THE TELECOM service providers jostling for a higher share of the broadband pie in the State Capital could find a new ally in the months to come—the cable operators.
An interesting dimension of the broadband war is that about 250 cable operators with over one lakh connections in the city could turn the fortunes of a telecom company for even better days if cable operators decide to select a single company en masse to offer broadband services on a digital platform.
“Offering broadband Internet services through cable operators has its advantages. The foremost advantage is that a PC or a TV at home could get a bouquet of television programmes and a high-speed Internet service through the fibre optic backbone of the telecom service provider and the digital broadcasting equipment of the cable operator”, Anil Upadhyaya, President of UP Cable Operators’ Welfare Association told HT Lucknow Live.
He said Reliance Infocomm engineers in Lucknow had already completed their four- angle digital mapping project to identify broadcasting locations of cable operators from where Internet services could be provided using a fibre optic network.
“This four-angle digital mapping exercise by Reliance Infocomm was taken up one-and-a-half years back. This could easily provide a clue that telecom service providers had cable operators in their mind for distributing broadband connections well before cable operators decided to go digital in the city, he said.
“In the broadcasting parlance, the cable operators would gradually build up the CAT V technical capability which would allow telecom service providers to synergise their broadband services with satellite broadcasting services while using digital infrastructure of cable operators”, Upadhyaya said.
{{/usCountry}}“In the broadcasting parlance, the cable operators would gradually build up the CAT V technical capability which would allow telecom service providers to synergise their broadband services with satellite broadcasting services while using digital infrastructure of cable operators”, Upadhyaya said.
{{/usCountry}}“Cable operators are looking for value addition in services in a big way. There is also a keen interest among them (cable operators) to go for alliances with telecom operators who could provide them the technology to deliver value added services”, he said.
“We have this simple agenda now to work collectively in the cable business for entering into technical and business agreements with telecom service providers with the hope that cable operators would be able to keep their technology upgradation costs down by utilising the world class infrastructure of telecom service providers and other broadband services companies, Upadhyaya added.
Not just in Lucknow, the cable operators in the entire UP region are trying to combine Internet and television channel distribution capabilities on a digital platform. The prime basis of having Internet connections is also to share revenues on broadband traffic after notifying the government of all the new services being offered by the cable operators in the state.