Computers Today October 16-31, 1998 Country Buzz Pg 3

October 16-31, 1998 COUNTRY BUZZ

Indian VSAT Operators Miffed by Bad Infrastructure and Stifling Policies

Abu Shafquat The restrictive Government policies have hampered the growth of the VSAT industry in India. The nine-odd VSAT operators, who commenced their operations from 1995 onwards, are not able to add new customers due to the lack of availability of bandwidth. To add to their woes, the licence conditions restrict them to utilising only the extended C-band on the Insat 2B and 2C satellites, while VSAT companies worldwide utilise Ku-band as well as C-band frequencies, and also the use of foreign satellites--something which is considered a sacrilege for Indian VSAT operators. As a result, there has been a lacklustre growth of the VSAT industry with close to 7,000 VSAT installations in the country.

Drawing the attention to the crisis faced by the Indian VSAT operators was Simon Bull, the Global VSAT forum chairman, who was in the country recently to address a VSAT workshop in New Delhi. It was organised by the VSAT Service Providers Association (VSPA) and Global VSAT Forum, an industry body set up by players such as British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Hughes Network Systems, among others. A similar representation by Shashi Ullal, president of VSPA and also president and managing director Hughes Escorts Communications, depicting the sad state of affairs in the VSAT industry, points out that there is a lack of transponder space in the extended C-band which is affecting the expansion of the customer networks and execution of new orders.

Abu Shafquat (see photo), chief executive, Telstra V-Comm, says, the industry will become unviable if the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) does not consider VSAT infrastructure for providing Internet access to customers by allowing VSATs to carry intra- as well as inter-ISP traffic. It has been argued that to build a backbone for the ISPs and other services, using VSATs, the bandwidth requirements will be high.

New Net Database is Out

The world's first Internet database, Oracle 8i, was previewed by Oracle Software India Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp., recently to an audience of more than 100 hardware and software partners, and analysts. Currently in beta testing, it is set for launch commercially during end-'98. A developer's release of Oracle iFS will ship with Oracle 8i and will be released in 1999.

It is also the first database to integrate Java programs, Web sites and Internet content, and its features would help companies and developers to build Internet-savvy applications that lower costs, enhance customer and supplier interaction, and provide global information access across platforms and across the enterprise, claimed Shekhar Dasgupta, country manager, Oracle India. "With Internet subscriber number touching 100,000 now, an exponential increase from just 2,000 two years back, we expect Indian companies to adapt to the technology faster," Dasgupta added.

He said that Oracle India will target markets such as telecom, manufacturing, financial, energy and power and transportation. Oracle 8i brings the world's first database-resident Java Virtual Machine (Java VM) for storing and executing Java code on the server.

Cellular Operators, DOT, on Warpath

Efforts by union Communications Minister Sushma Swaraj for attracting foreign investments have received a setback with the Indian telecom sector once again heading for a long-drawn legal battle, this time between the cellular operators and the Department of Telecommunications (DOT).

While the minister rejected the demand of cellular operators for a two-year moratorium on the licence fee payment, she met their request for extending the validity of the licence period halfway, by raising it from 10 to 15 years instead of 20 years as originally sought for. Fears of an impending serious convulsion in the cellular industry have arisen with the DOT asking the eight cellular operators in the four metros to pay up the agreed per subscriber charge of nearly Rs 6,000 per line. However, there is a serious possibility of some of the operators going to the court to resolve the issue. Majority of the cellular operators have been badly hit in the past year and they are already in the red.

Bunka India to Cash in on Microsoft Markets

Two-year old Bunka Orient India, a fully-owned Japanese software major specialising in software development tools for Microsoft platforms, is hyper-active these days. Its new chief executive officer Shiv Prasad Chittora is hoping to end his maiden year with a turnover of Rs 5 crore--almost double that at the time he took charge.

"The world is in the grip of Microsoft fever and we have the expertise on this platform. We've done well in China and see no reason why the same cannot be repeated here," declares a confident Chittora. Bunka Orient develops ActiveX controls (software components) in India as well as in Japan for the domestic and global market. Besides, it develops utilities to increase productivity in software development for Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms.

Chennai IT Soars High

There is a lot of excitement among software companies, particularly in the southern city of Chennai. Two city-based companies have made it big--globally, that is. In the process, ATL has outpaced the software majors of Silicon Valley.

The software start-up Advanced Technology Labs (ATL) has launched the world's first software development centre specialising in Component Object Model (COM), a technology pioneered by Microsoft. According to chief executive Raj Kumar, the COM Competent Centre, the only R&D centre in the world, will provide Indian outfits opportunities for the first time to acquire the power of the technology. COM is a revolutionary method of building software applications that endow the application with the power to fight obsolescence. Being a universal interpreter, COM makes it possible for millions of computers to talk to each other, while running different programming languages. Meanwhile, another Chennai-based software start-up Goldwire Softweb Pvt. Ltd has launched Flash2VB, an all-new software for developers, which reduces the time and cost of migrations from character user interface applications to the graphical user interface client-server environment in MS Visual Basic. According to Microsoft Corp officials, Flash2VB is under testing and evaluation at its own facilities and two other Beta-test sites.

Issue Contents Write to us Subscriptions Syndication