The Hindu : New Delhi News : IT’s all about sangam

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Friday, Mar 21, 2008
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New Delhi

IT’s all about sangam

Anand Parthasarathy

‘Convergence India’ showcases confluence of voice, data

- Photo: Anand Parthasarthy

Food for thought: Cisco showcased interactive TV solutions at the Convergence India show in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: Home is where the telecom industry’s heart is – your home. Indians scooping up mobile phones at the rate of 8 million a month might be ready for the next stop on the road to broadband nirvana: brand new home systems which bring a masala mix of TV-based infotainment, Bollywood-on-demand and basic voice and message services.

That seems to be the perception of many among the 600-odd global and Indian information technology and communication players who are showcasing their wares at the 16th annual Convergence India show now on at Delhi’s Pragati Maidan.

Touted as the largest such happening in Asia, the event is a good bell-weather of where industry perceives the next big opportunity lies – and this year the consensus seems to be: Get into people’s homes, with the message: ‘Forget your primitive cable TV-wallah; it is time to move on to new systems that will give you the filmi entertainment of your choice at the click of a remote, even as it converges the twin worlds of the PC and the TV on one flat LCD screen.

Cisco’s Indian engineers have helped create a set top box which offers home users the ability to interact with their cable operators to order video content of their choice. A leading regional cable TV company is conducting trials with Cisco, prior to launching the first such service in India. Bangalore-based Innomedia has created another home-grown product along similar lines that is already serving large townships within the Reliance family in Jamnagar. By this year-end, Delhi should see offerings of interactive home TV, coupled with Internet, from a few providers.

The other big buzzword at the Convergence show is Wimax -- a faster, longer-range avatar of wireless networks like WiFi. The event’s key sponsor showed “cool” plug-ins that allow laptops to latch on to WiMax nets just as hot-shot executives currently use mobile service data cards to access Internet .

Mobile providers

And Vanu Inc, the company started by Vanu Bose, son of Amar Bose of Bose acoustics fame, showed how the sangam principle could be used even by mobile providers: their demo had 3 GSM networks and one CDMA phone network – all sharing a small desk-sized rack of electronics.

When you preach convergence to your customers, you must practise it as well, Vanu seemed to say. In another age a filmi hero asked his “Radha” in one of Bollywood’s cruder phrases: Sangam hoga ke nahi? At Convergence India there were no such doubts. The Ganga and Jamuna of PC and TV were made to merge – this year.

The event concludes today (Friday).

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