Num TV will be available in various languages and will evolve itself to be accessed through Radio, Print and also stage live shows shortly."

NumTV.com will cater to the Asian community but Indians will not be able to view the broadband content due to the non-availability of high-speed access. But once it kicks off in India, NumTV.com hopes to be a success there too. The broadband portal will face competition from the recently launched Homeland Networks‘ tvofindia.com which too targets a similar community

The Zee Network launched the fourth of its regional language channels - Alpha Gujarati on 21 March. The launch took place at a bash attended by the who‘s who of Gujarati language theatre, film and folk art industry. The launch was done at the hands of the Hindi and Gujarati theatre and film star Paresh Raval.
"It was the complaint of a woman when I was travelling in the UK a few years ago that Zee TV does not air programmes in Gujarati which got me interested in regional language programming," says Zee Network chairman Subhash Chandra.

The channel is targeted at the rich Gujarati community which has been served by state-owned Doordarshan and the RITV owned Gurjari TV, now and then. A programming formula similar to that used on Zee TV is being used with Alpha Gujarati: women‘s oriented series, family dramas, sitcoms, music shows and participatory game shows.

The Zee Network looks likely to have a potential leader of its Alpha series of channels in Alpha Gujarati. Reason: it has the inhouse distribution advantage thanks to its ownership of its MSO Siticable. Second Gujarat is a very strong cable and satellite market. And extremely rich. Consumers today are willing to spend on flashy goodies with little restraint.Also Gujarat has a gaggle of entreprenuers who will use the channel to reach consumers if they are made to believe and understand that they are getting a good deal.And with a targeted audience for the channel they will undoubtedly be interested in even taking up commercial air time.

Meanwhile, Zee is looking ahead at launching channels in the four southern regional languages. Among these: a Telegu channel, a Tamil service, a Kannada service and a Malaylam channel.

Zee Telefilms‘ subsidiary E-Connect has launched its portal www.zeenext.com on 22 March 2000. The B-2-C and C-2-C portal covers everything from entertainment to business. The horizontal portal is going head to head in competition with most general Indian portals, including rediff.com, indiainfo.com, and satyamonline.com. It features more content than any other portal and is also involved in unique services like ‘Mobilenext‘ which is a messaging tool connecting to about 260 mobile networks globally.
ZeeNext boasts of having over 1,30,000 e-mail subscribers and over 1,000 Mobilenext downloads during the beta phase of the portal. The company is ready with broadband content which will be launched within a month and half. It is currently converting its entire programme library into streaming video.

ZeeNext President Sunil Jasuja says it will expand its content by acquiring and purchasing content through strategic alliances with other portals and content providers. The company says the site has 128-bit encryption and hence has a high level of protection, which will serve it well in the case of e-commerce transactions. It is in the process of obtaining a security certification from VeriSign.

On the company‘s plans to attract surfers hooked to other popular portals such as rediff.com, satyamonline.com, etc, E-Connect President Sunil Jasuja says, "Zee is a brand which is trusted and which reaches 30 million people worldwide."

E-Connect will launch dial-up Internet access services in Mumbai on 26 March costing Rs 499 per month. Net-over-cable TV, which is to be launched soon will be priced at Rs 1,500 per month for unlimited access. The cable modems are currently priced at Rs 10,000. Jasuja is however optimistic about it matching the price of conventional telephone modems. This will increase the penetration of Cable-over-Internet services of E-Connect, which will be enabled through SitiCable.

The company has invested Rs 250 million in the last three months of operations. E-Connect officials are confident of maintaining the budget of Rs 4 billion as decided earlier by the Zee management.

The revenue model of E-Connect is a combination of access, advertising, direct e-commerce and e-commerce facilitation. The major chink of revenues would come through the Internet access services. E-commerce revenues would also be significant The company hopes to break-even within three years of its operations.

The content and access mix of E-Connect will prove to be an advantage over many other Indian portals. It is likely to stand head and shoulders above most other portals in the broadband era thanks to its huge library of television software.

Arianespace and the Indian Space Research Organisation successfuly lifted the first in the third generation of Insat satellites on 22 March at 04:58 Indian time. The Arianespace-505 launcher had an additional payload in the Asiastar satellite which was launched for digital radio service, WorldSpace. Asia Star was first injected into orbit 28 minutes after lift-off,

and seven minutes later, INSAT-3B was injected (in a three-axis stabilised mode into a Geo-synchronous Transfer Orbit - GTO) with a perigee of 560 km and an apogee of 35,770 km and an inclination of 7 degree with respect to the equator.

The satellite is at present orbiting around the earth with a period of 10.64 hours. The Insat Master Control Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka acquired the telemetry signal from Insat-3B at 5.30 (IST) three minutes prior to its separation from the launcher.

On separation of the satellite from the composite adopter, satellite health checks were conducted and a series of commands issued from the MCF so as to orient its earth-viewing face towards earth. The outermost panel of the stowed solar array on the south side was also oriented towards the sun to start generating the electrical power required by the satellite during its transfer orbit phase.

When the satellite reaches near geo-stationary orbit, deployment of two solar panels and the two antennas will be carried out and the satellite put in its final three-axis stabilised mode. The payloads will be checked out before commissioning the satellite. The deployment of the solar array and the two antennas will be carried out after the satellite attains near geo-synchronous orbit.

Insat-3B will be collocated with INSAT-2E at 83 deg East longitude. It may be noted that Insat satellites now occupy four slots -- Insat-2B and Insat-2C are collocated at 93.5 deg (E) longitude, INSAT-1D and INSAT-2A are collocated at 74? E longitude and Insat-2DT is located at 55? E longitude besides Insat-2E at 83 deg East longitude.

Insat-3B is primarily intended for business communication, developmental communication and mobile communication. The communication payload provides 12 extended C-band channels, each having a bandwidth of 36 MHz. The Ku-band payload provides three channels, having a bandwidth of 77/72 MHz. The Mobile Satellite Service transponders operate in C/S band frequencies. Compared to INSAT-2C/2D, the power of extended C-band transponders on board INSAT-3B has been increased from 10 W to 15 W and that of Ku-band from 20 W to 55 W.

Tele-medicine is also expected to be introduced that will help in remote iagnostics and extension of super special hospital treatment to the rural population. INSAT-3B Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) has forward link channel in C X S band and return link in S X C band. MSS can support portable terminals and carry voice, fax or data. It also supports messaging service using reporting terminals.

Pix courtesy Arianespace.