Zee Tele plans foray into ISP and portal business

BANGALORE: Zee Telefilms Ltd. (ZTL) plans to invest Rs 400 crore over the next three years to develop its new ISP and portal business, called 'ZeeNEXT'. E-Connect India Ltd., a 100 per cent subsidiary of ZTL, is managing the Internet foray. Access would be possible through conventional telephone line, television cable or the planned direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast format. Both PCs and televisions can be hooked up to the system, operating for some time now as a 200-user-strong pilot project in Bangalore.

What would make Zee's service stand out is its high speed which reduces download time, E-Connect President and COO Sunil Jasuja said. Speed would, however, vary with the type of delivery system opted for by the subscriber and tariff would vary with the delivery format chosen.

Zee, which also owns Siticable, has plans to upgrade physical links with fibre optic cables. The company is open to offering its Internet services to other cable companies. To ensure adequate bandwidth Zee would commission over the next 4-6 months its own set of international gateways. Key to Zee's Internet services taking off in a big way would be the cost of Web linkage through television cable, for which the price of cable modems must come down from the current level of Rs 15,000-20,000 to a price comparable with that of telephone modems. The portal content ranges from e-mail to live news, auctions, broking, shopping and radio. Its distinctive features were described as entertainment coverage, customization, Webcasting and online e-commerce.