Siti Cable to enter other cities

Venkatachari Jagannathan
24 December 2002

“We will soon be rolling out our Net-over-cable services in Hyderabad and Delhi,” says P Kailasam, head, Internet-over-cable operations, Siti Cable Network. Towards this end, the company is investing heavily in laying a hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) cable backbone.

Initially, Zee Interactive Multimedia did the cable ISP operation. A financial restructuring saw the company getting merged with Siti Cable, Asia’s largest cable network, reaching 5.5 million households in 43 cities.

“We are the only cable Internet service provider (ISP) to have our own international gateway,” says a beaming Kailasam. Siti Cable holds a category ‘A’ Internet service provider (ISP) licence-holder.

Like other cable ISP officials, Kailasam, too, declines to talk financial numbers. “Our strengths are many: owning our own gateways, HFC network in major cities, market leadership in Karnataka and management expertise.”

Excerpts from an interview with Kailasam:

What is your subscriber base in Bangalore? What are your revenue model and the average revenue per subscriber (individual / corporates)?
We have around 7,500 subscribers and the average revenue per subscriber is Rs 1,000 per month. Our revenue stream is from cable access subscription, sale of bandwidth and associated services.