ESPN Star Sports HD channels now available on select cable networks across India
ESPN Star Sports, the body which owns the two first 24×7 sports HD channels in India (ESPN HD & Star Cricket HD) have signed a deal to allow select cable operators in India to show their HD channels. The channels are available to 3 cable networks – Incable, 7Star in Mumbai & UCN in Central India. Subscribers of these digital cable operators can now enjoy these HD channels by upgrading to a HD set top box.
All the cable operators in the metro cities are required to go digital by March 2012. This will be followed by digitization of the entire country’s cable system by the end of 2014. This should give the cable operators in non metro areas to educate their subscribers and start supplying HD compatible set top boxes to them. In the metro cities though, operators will have to launch lucrative schemes and high quality DVR enabled set top boxes at cheap prices if they want to rope in subscribers, as their DTH competitors already have a good infrastructure in place for this.
Nonetheless, this is great news for subscribers. In addition to HD channels, digitization of the cable industry will also enable service providers to offer high speed broadband connections to customers. A segment which desperately needs a healthy competition in India.
TomTom Launches GPS Navigators in India
TomTom – the Amsterdam based navigator company has launched GPS navigators in India. The devices will compete directly with rival company MapMyIndia’s navigation products and will offer touch & voice controls, emergency assist and bluetooth compatibility in addition to standard GPS features like turn by turn navigation & lane assistance.
The three models Via 100, Via 125 and Via 120 will be available in 4.3 inch and 5 inch displays with a starting price tag of ? 15,000.
Airlines planning to introduce mobile boarding passes in India
Despite advancements in the telecommunication arena with the launch of 3G, India is still far behind other countries in terms of mobile enablement of services. We reported a few weeks back that Indian Railways is now allowing paperless tickets on trains (although, some of our readers were fined because they were not carrying a paper ticket). Now its airlines’ turn.
SITA – the company which builds IT solutions for airlines is in talks with India based airlines to provide them with the infrastructure to enable travelers check in online and get their boarding passes delivered to their smartphones.
Airtel, Idea & Vodafone to offer pan India 3G roaming
The three major 3G operators in India – Airtel, Idea & Vodafone have join hands to offer pan India 3G roaming to their subscribers in the country. This move was inevitable as TRAI only allowed five 3G operators per circle. Those who could not get the 3G license in all the circles will have to tie up with other operators in order to provide 3G data roaming to its subscribers. And without this move, subscribing to a 3G data plan was totally useless if you are a frequent traveller.
In any case, this is good news for the subscribers. No word on whether the operators plan to charge anything extra or not. We hope they don’t.
[via BGR India]
MTS offers high speed internet connection on Delhi – Jaipur stretch of National Highway 8
MTS is offering high speed mobile broadband connectivity on the Delhi – Jaipur stretch of National Highway 8. Users on this stretch will be able to enjoy high speed data based services like live TV, video on demand on their laptops and smart phones.
MTS says that they plan to extend their network to other National Highways in future.
[via BGR India]
Airtel sets 1Mbps as the new broadband minimum, increases FUP quota
Airtel has set a new minimum definition to broadband plans in India. Despite TRAI defining broadband as a minimum of 256Kbps, Airtel has set 1Mbps as the new minimum for its broadband plans across India, with 2Mbps being the minimum in 10 of its top cities namely Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. In addition, Airtel has also increased the FUP quota on many of its unlimited plans. This will give a lot of consolation to the power users who have been pissed off with Airtel’s low FUP quotas on its unlimited plans.
The new Airtel plans are as follows:
Airtel partners with BigFlix to launch on demand video streaming service
Airtel has tied up with BigFlix to launch on demand video streaming service in India. BigFlix is a Netflix type service in India offering a library of DVD quality movies & TV shows which you can stream to your computer, laptop or tablet device (no iPad support though as the site requires Flash). Previously, their streaming service was only available outside of India and only offered the DVD rental service in India. Sadly, they do not offer streaming to devices like Apple TV and have no HD content.
Advantages of Airtel’s plan:
- Streaming from BigFlix.com will not consume your monthly FUP quota
- Charges for the service (INR 229 per month) will be added to your Airtel broadband bill
Under the service, users can enjoy over 500 Movies along with 100 TV shows, 100 trailers and 100 music videos from the BigFlix library.
I checked out a few trailers and found that the quality is below par and is surely not DVD like even remotely as they claim. Also, I guess the sound will be stereo as opposed to 5.1 in a DVD. Nothing new, Reliance has a history of claiming services they cannot deliver. And it looks like they have managed to infect Airtel with this bug.
But that is just my opinion, and if you want to subscribe to the service, you can visit www.airtelmovies.com or SMS “movie” to 53636, OR call 1800 200 3101 for information or subscription to airtel Movies. Watching ‘airtel Movies’ requires standard Macromedia Flash player version 10.2 and no other specific software.
[via airtel.in]
Is Airtel becoming the at&t of India?
+ 3G = 
?
I have always been a big fan (and advocate) of Airtel. Whether it was their mobile service, broadband or DTH, I always recommended Airtel to my friends and family members. And this was not because of some brand love that I had for the company. It was because Airtel had always more than exceeded my expectation in terms of Quality of Service & customer care. With superb 2G network coverage across India and virtually 100% uptime of its broadband services, Airtel was my number one choice when it came to choosing a telecommunications provider. Sadly, things are changing 
.
I was super excited when Airtel launched their 3G network in India. I had been using MTNL’s 3G service for a year and though it was offering decent 3G data speeds on my iPhone 4 & iPad 3G, it had pathetic network coverage when it came to vanilla phone calls. I always carried an Airtel number as a backup because MTNL’s network could betray you anytime. When Airtel launched their 3G services in Delhi, I ported my number to Airtel thinking that my days of carrying two mobile phones were over. Little did I know that I was totally mistaken.
Switching to Airtel did have its advantages in forms of awesome 3G data speed to boast in front of my friends, however, it brought a hell lot of nuances with it:
- Low signal strength in areas where I used to get 5 bars all the time with Airtel’s 2G network.
- Call drops when walking from one room to another in the same house
- Decrease in signal strength & voice quality when holding the phone between my shoulder & ear with my shoulder as the support (typical Indian hands free operation)
- Number unreachable
- Switching to EDGE multiple times in a data heavy app (This is a big nuance with Skype on iPhone)
MTNL launches 10Gbps fiber to the home (FTTH) broadband service in Mumbai
State owned Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Limited has announced the launch of high speed FTTH (Fiber To The Home) broadband service in the Mumbai circle with the Delhi circle launch to follow on 1st May 2011.
The service will enable consumers to enjoy high speed broadband (up to 10Gbps) over a self healing network of fiber optics. The network will have ample bandwidth to offer advanced services like IPTV, HDTV, 3DTV, video on demand , Bandwidth on Demand, Video conferencing etc.
Plans will start from INR 649 for limited usage. Unlimited plans are available for INR 999 for 1 Mbps, INR 3499 for 4 Mbps & INR 5999 for 10 Mbps.
[via TelecomTalk]
Airtel’s 3G services now available in Hyderabad
Airtel has finally launched their 3G services in the cyber city of Hyderabad in India. This launch was much anticipated as Hyderabad is one of the biggest IT hubs in the country and has the potential of being one of the largest 3G subscriber base in India.
So far, we are getting mixed reactions for Airtel’s 3G performance in other parts of India. It will be interesting to see the performance in Hyderabad.
