Archive for March, 2008

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RCom set to launch DTH service Big TV

Friday, March 28th, 2008

The war to carry television to your home has started in earnest with the telecom giants Reliance Communications and Airtel ready with their DTH plans and expect to storm the market by May this year.

Reliance Communications, which is launching the service under the BIG TV brand has even started trial runs in Mumbai. The company says it will invest Rs 2000 crore in its DTH venture and is ready with its entry strategy.

The DTH market in India is already at 6 million with Tata sky and Dish TV being the major players but Reliance says its service will be cheaper and since its using MPEG 4 a new technology.

It will be able to provide almost 250 channels, the highest by any DTH player. The company is even talking to broadcasters on HDTV transmission and just like Airtel it will use the distribution network of its parent company.

Reliance is targetting a million subscribers in the first year of operation and will be concentrating on smaller cities to boost its subscriber numbers.

[source]

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TRAI to phase out ADC

Friday, March 28th, 2008

The Access Deficit Charge has been a thorn in the side of telecom companies for a while now but the ADC is all set to go. The TRAI has said that the ADC will be phased out and telecom companies have in turn promised to pass on the benefit to their consumers.

Come April and telecom companies will be in for a Rs 800 crore bonanza and they’ll pass on some or most of it to users which will mean cheaper calls over the next 12 months.

Earlier, operators were paying 0.75 per cent of their revenue. To cross subsidise BSNL’s rural phone operations, this charge will go from April 1 and the one rupee charge on incoming international calls will be slashed to half which will be phased out after September.

“The operators of course are a happy lot and are promising to pass on the benefits to the consumers which could mean minor tariff cuts especially on calls coming in from abroad,” said Nripendra Misra, Chairman, TRAI.

Private telecom players have questioned the subsidy that state-owned BSNL got through the access deficit charge. But now they have no reason to complain.

However, BSNL will continue to get a fixed amount of Rs 2,000 crore every year for next three years from another source, the USO fund.

[source]

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Trai to cap DTH charges? Bad idea

Friday, March 28th, 2008

The proposal by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to cap charges for channels shown on direct-to-home platforms at Rs 5 per month is in line with what has been allowed for those operating conditional access service networks.

Since both are addressing the same consumer, the proposal has inter se equity as a plus point. And the business of capping the CAS/DTH bill to the TV-watching home has a certain populist appeal. The problem is that the basic proposal on CAS was unfair to channel owners and removed the incentive for channels to produce superior/differentiated programming that might cost more money and/or which commands greater audience pull.

Extending this faulty logic to DTH now will compound the offence. Star TV, for instance, paid very large sums of money to, first, Amitabh Bachchan and later, Shah Rukh Khan, to host Kaun Banega Crore(Rs 10 million)pati. But
if it cannot charge more than a rival channel which does not have such expensive programming, how is it to meet its higher costs?

The same holds for sports broadcasters who bid hundreds of crore (Rs 10 million) for exclusive cricket broadcasting rights. One answer is that channels with superior programmes and, therefore, a larger audience will get their payback through higher advertising revenue. That is true, of course, but why should the channels be denied the right to ask more from the viewer as well?

MORE… 

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Top B-schools to join IIMs’ fee-hike trek

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Got your sights set on management education? Here’s a news flash: It’s just got that much more expensive! Now that the IIM fee-hike jig is done, other major B-schools like MDI, Gurgaon; TAPMI, Manipal; SP Jain and Goa Institute of Management are going the same way as well. End result: Students pay more, wherever they go.

TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal, for instance, has decided to effect a 50% increase in fees for its two-year management course from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh (all-inclusive, without food) from the 2008-09 session. “This decision has been taken partly to recover some of the costs incurred by us to set up the new campus. This may even go up to Rs 6.5 lakh from next year,” TAPMI director D Nagabrahmam said.

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, too is raising its fees: from approximately Rs 6 lakh to around Rs 7.92 lakh for its two-year flagship programme. In fact, MDI director SK Basu said that the institute was planning to increase fees across courses so as to not put the burden on just a particular set of students.

“We have even increased the intake from 300 to 360, with AICTE approval. As a self-sufficient institute, which gets no government grants, this has been done to offset costs, including that of our planned expansion,” said Mr Basu.

[source]

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Tata faces new challenges

Friday, March 28th, 2008

A day after announcing the biggest deal of his career at Tata Motors, for Ravi Kant top of the agenda is integrating the two iconic brands Tata now owns into its fold. Tata already has some big changes in mind from the way Ford ran these two companies. “The difference would be the kind of latitude and freedom we may give them. It may be different from what they were used to. It will be an important business and very large size business. It will look for its well being and sustained growth,” said Ravi Kant, MD, Tata Motors.

With JLR’s combined sales, Tata’s overseas business will now cross its domestic passenger vehicle sales and Tata has clarified that JLR revenues will be consolidated into the balance sheet of the listed Tata Motors.

Ravi Kant also shared with NDTV that while for the Ford Motor Company, JLR was a very small part of its overall business, for Tata its a much larger division. So, the stress will be on growth of the two marques while maintaining their individual identities.

Tata Motors has come a long way since Telco began making heavy trucks introducing its first car at the turn of the century and today the most talked of car in the world, the Nano. With Jaguar and Land Rover – it enters a new arena it is not used to doing business in but it says its ready for the next step in its evolution.

[source]

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Motorola splits in two: Mobile Devices, and Broadband and Mobility Solutions

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

The board of directors has agreed to split Motorola into two independent, publicly-traded companies. The new entities will be called Mobile Devices and Broadband & Mobility Solutions. The Mobile Devices business will focus on the design, manufacturing, and sales of mobile handsets and accessories globally. The Broadband & Mobility Solutions business covers Moto’s enterprise, government, public safety, and home and networks business. Greg Brown, Motorola’s president and CEO, says the reason for the split is easy, “Creating two
industry-leading companies will provide improved flexibility, more tailored
capital structures, and increased management focus – as well as more targeted
investment opportunities for our shareholders.” Right, weren’t those the reasons for the Palm split? The matter is of course subject to regulatory approvals, but Motorola hopes that the transaction is complete “in 2009.”

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