Murdoch keen on optical fibre network in city

MUMBAI, MAR 14: Media moghul Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday said he was interested in setting up a state-of-the-art optical fibre telecom carri...

MUMBAI, MAR 14: Media moghul Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday said he was interested in setting up a state-of-the-art optical fibre telecom carrier network in the city, as part of building a multi-media delivery engine in future.

He said News Corp group, which owns Star TV, has plans to set up an entertainment programming studio near Mumbai. “Mumbai is surrounded by webs of cable wires and they could be replaced by optical fibre network, to enable them to cater to various Infotech needs from e-education to e-commerce, besides providing immense job opportunities,” Murdoch said soon after a breakfast meeting with Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh here.

Deshmukh said any private investment in IT and allied sectors was welcome and asked Murdoch to submit the proposals immediately to the state government, while promising their speedy clearance.

The News Corp chief said India’s cable industry offered investment opportunities. "It would be fair to generalise that the cable industry (in India) is chaotic and gives a very bad service," he said. "Now is the opportunity to provide investments, brand new state-of-the-art broad band cable in every home. That will put this country five years ahead of the US".

Murdoch said India had a tremendous future in the field of IT and entertainment due to its skilled manpower. Murdoch said his group plans to invest in India’s fledgling Internet industry besides boosting Star TV’s presence in the country by launching local language channels. "We’ll be certainly investing in some companies. We had a meeting this morning about small investments in start-ups in dotcoms," the chairman of News Corp Ltd said here today.

"These dotcoms are as many here as anywhere, yet at this stage, it’s a very small market," Murdoch added. Murdoch’s high-technology venture capital company eVentures, formed jointly by News Corp and Japan’s Softbank Corp, launched an investment arm called eVentures India last year. "I think you will see us greatly expanding Star’s presence here, our budgets on programming and our production facilities," he added.

News Corp Ltd is represented in India through News Television India, an arm of Hong Kong-based Star TV which is a unit of News Corp. Star TV operates half-a-dozen satellite television channels in India that offer news, entertainment and Sports broadcasts predominantly in English and Hindi. "We are developing 100 per cent Hindi language programmes in the next six months. We are going to think globally, but act locally," Murdoch told an industry gathering on Tuesday.

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Murdoch has said Star TV intends to extend its services to six of India’s main languages besides Hindi but did not give details of when they would be launched. "There is no doubt we are getting in at an extraordinary time in the way people live and do work," Murdoch said, referring to the huge impact the Internet has made to businesses worldwide.

"It’s a huge opportunity for India. There can be faster growth here than anywhere else in the world," he said. News Corp last year swapped its Indian joint venture interests for cash and a small stake in its existing partner, Zee Telefilms Ltd, a media conglomerate. Murdoch also met Mastek chairman Ashank Desai, Tata Consultancy Services CEO C S Ramadorai and VSNL CMD S K Gupta.