Press Release about icontrol: The IPTV

Read my first post to know more about icontrol.

Aksh Optifibre, a public listed company, the second largest company and a large-scale manufacturer of cable and optical fibre. It was incorporated in the year 1986 as a private limited company and was converted into a public limited company on 13th March 1994. Aksh has two plants at Bhiwadi, for manufacturing optical fibre cables and fibre, and another at Reengus, Rajasthan. Aksh has recently developed a new cost-effective concept called “Fibre-to-Home”, through which they expect to revolutionise the IT and telecom industry completely. It’s a concept that would bring wireless Voice, Audio, Video and Internet direct to home. The company is planning a Rs 200-crore expansion for the recent future. The company is betting big in the emerging IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) segment in India.

AKSH Optifibre Ltd. is the first company to launch icontrol brand in Delhi and Mumbai on to promote IPTV in Indiauin association with MTNL. Aksh has recently signed an agreement with BSNL also to provide IPTV services in 20 cities in North India , the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP (West) etc The company plans to add about 5 lakh subscribers for our IPTV services in Delhi and Mumbai in next 3 years. Aksh is investing close to $37 million in its services business on IPTV and VoIP platforms.

icontrol service provided by Aksh in association with MTNL is a IPTV based television connection that is to consumers to watch the TV programs they wish to view at their own convenient time. icontrol offers 120 channels, 200 movies on demand with rewind, fast forward and pause option. icontrol requires NO COMPUTER, NO INTERNET, NO BROADBAND, NO DVD PLAYER.

Speaking at the launch of icontrol, Dr Choudhari, MD, Aksh Optifibre said ” All icontrol subscribers can replay Live channels and view your favorite program time & again through Time shift TV. icontrol will let you do interactive gaming, messaging on television which are not available on cable and DTH. There is a misconception that for viewing IPTV, broadband and PC is necessary. You need not have any computers, special hardware or technical knowledge. icontrol will do to India, what PC did to US”

The I in icontrol stands for the Interactivity factor prevalent in IPTV. icontrol is revolutionary as all it needs is a TV, broadband is no longer required. IPTV in colloquial term stands for “Internet Protocol TV” simply means “Interactive Personalized TV”.

Aksh’s icontrol is designed so as to enable consumers to control the television, to convert the idiot box into a utility box and in establishing two-way communication for the consumer. This means you request for a program and you are delivered the same. The launch strategy for icontrol brand is to position “TV IS SERVANT”. icontrol promises it’s consumers, control over TV viewing. The IPTV/VOIP business is slated to grow in an exponential manner over the next few years. And it is estimated that in 3 years time, this division at Aksh alone can reach a turnover of around Rs 3500 crores.MTNL has 1.52 lakh broadband subscribers in Delhi and 1.83 lakh in Mumbai. MTNL will offer this service to its broadband subscribers using its existing broadband network. “Consumers have come to expect sterling services that are both innovative and affordable from MTNL,” said Shri RSP Sinha, chairman and managing director at MTNL. “We take the lead, yet again, in ushering in a true revolution in home entertainment with the country’s first IPTV service. IPTV provides an interactive viewing experience and allows for multitude of exciting revenue generating applications to be deployed. Our existing presence in more than four million homes in New Delhi and Mumbai through our broadband service will give MTNL a tremendous headstart in changing the way people watch television.”Aksh Optifiber aims to provide IPTV service to 450,000 subscribers in Mumbai and Delhi, for which it utilizes MTNL’s existing broadband network as the content delivery backbone and enable users to get services such as video on demand, broadband, TV channels, time-shifted TV, and video conferencing.

The service, which will utilize MTNL’s existing broadband network as the content delivery backbone, will consist of traditional broadcast television, video- and music-on-demand, videoconferencing capabilities and time-shifted TV, allowing users to access television content on any channel up to one week in the past.

About the Owners: Choudhari and Navani family originally promoted AOL with Dr. Kailash S. Choudhari as the sole promoter. Dr. Choudhari is a technocrat with over 15 years of experience in the cable industry. He holds a stake of 19% in AOL. AOL originally used to manufacture and export PVC and PE insulated speciality cables before diversifying into optical fibre cables.

MTNL and Aksh launch icontrol in Delhi and Mumbai; Know basics of icontrol

This morning when i picked up my Delhi Times, There was a fullpage advt talking about some "icontrol", which is a new IPTV service { i think so..} presented by MTNL and Aksh Optifibre. So, I thought, lemme use my Googling skills to find out more about this service as many of my fellow Netizens are trying to find the same. Google Trends tells me that that there is a sharp increase in the number of people searching about iControl on internet from the places like New Delhi.
Ok. So Lets try to find out what is really "icontrol" is...

Firstly lets talk about IPTV:
IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is a system where a digital television service is delivered using Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. A general definition of IPTV is television content that, instead of being delivered through traditional broadcast and cable formats, is received by the viewer through the technologies used for computer networks.
icontrol advt says that you do not need any broadband service or telephone to use this service, Thats right, icontrol will use a optical fibre cable to transfer television content to you TV. Ad it is totally based on computer netwokrs so you will have an added advantage to control what you are going to watch.


icontrol tarrifs

Delhi :

* Free Setup Box against fully refundable security deposit of Rs. 999.
* Pay Rs.199 per month to get icontrol service through MTNL.
* No Telephone , No computer, No DVD Player, No Internet / Broadband required for using icontrol

Mumbai :

* icontrol currently for MTNL broadband subscribers.
* Free Setup box against fully refundable security deposit of Rs. 999.
* Pay Rs. 100 per month to get icontrol service through MTNL.
* No Telephone , No computer, No DVD Player, No Internet / Broadband required for using icontrol



But since it has just been launched, I too was not able to go through the service, but i hope this change the viewing experience of Delhi TV viewers.