No Broadband On Internet Street

A polish man living on a street called Internet Street in Warsaw is selling his house because he is unable to set up a broadband connection there. Details at TotalTele.

I know wireline coverage in India sucks (for example, Airtel and Reliance Communications don’t service my area in Delhi), but selling your house because of no broadband? I think I might relocate…What would you do?

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Indiatimes Launches Womens Portal iDiva, B2B Marketplace

BCCL group company Indiatimes has made live two separate verticals - a womens portal called iDiva, and a B2B marketplace called, well, B2B. Both sites are still in the process of being fully launched, and are currently in beta.

– iDiva competes with two other initiatives from media companies in India - Indiwo from Web18 (disclosure - I have shares of Network18) and Women from India Today Group Online (Digital Today). What’s interesting about iDiva is that Indiatimes has gone a step further, and introduced a separate e-mail for women - iDiva Mail.

– B2B Marketplace - essentially a directory listing and marketplace, connecting buyers and sellers of Automobiles, Aviation Equipment, Chemicals, Construction, Electricals, Furniture, among several other categories. Fairly similar to other marketplaces, like Indiamart.com, TradeIndia.com and others. What surprises me is that this appears to be an Indiatimes launch, though it should ideally have been launched by Times Business Solutions, where most online classifieds businesses from the BCCL have been aggregated.

More on these sites later - I’m currently at the 3G India Forum, without WiFi, and the Reliance Data card connectivity has been rather poor for the last couple of months.

Live: Nokia To Launch Music Store In India On 18th Dec; IMI, Hungama, Universal

Update: Nokia is going to launch Nokia Music Store in India on the 18th of December, and the commercial launch is expected in the first quarter of 2009, as we had reported earlier. Nokia has tied up with the Indian Music Industry association IMI, Hungama Mobile, and Universal Music in India, which D. Shivkumar, MD of Nokia India said covers over 90% of the music available.

Original story: We’d reported a few weeks ago that Nokia is planning to launch its Music Store in India. At a press conference taking place in Delhi right now, Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Nokia has announced the launch of the beta version of Nokia Music Store. In that context, Nokia has also announced a partnership with the Indian Music Industry association - IMI, and will be talking about content partnerships. 

We’re going to update this post live, so watch this space. 

Update 1:

Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Nokia: People expect that the services that are brought to them are complete solutions - all need to be available via mobile and laptop and desktop. In India, most people will have their first experience of the Internet through the mobile phone. The next generation web does not neccesitate the personal computer. Other forms of computers are not so important anymore. Maps on Ovi: everything free of charge, and available on the mobile 

Update 2:

D. Shivkumar, MD of Nokia India: people want affordable devices and music everywhere. Music is about downloading, sharing creating playlists, experiencing enhancement via Accessories.
Issues with Digital Music: Piracy, lack of range, payment mechanisms

Nokia Music Store is a one stop shop. This store will be launched for all customers on 18th of December, and launched in first quarter next year. We have tied up with International, local leading and independent platyers. We have over 1 million songs. You can sideload songs from your PC. If you’re buying a mobile phone, it will have a unique pin number which allows you to download mujsic.

In India, if you need to launch something, you need a retail presence. We have a retail strategy, in order to sell. We’ve got blogs from various bands, who are talking about their experiences, wherever they’re playing.

(more…)

Business Standard Launches Instant Messenger - BS Buddy

Financial daily Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger called BS Buddy, which appears to be a customized version of Mundu IM from Geodesic Ltd. The Instant Messenger allows access via a single messenger, to MSN Messenger, Yahoo IM, AOL Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk and Jabber Talk. That’s nothing new - Pidgin already allow access to multiple IMs.

What’s noteworthy is the access to content that the IM allows - when you click on the yellow blob (seriously - what were they thinking?) in the IM that represents BS Buddy, it opens up a pane as shown below, called BS Dashboard.

The BS Dashboard provides current news, stock market information, stories from the days Business Standard, content from BS Motoring, and a merchandise from BSshopping (powered by IndiaPlaza). Details of the features available here. They appear to have a couple of advertisers already on board in Nokia, HP and Oracle.

As a product, I quite like the BS Buddy, but I don’t really see the point for Business Standard to launch somethng like this. Even though they have, they aren’t really communicating the key feature of the IM is the interoperability between various IMs, and they haven’t communicated that on the main page for the service - http://bsbuddy.business-standard.com/ . Without that being communicated, it appears to be a Business Standard IM, and hence there’s no incentive for a user to download it - that fact that users are also getting BS content is just an add-on.

“We’re just the pipe” say Mobile Operators, When It Comes To User Generated Content

So who is liable for user generated content in India - the platform or the user? This same debate, which is at the core of a number of lawsuits, has found a new platform: Voice Chat on telecom networks.

DNA reports that Mobile operators are denying any liability whatsoever for the voice chat services on their platform. What’s interesting is that they appears to be passing the buck to VAS companies. TV Ramachandran says “In plain terms, we only provide the pipeline for a value added service. What goes through the networks is neither a concern nor a responsibility of the telecom operator.” A Vodafone official has expressed similar sentiments. As per the report, Cellebrum provides voice chat services for Vodaphone, while Altruist is the vendor for Airtel.

So here’s the skinny - when it comes to everything else - revenue shares for content, for example - the operator claims they provide value and support and are “not just a pipe”. But when it comes to being liable for content being sent over their network, they’re “just a pipe”. That’s double-speak.

The TRAI doesn’t yet regulate Mobile VAS, but this appears to be another front that has opened up. Our take is that if the mobile operator is going to hold the VAS service provider liable, then that risk should come with its own reward. You can’t have your cake and eat it too…though that’s what they’ve been doing so far.

More on the issues around Mobile VAS at our post on

– TRAI Open House Discussion On Mobile VAS

Rajshri Media To Provide 100 Full Length Films On YouTube, Where Piracy Still Flourishes

Rajshri Media, the Internet and Mobile arm of Bollywood production house Rajshri Films, is planning to put up Bollywood films on YouTube for ad-supported free streaming; “Not your short 10 minute clips, but full length feature films,” Rajjat Barjatya, MD of Rajshri Media told MediaNama.

Rajshri will upload 100 full length films on YouTube, one film per day starting next week. They’re yet to decide the exact date, or which films, but suffice to say that they’ll begin with films from the Rajshri Films portfolio. They also intent to put up content from their partners on YouTube - some Hindi and Tamil content as well. YouTube will create a space for promoting full length movies, including those from Rajshri.   

How Does Rajshri Benefit From YouTube?
For one - the bandwidth costs. At 200+ terabytes of bandwidth utilized every month, it remains Rajshris single largest cost. YouTube will take on the cost of streaming. Apart from this, Rajshri gets advertising dollars from YouTube. Barjatya told MediaNama that “Our revenues from YouTube have been doubling month on month, since we began monetizing our content there in April 2008. 

Content Trends

Some trends for movies being watched on Rajshri.com:
– 72% of film viewers watch films for over 30 minutes in one go
– 32% owatch films for over 60 minutes in one go
– 17% watch films full movie in one go.

– Golmaal Returns
– Karzz 2008
– Fashion
– Drona
– Mukhbir

All these films have been uploaded by the user bipasha13. Remember that India music label T-Series has taken YouTube to court regarding uploads of copyrighted content, and they don’t have a Safe Harbor in India since the Digital Millenium Copyright Act isn’t applicable. On its part, Google has wooed content owners like Eros, Rajshri, Zoom, among others, who have set up their own promotional channels on the platform for a revenue share, but that’s no excuse for not clamping down on illegal uploads.

Barjatya, however, praises YouTube “They’ve given us tools to remove content. We have flagged off thousands of videos of Rajshri and Rajshri.com ontent. We have a team looking at content on YouTube. Today, you will find less than 1% piracy for Rajshri content. A majority of our content passes through a digital watermark, which YouTube has allowed us to use. We have not made any of our betas to YouTube, and whatever we upload goes through digital fingerprinting process, and that prohibits the user from uploading the same content again. If there is a frame, or a succession of frames, the system will block the upload.”

We’ve contacted Google India for comments on the pirated content we found on YouTube, and what steps they’re taking to prevent the upload of copyrighted content on YouTube.

Related:
–  Google Files For India Patent For Detecting Copyright Content

RCom Offers Free Laptops From Intel, Acer, Asus,HCL & Lenovo With Internet Data Card Connection

Telecom operator Reliance Communications has announced a strategic alliance with laptop companies Acer, Asus, HCL, Intel and Lenovo, to offer a laptop free with a two year “unlimited” subscription to its Internet data card service Reliance Netconnect. The specifications of the laptops aren’t mentioned, but with a lock-in of 2 years, the customers will pay a total of Rs. 36,000 and service tax over and above that.

Perhaps the laptop manufacturers are offering the laptops to RCom with reduced margins, hoping for an improved topline growth. In case of RCom, this may be a means of acquiring a subscriber base for wireless Internet services - one that they can later upgrade to higher speeds when 3G and/or WiMax services are eventually launched. Remember that BSNL has something of a head start here, with EVDO services already operational. I’m a Reliance NetConnect subscriber, and I can tell you that at an inconsistent speed of 2-14 kBps, it’s anything but Hi-speed; While typing this post, the NetConnect connection got disconnected thrice (thankfully, Wordpress has an auto-save function) and I lost one version when I clicked “Publish”. I shudder to think about what will happen if they get more customers, and bandwidth get even more clogged. This also reminds me of something Shyam Somanadh of Web18 had said to me a year go - that it will take someone like a Reliance to go out and completely break this market open by offering PCs for free. In this case, it’s laptops, and probably lower margin than in case of PCs.

Also, does this mean that Reliance is no longer associated with the One Laptop Per Child project? Last year, RCom had announced a pilot with OLPC in Maharashtra, in a tribal village at Khairat (near Karjat, Maharashtra). The project had planned to cover “more than 25,000 towns and 60,000 villages” by March 2008. So obviously things didn’t go according to plan. Take this current announcement from RCom as, well, just an announcement, and hope for an increase in Internet penetration.

Related: 3G India: BSNL 3G Service Already Operational - 2Mbps Via EVDO for Rs 750/month