TRAI said it had received 29 comments in response to its consultation paper and with intentions to strike a balance between providing a good TV viewing experience to consumers and protecting the commercial interests of TV broadcasters, it has released these regulations regarding the duration of advertisements carried in TV channels.

Highlights of the new regulations

-  Maximum Duration Limit of Advertisements: TRAI has mandated that the duration of advertisements in the TV channels should be limited to 12 minutes per clock hour and the leftover advertisement duration (if any) in any clock hour will not be carried over to the next hour. These advertisements will include all types of advertisements including advertising spots, info-commercials and self-promotional advertisements from the broadcaster.

- Advertisement breaks only during breaks for live sporting events: In case of live broadcast of sporting events, the advertisements should be carried out by the broadcaster only during the breaks in the sporting action e.g. half time in football or hockey match, lunch/ drinks break an change of overs  in cricket matches, game/set change in case of lawn tennis etc

- Time gaps between consecutive advertisements breaks during telecast of movies and other programmes: The minimum time gap between any two consecutive advertisement breaks i.e. the end of one advertisement session and the start of the next advertisement session during a programme should not be less than 15 minutes. In case of movies, the time gap between two consecutive advertisement breaks will be 30 minutes and there is no such conditions for live sporting events, considering the nature of these events.

- No Partial Advertisements: TRAI mandated that there would be only full screen advertisements, and part screen advertisements or drop down advertisements will not be allowed. This would certainly come as a blow to sports broadcasters who sell screen overlays as part of ad inventory. Also, we believe that broadcasters would not be able to promote their own shows/events through overlays.

- Audio Level of Advertisements: TRAI stated that broadcasters should ensure that the audio level of advertisements should not be higher than the audio level of the programmes.

In March 2012, TRAI had stated that the existing provisions prescribe that no programme should carry advertisements exceeding 12 minutes per hour, which may include up to 10 minutes per hour of commercial advertisements, and up to 2 minutes per hour of a channel’s self – promotional programmes. The provisions in the rules also provided that all advertisements should be clearly distinguishable from the programme and should not in any manner interfere with the programme viz use of lower part of screen to carry captions, static or moving alongside the programme. However, it had noticed that channels were not abiding by these rules.

Further, TRAI had also said that some of the consumer organizations had put forth an opinion that there is little justification for pay channels to show advertisements since they already pay subscription fees for viewing pay channels.

Download: Regulations | Press Release

He has also said that the proposal was submitted without any public consultation involving stakeholder groups, members of the civil society, private sector, technical and academic communities and others, since it represents their interests and would change their role completely, if accepted. He has pointed out that the internet was not built by governments and should not be regulated by them, and that there was no reason to change what is currently free, open and working well. He has said that the proposal doesn’t explain the reasons for the shift in the government’s stand.

Chandresekhar has expressed concern over the government’s proposal of establishing a body comprising of 50 politicians/ bureaucrats controlling the internet, while multi-stake holders move to an advisory role. He has called for the strengthening of the multi-stakeholder model, instead of letting a government body with the UN logo taking charge.

While we’re in agreement that there should be some focus on multi-stakeholder-ism, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, during an interview with MediaNama had shed some light on how the proposal might actually change the shape of things, and dilute the role of the US in internet governance. He had cited the examples of laws proposed in the House and the Senate in the US, including the ones allowing DNS Seizures, which could affect the whole world. So, these might not be as evil as they’re being perceived to be.

Also read: India finds itself in centre of Internet governance controversy… Again

Related:
- Why India’s Proposal For A UN Committee For Internet-Related Policy Isn’t All That Evil

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Television guide company What’s On India has launched an open graph app on Facebook called ‘Social EPG’, allowing users to share their viewing preferences on Facebook with an intent to discover new TV shows, films, matches and documentaries through social recommendations from their Facebook friends.

The company informs that it has integrated Facebook login on its website and is currently working on extending Facebook sign-in mechanism across all its mobile and tablet apps. Whats On India currently offers apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Symbian and BlackBerry platforms.

To get TV recommendations from their friends, users will have to log in to WhatsOnIndia.com using their Facebook credentials and grant the requisite permissions to access their Facebook account including access to posts in the user’s newsfeed and the ability to create Facebook events for setting reminders.

What Next? Going forward, the company intends to extend this social TV recommendations to include other social networks like Twitter and Google+. Further, third party app developers will also be able to integrate these features in their apps since the social features are powered by What’s On India’s proprietary EPG-on-cloud platform launched last year.

The app is not the first of its kind, and Indian DTH operator Tata Sky had integrated social sharing  through its TV Guide+Remote app, last year. This does take it a step forward since it’s not limited to users of a particular service, and is web based. Perhaps, What’s On India could also integrate social discussions, to make the service more interactive.

Other What’s On India developments: Last month, What’s On India’s television channel distribution & connectivity monitoring vertical TV Street Maps (TSM) had revealed that it had expanded its reach to 1000 head-ends across 450 cities and had stated its intentions to expand its reach nationwide. At the time of writing this post, the service claims to offer a reach to 1200 head-ends across 475 cities.

In October 2011, the company had raised undisclosed amount of funding from Intel Capital and had received FIPB’s nod to issue preference shares to foreign players in return for an allowed investment of Rs 31.49 crore. Strangely, it had received a similar approval in June for an allowed investment of Rs 99 lakh. Apart from Intel Capital, What’s On India is backed by investors like Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Wealth First.

Related:

Dhingana & NDTV Launch Open Graph Apps On Facebook; Social Reader Apps Losing Popularity?
Gaana.com & Saavn Launch Open Graph Apps On Facebook

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Open wallet? Airtel currently has a prepaid payment system license which allows users to deposit cash into Airtel Money, but they can only use it for payments there after. Because prepaid payment instruments are a closed loop system, they cannot withdraw cash, without a tie-up with a bank. However, this is not exactly an open wallet, and mainly targets the migrant population from Eastern UP and Bihar, as withdrawals will only be possible in the particular regions. So, if a user in Delhi wants to send cash to another user in the same city or in Mumbai, withdrawals would not be possible through Airtel outlets, even if both have an Axis Bank powered no frills account. Also, the service would require users to submit their KYC (know your customer) documents for identification, in order to open an account.

Earlier, Airtel had partnered with India’s largest commercial bank State Bank of India to announce a joint venture to offer customers a similar service. Back then, SBI had stated that both the companies were to invest Rs 100 crore in the business and this tie-up was supposed to be an exclusive one with the bank. However, this joint venture fell through in December 2011, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was reportedly apprehensive about letting a telecom operator enter the banking space through equity participation.

Bank account features: The account will allow users to conduct banking transactions including cash deposit, money transfer and withdrawals, in addition to paying them savings account interest. However, as we mentioned, the focus is mainly on remmitances, as the solutions will be initially offered in the top four remittance corridors involving Delhi and Mumbai on the sending side and Bihar and East UP on the receiving side. The company plans to extend it to other remmitance corridors, in the future. It also plans to introduce banking products and services like micro Recurring Deposits, micro Fixed Deposits, small loans and micro-insurance products, through the platform.

Airtel plans to leverage its distribution network of over 1.5 million outlets, and Axis Bank branches for reaching out to the customer, mainly targeting the unbanked segment. Airtel also intends to offer remittance facility to other bank accounts through NEFT, in the future.

How mobile payment platforms should work: It’s interesting to note that Axis Bank offers a similar product, MyCash, with Idea Cellular, with remittance facility offered in the Dharavi – Allahabad remittance corridor. So this service is not exclusive. So, what’s stopping telcos and banks to come together and launch a one wallet, multiple banks, multiple services mobile wallet?  An Airtel Money customer should have options of multiple banks (wherever he/she has an account) to choose from for depositing money into the Airtel Money wallet, withdrawing money from the Airtel Money account, and also for transferring to another users bank account.

The RBI, with its hesitant and closed (albeit relatively secure) approach to mobile payments is not doing enough. The banks have done precious little to promote mobile payments, and only Airtel has been awarded a prepaid payments license. However, there’s some hope left- the NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India), which offers mobile money transfers on its Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) platform for 39 banks, is seeking an approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to make the mobile payments services by telecom companies like Airtel Money and m-wallet services offered by banks, interconnect.

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Sab Kanaujia has stepped down as the President, Entertainment Services, Verismo Networks and GM, Mela with immediate effect. Sab Kanaujia stated in his personal blog, that the reason for his resignation was the disagreement with Prakash Bhalerao, the CEO of Verismo Networks on the strategy and the direction in which Verismo’s multi-platform consumer entertainment service Mela was headed.

He claimed that the Verismo Board agreed with his strategy on several aspects but were not ready to confront Prakash, who is a majority stakeholder in Verismo. Going forward, Kanaujia writes that he has submitted a proposal to the Verismo board to spin Mela out from Verismo as an independent entity controlled by the management team, and is currently in discussion with the board. He stated that if they don’t reach on an agreement, he will open a new company for which he is already in talks with a few potential strategic partners. He said:

“South Asia is the most diverse content factory in the world. Bollywood is the biggest film industry in the world from annual production and consumption perspective. There is not a single service today that fulfills the demand of global fans for this content in a convenient manner. If one gets the execution right with the right strategy, it presents an extremely attractive business opportunity. We have some really interesting ideas on how to capitalize on this opportunity.”

Verismo in India

In August 2011, Intel Capital funded Verismo Networks had acquired Sab Kanaujia’s Digital Entertainment Corporation of India (DECI) and launched an entertainment services division in India with Sab Kanaujia as its President (Entertainment Services). A month later, it launched a consumer entertainment service called Mela which offered premium South Asian video content including 40 live television channels covering news and entertainment, 250 Bollywood and regional movies and select premium videos spread across different categories. The company had stated that the service will initially target expatriate South Asian community in the United States and extend it to other regions in a phased manner.

The company had launched an iOS app for Mela in January 2012. While the app was available for free download, there was a monthly subscription fee of $4.99/month for unlimited access to the company’s movie catalogue which it had claimed to have more than 1,000 movies including titles like Bheja Fry 2, Dostana, Band Baaja Baaraat, New York, and others.

In March 2012, Verismo’s Mela had launched a First Day First Show initiative, wherein it released Bollywood movies in international markets simultaneous to their theatrical release in India. These movies were available across various platforms like Roku, iPad and on their Mela HD Set Top Box.

Earlier this month, Verismo had released its MelaTV app on multiple platforms like Roku, iPad, Android tablets, Windows and Mac OS desktops, and other Internet-enabled devices and had extended the service to all regions, allowing Indian users to access live TV and on demand content through various Internet connected devices. The app offered Tamil and Telugu entertainment content including entertainment channels, cooking shows, sports and live news, educational programs, and devotional videos along with an in-house movie channel called MelaFlix which aired Telugu and Tamil films and popular Bollywood titles on a subscription basis. The company had claimed that it had tied up with several content providers at launch, including Sun Network, Yash Raj Films, ETV Network, Shemaroo, and Telugu One among others.

Role in NBC Universal: Prior to his role in Mela and DECI, Sab Kanaujia served as the VP (Digital Product Strategy & Development) at NBC Universal for three years until he quit in October 2009. In this role, he was involved in NBC’s investment in NDTV Ltd and had spent quite a lot of time in India working with NDTV Convergence, significantly for the relaunch of NDTV.com. He was also responsible for the launch of NBCU Digital Solutions in India, which provided publishers with scalable digital solutions and had enabled the launch of TenSports.com as a cricket live-streaming destination in partnership with Ten Sports.

Related:

What Mela Plans To Do Differently From Other South Asian Content Ventures
NBC Universal Launches Digital Solutions Business In India; More Planned

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Real Estate Group Buying Portal Groffr.com has launched a new feature, called ‘Rent A Flat‘ allowing users to browse through listings of new flat/rooms available for rent, or post their flat requirements on the portal. In addition, the portal also features users who intend to rent out their flats or room. The company claims to offer flats and rooms without any brokerage.

By the looks of it, the Rent a Flat section is pretty basic and is essentially a directory of flat listings. Users can narrow down these listings based on whether they are looking for flats to rent in or rent out. They can also filter these listings based on the city and the locality. At the time of writing this article, the service seems to be available in 16 cities including Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Goa among others.

In order to post the flat requirements, users need to login to Groffr with their Facebook login credentials and grant access to your timeline. Interestingly, the site also asks user to grant permission to send SMS messages if the user has a phone number listed on their profile.

After granting the permission, users can post their requirements by sharing details about their location and budget preferences and the time period within which they need a flat. In a similar fashion, users who intend to offer their flat/room for rent can post requests stating their locality, budget and the time period till when the flat will be on offer. Its interesting to note that there are no discounts or group deals on these flats considering that Groffr is a group buying portal.

In July 2011, Groffr had raised around $1 million in its series A funding led by Indian Angel Network. The company had said that it will use the funds raised to expand its geographical presence to Delhi NCR, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Indore, along with increasing its workforce and investing in brand building. Groffr currently offers time bound group deals across various categories such as automobiles, real estate, electronics and others in several Indian cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Nagpur, Delhi, Jaipur, Gurgaon and Noida among others.

Other Players: Other players in this segment include InfoEdge’s property listing portal 99acres.com, Times Business Solutions owned MagicBricks.com and Consim Info’s IndiaProperty.com. Sulekha had launched a property site in October 2011 to offer property related information, including buy or sell property listings, rentals, information on localities and brokers, and others. Earlier this month, User reviews portal Mouthshut had introduced real estate developers listings and claimed to have 14,000 developer listings from 29 cities including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chandigarh, and Chennai among others. Classified listings sites also offer rental listings.

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, the minister also added that they have undertaken several projects to modernize, renovate and preserve libraries that comes under the Ministry of culture. These projects include digitization of old and rare books including various manuscripts, conserving and preserving these old and rare books and manuscripts using modern techniques, providing online access to the full texts and scholarly journals and maintaining an online public access catalog for library users.

The minister stated that RRRLF has released two separate grants to public libraries worth Rs 4.5 crores (Rs 4,53,29,800) and Rs 10 crore (Rs 10,19,94,316) in the year 2010-11 for modernization and building renovation purposes, respectively. The agency had previously released similar grants in 2009-10 and 2008-09 for the same purposes as indicated by the table below.

Related:

Delhi University Digitizes Texts…But Where Are They?
Indian Government To Use Social Media To Clear Doubts Around Digitalization

41 banks have so far signed up for IMPS with 7 banks including Catholic Syrian Bank , IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Andhra Bank, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, Bank of Baroda and Dhanlaxmi Bank in soft launch. The IMPS page now has customer care numbers, to enable people to get MMIDs.

Amongst banks, ICICI Bank issued the maximum numbers of MMIDs at 162.5 lakh followed by AxisBank with 64.31 lakh, SBI Bank with 37.5 lakh MMIDs and Kotak Mahindra Bank with 16.9 lakh MMIDs.The more the MMIDs, the more the likelihood that P2P transactions will take place, and maybe, there will be more transactions than there are MMIDs, but the figures for this month are again pretty dismal.

The NPCI is taking other steps to promote the service as well, including the introduction of a universal USSD code to access the service. We’d like to reiterate that all partner Banks are still not promoting the IMPS at a level necessary for its growth.

Related:

- March 2012: 33.87M IMPS Mobile Money IDs; 30,137 Transactions
- February 2012: 33.53M IMPS Mobile Money IDs; 22,997 Transactions
- January 2012: 18.33M IMPS Mobile Money IDs; 19,101 Transactions

On the whole, as much as the move to set up a Short Code Council is a positive move, there is “Bureaucracy” written all over these recommendations, and it appears to be a move to control a struggling VAS ecosystem, and will inhibit the growth of an independent content and services ecosystem, because approvals will mean that the SCC could be used to control content; this should be seen in the context of the TRAI’s  SMS Spam regulations which initially inhibited SMS based social networking and publishing.

However, these recommendations will have to be approved by the Department of Telecom, these which could take from a month to infinity, given the history of TRAI recommendations:

Application Service License

- Definition of Application Services:
“Application services are enhanced services, in the nature of non-core services, which either add value to the basic tele services or can be provided as standalone application services through telecommunication network. The basic services are standard voice calls, voice/non-voice messages, fax transmission and data transmission.”
- Licensing Application Service Providers through Authorization: Application Service Providers will have to apply for licensing to provide their service. The benefits of bringing ASPs under licensing are mentioned only from the governments point of view: “will meet the requirement of simplicity as well as meeting the necessary requirements in terms of security and proper conduct of telegraph.”
- Application Service Provider Terms & Conditions: The licensee needs to provide information on introduction of upgradation or addition of services to the TRAI and licensor (DoT) 15 days before launch.

Our Take:

- Data Services Too? We hope that the authority means that Application Service Providers are those who directly use the telecom network services like IVR and SMS, because if they also mean data transmission, then just about everything on the mobile Internet and all applications will come under the Application Service Provider definition.
- In the recommendation paper, the TRAI mentions multiple instances of “Licensing under Authorization”, in some cases where it has asked for a non-refundable processing fee of Rs 15,000, and an annual fee of Rs 10,000, and another instance where there has been “No entry fee, licence fee, bank guarantee and roll out obligation.” The terms for the ASP License have not been specified.
- Mandatory? It is not clear whether the authority recommends that taking an ASP license is mandatory for those providing applications.
- Benefits? It’s also not clear what benefit an ASP will receive on becoming a licensee. There is a carrot: “Once the recommendations for bringing ASPs under licensing regime are accepted, the Authority will consider the issues related to Interconnection between TSPs and ASPs. The Authority may consider related to Revenue share, MIS reconciliation and open access for application services at an appropriate time.”
- Bureaucracy: As of now, this move does two things – it increases the influence and the role of the regulator in the ecosystem, and given that ASPs will require licensing, it creates an unnecessary barrier to entry. For example, the licensor (i.e. DoT) and TRAI needs to be intimated about any upgradations or any additional provisioning of value addition at least 15 days before the introduction of these services. This adds a bureaucratic hurdle to cross, and will inhibit experimentation.
- Slippery Slope: Once application service providers come under registration, it’s likely to be a slippery slope of regulation. The TRAI, as it understands more and more about the ecosystem, can push for amendments, and each change will impact the business environment. Take a look at the ISP licensing regime – which went from a situation where anyone could become an ISP to a license fee payment regime, from 100% to 74% FDI, and a forced consolidation allowing only larger players to remain.

MediaNama’s recommendations to the TRAI were for not licensing or registration of application services.

Short Code Registry

- A Short Code Council (SCC), to be set up by the TRAI, which will allocate short codes in accordance with the National Numbering Plan to both ASPs and telecom operators independently. Application service provider can launch the service only after online approval by the SCC. A new or modified service will require a revised approval.
- Short Code Council will also centrally manage the details of short codes allotted, type of service provided under short code, tariff for the service and hosting details for application services, which can be used by customers for discovering the services interactively.
- Application Selection: “Appropriate fee, one time and recurring charges, should be charged for allocation of common short code by Short code Council so that only the genuine and serious content provider/ application service provider/entity should seek the same”
- Three month deadline for ASPs: The service needs to be operational within three months of allocation of a short code, else it will be presumed that the common short code has not been made operational and non-utilization of short code for a period of more than three months will be subject to cancellation of short code and reallocation to other applicants.
- 15 day deadline for telcos: Telecom service providers should open the common short code within a fortnight after the code is approved by the Short Code Council and update this information online with Short Code Council.

Our Take

- Not quite what we wanted: This move to free up Short Codes has been long pending, and it is welcome, but we’re concerned that the additional bureaucratic process might inhibit the growth of an independent short code ecosystem. Our recommendations were for setting up a Short Code Registry on the lines of ICANN, and allow anyone to register and purchase network access and independently launch services. A subjective selection process means that instead of dealing with telecom operator VAS department subjectivity before launching a service, businesses may have to deal with regulatory subjectivity (and an increased lack of understanding of consumer trends).
- Short codes only? One also doesn’t know whether this will have an impact on long code messaging sevices as well, but at present, it doesn’t look like it will.
- On Deadlines: There’s a deadline of three months for provisioning, but no indication of what will happen if the telecom operator doesn’t allow provisioning of service, and no penalty for telecom operators specified, though there is one for ASPs. Can an ASP be held to ransom by a telecom operator because he runs the risk of losing his short code? The three month deadline is a good idea because it prevents squatting on short codes, but cancellation should also take into account the way this industry functions.

MediaNama’s recommendations to the TRAI 

a. Separation of ownership of identity of the Digital Service Provider/MVAS company from provisioning by Access Service Provider/Telecom Operator by creating a Common Short Code Registry, governed by a Common Short Code Registrar. At present, Digital Service Providers/MVAS companies do not own the short codes they operate.

b. Separate billing for services/content from access charges, to bring transparency and standardization in consumer billing, and independence for the Digital Service Provider/MVAS company from Access Service Provider/Telecom Operator. We would recommend the removal of the existing revenue share mechanism as a means to ensure ubiquitous pricing mechanisms across digital platforms.

c. Enforce provisioning of independent mechanism for verification of billing, in order to address MIS issues, and bring billing for content and services in line with Mobile and Online Banking guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India, as well as regulations governing payment service providers.

Download our recommendations for an open ecosystem here.

MediaNama readers might recall that the Indian Railways had launched an alternative system for online ticketing, which, last we checked wasn’t working. Now the reservations page for CRIS points towards the IRCTC site, with no mention of the CRIS reservation site. IRCTC had also launched a mobile web site and an Android app in January, but it doesn’t separate transactions according to platform.

Payment Gateway Specific Information:

SBI Debit Card: Accounted for 11.96% of total transactions, and 10.02% of total successful transactions

ICICI Payment Gateway: Accounted for 8.14% of total transactions, and 8.46% of total successful transactions

Citibank: 5.68% of total transactions, 4.56% of total successful transactions, and a 58.61% success rate

HDFC: 6.12% of total transactions, 5.84% of total successful transactions, and a 69.62% success rate

- Itz Cash Card: 4.00% of total transactions, 4.93% of total successful transactions, and a 90.10% success rate.
- I Cash Card: 2.38% of total transactions, 3.03% of total successful transactions, and a 92.95% success rate.
- Oxicash: 0.05% of total transactions, 0.04% of total successful transactions, and a 60.71% success rate.

Related:

- IRCTC Reports 15.30M Transactions For March 2012
- IRCTC Reports 13.94M Transactions For February 2012
- IRCTC Reports 13.74M Transactions For January 2012