The Hindu Business Line : Hathway plans to launch digital video services soon

HATHWAY Cable and Datacom Pvt Ltd is planning to launch digital video services as well as Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony in a few months.

While the Reliance Infocomms and the Tata Indicoms of the country are readying their networks to offer pan-India broadband triple-play (voice, data and video) services, Hathway, an MSO (which also provides cable TV services) with Internet services in ten cities in the country, is quietly going ahead introducing triple-play services of its own.

The subscriber would be sold a digital set top box enabled for Internet access through which he would also get digital quality video. The box will likely cost around Rs 3,150, said Mr Jayant R. Changrani, Vice-President, ISP Network, Hathway Cable and Datacom Pvt Ltd.

For VoIP services, a voice gateway would be connected to the Hathway network, which, being an Internet Service Provider, can offer VoIP services. Through VoIP retail cards a whole host of services would be offered, he said.

Although Hathway will find the competition for corporate clients difficult with large players such as Tata Indicom, BSNL and Reliance Infocomm entering the fray, it is very confident on the home retail front, especially on account of Hathway's strong relationship with local cable operators (LCOs), whom broadband Internet providers are now urgently seeking out for last-mile access for quick deployment of services.

Hathway offers broadband connections through Ethernet cabling as well as through co-axial cabling. "Although we are a cable company, we are also laying our own Ethernet," said Mr Changrani. But here too, it is the local cable operator who maintains the front end.

Later on, when the set top boxes start getting sold, the cable operator will become the direct selling agent (DSA) for the devices, he said.

According to Hathway (a Rajan Raheja group company with STAR as a stakeholder), it had 24 per cent of the market share of India's high-speed connections which were around 2.26 lakh as of June 30, 2004. Quarter-on-quarter growth is more than 20 per cent.

Taking subscriber verticals, 40 per cent of Hathway's customers are in the home segment, 25 per cent in the corporate segment, 20 per cent in the small and medium enterprises segment and around 15 per cent in the segment consisting of hotels, educational institutions and the like.

Some large corporates such as KPMG use Hathway's Internet service, said Mr Changrani.

Hathway's latest offering is a new broadband package called Silver Super Rush which offers speeds of up to 512 kbps through cable for Rs 250 per month subject to a data transfer limit of 2400 MB annually.