In the last month or so, a number of feel-good stories have cropped up where consumers have stuck it to the corporates. First up, there was the case of a lawyer winning a Rs. 9 refund from MTNL after a protracted 18 year battle.
MTNL in association with Aksh Optifibre today announced the launch of India’s first legal and cheapest Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services in Mumbai. The service will enable MTNL broadband subscribers to call US, UK, Canada and Australia at rates as low as Rs 1 per minute changing the voice calling experience forever.
The co-branded portal, mtnl.aol.in will offer a compelling combination of AOL products: easy to use e-mail service, instant messenger, content straddling across channels like Cricket, Bollywood, Hollywood, music including integrated videos in many channels, in addition to MTNL utilities like services and product offerings, games, tariff plans and customer care, an AOL statement said.
MTNL are said to be planning WiMAX pilot projects in Delhi and Mumbai. Similarly, BSNL are said to be planning projects in Rohtak and Chennai.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has not yet assigned frequency spectrum for WiMAX services. Once TRAI assigns spectrum for WiMAX and decides on its pricing, MTNL will offer WiMAX commercially to its subscribers. This will, of course, depend on the success of its pilot projects.
Link: Indiatimes Infotech.
Time broadband service who are apparently the primary content providers for MTNL's forthcoming IPTV rollout, have tied up with Verimatrix to add user-specific watermarking to all digital content.
Verimatrix, developer of the most widely deployed IPTV content protection system with tier one operators, today announced at CommunicAsia 2006 that its Verimatrix Content Authority System (VCAS) and patent-pending VideoMark(TM) user-specific forensic watermarking will be deployed on the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) Delhi network. Time Broadband Service of India is providing the content delivery network as the first broadband content partner for state-owned incumbent MTNL's IPTV service, which is the first commercial video-tier rich-media service in India.
Also of interest is the brief mention of H.264 compatible set-top boxes. Related link: X264 library.
Full story: VoIP magazine.
