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Indian firms stream in to offer broadband services

Narayanan Madhavan

Broadband Internet got hotter in India this week with the announcement of two ambitious ventures to boost video and sound broadcast over the medium.

With less than two million Internet connections in a nation of one billion people upstart companies are betting on niche markets to sell broadband services with focused zones and cable-delivered Internet.

Bombay-based United Television (UTV) on Wednesday announced what it called India's first broadband streaming site at http://www.sharkstream.co.in, which aims to deliver video in the city via the Internet.

A day earlier, Delhi-based Spectranet broadband network and its allied portal, wahindia.com, carried a live video streaming broadcast of the launch of "The Gin Drinkers", the first novel by Sagarika Ghose.

Spectranet covers South Delhi and has tens of thousands of homes with cable access and enough purchasing power to be able to afford broadband connections.

UTV's is working in partnership with cable and Internet firm WIN Cable Internet, which while having just 500 Internet subscribers does have more than 70,000 homes in three Bombay suburbs on its cable network.

"The rollout, through UTV's broadband content arm Sharkstream.com, is a strategic move to put the group at the forefront of convergence media," UTV's chairman Ronnie Screwala said in a statement.

WIN Cable said the Indian Sharkstream site, which is an affiliate of the pan-Asian Sharkstream.com, now offers more than 50 hours of programming in English, Hindi and Tamil.

"The target audience is the Internet-savvy crowd aged 17 to 30," Screwala said.

Big players are also getting into the broadband game. Reliance Industries said on Tuesday its affiliate, Reliance Infocom Ltd, plans to invest 150 billion rupees ($3.2 billion) over the next two years to build a broadband network across India.

Reliance earlier this year started an acquisition bid for BSES Ltd, an electricity distributor in Bombay which is using its infrastructure to offer Internet across the city.

Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd, which has a joint venture with Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer's Channel 9 television, earlier launched a broadband communications network in the northern state of Punjab.

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