ADAG has big media plans

A media innovation company of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is all set to launch a new technology - CHOIS - that could make Direct-to-Home services obsolete and earn the company up to Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in revenue through royalty and fees in two years.

"CHOIS (Converged Home & Office Integrated Services) technology, which we have been developing for the last ten years, is ready for launch immediately…within a few days. We will license it to a few global operators," Innomedia Technologies managing director Mohan Tambe told PTI in Bangalore.

CHOIS technology, which has been in the pilot stage with 5,000 users for the last four years, is capable of delivering digital TV channels, personal video recorder, video-on-demand, Internet browsing, VoIP telephony and video serving facility.

It is a complete end-to-end technology, which provides all the building blocks for constructing a fully dually-redundant, ethernet everywhere, fibre-to-home network (called Netway), providing 100 Mb symmetric bandwidth to each home and office, he explained.

The Bangalore-based company said the technology's human interface is a set-side-box, called CHOISpad, a Hexa-play device for delivery of services to end users.

"The global operators we are going to sign, in turn, are appointing franchisees which are the cable operators and they move into each and every home and office," Tambe said. "We are launching simultaneously in India and some other countries, including the US."

"In two years time, we expect some ten million (one crore) homes to be covered," he said. "Then, after three years, it's expected to be 100 million…it's an exponential kind of growth. The idea is to make it cost-effective so that no home is missed out."

The company would earn revenues through royalty and technology service fee. "We expect to take around $4 royalty for all technology building blocks and a small technology service fee of 2.5 per cent. The idea is not to earn upfront but earn along with the success of the technology in the field."

Sounding extremely upbeat and excited, Tambe added: "This will work out to be a model, which will get more than what any other company in the world gets from any services, because these (CHOIS technology) services are going all over the world…even a small fraction can add up to much bigger number."

From this technology deployment in the marketplace through global operators, the company expects revenues in the order of at least Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) to Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in two years, he said.

Asked if the company expects to add Rs 1,000 crore a year to the group revenue after two years, Tambe indicated that it could be much more. "It will be exponential thing. It (CHOIS technology) is just like any of those multinationals…the way they earn wealth outside (through royalty and technology services fee). We are earning in dollars from all over the world."

Tambe said most of the Multi System Operators in India want to sign up with the company, adding that some of the major MSOs themselves will become global operators because they have local cable operators as franchisees.

He said the company is launching the technology at the right time. "Right now, cable operators need to upgrade network. Otherwise, they will be obsolete. DTH threat is driving all cable operators to us. Because they (cable operators) know that they have to provide much more than what DTH can provide."

Tambe said the company invsted Rs 60 crore (Rs 600 million) to Rs 70 crore (Rs 700 million) to develop the CHOIS technology, which also uses CHOISpads for its head-end servers and streamers, allowing a world-class head-end to be made at one-hundredth the cost elsewhere.

CHOIS technology, he added also has dually redundant routers and gateways, which are easy to install and use as amplifiers and splitters used by cable operators.