Income from BPO in India to rise to $13.8 b in 2007
According to a preview of the global IT services and BPO track of the forthcoming Gartner summit in Mumbai this month India's revenue from offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) will grow from slightly under $1 billion in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2003, representing 66 per cent of the global offshore BPO market.

This will be supplemented by significant additional revenue from internal company operations and the US firms setting up their own delivery centres out of India, the firm said.
By 2003 India will generate $13.8 billion from offshore BPO exports.

Global offshore BPO is expected to reach $1.8 billion in 2003, a 38 per cent increase over 2002's total of $1.3 billion. In 2003, offshore BPO will represent 1.5 per cent of the total BPO market, said the preview.
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NIC to issue digital signature certificates
New Delhi: The National Informatics Centre's (NIC) facility for issuing digital signature certificates was inaugurated by the minister for information technology Mr Arun Shourie.

NIC had been awarded the licence to operate as a Certifying Authority (CA) in May and will now provide digital signature certificates to central and state government officials and to district administrations with a view to promoting e-governance in the country.

Apart from NIC, Sify-arm Safescrypt, Tata Consultancy Services and IDRBT are also licensed CAs. While the CBEC has also applied for a CA licence, MTNL is expected to do so next month.
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India down by 3 places on development scale
New Delhi: India fell three places from the 124^th position to the 127^th in the human development index rankings issued by the United Nations Development Programme.

While the index value, which reflects general progress, improved from 0.519 in 1990 to 0.59 in 2001, two countries — Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Occupied Palestinian Territories — posted higher index values than India.

The human development index, created in 1990, combines measures of life expectancy, school enrolment, literacy and income to allow a broader view of a country's development, rather than using only income. The Human Development Report 2003 is based on available data of 2001.

The other countries whose development index ranking has suffered is China where it dropped eight notches to 104 from 96 last year and Pakistan, down six places to 144 from 138 in 2002.
The top three slots went to Norway (with an index value of 0.944), Iceland and Sweden. The US ranks 7 and the UK 13.
India has done well on the poverty front and moved up two notches to 53 this year among a list of 94 developing countries.
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CAS may get setback when billing system is unveiled
New Delhi: The smooth implementation of conditional access system is likely to get a setback in the total absence of security parameters and technical standards for the subscriber management system (SMS) and the billing system, which are key components of the system.

At present there are no clear standards laid out for this and it is feared that cable operators can resort to "ad hoc" implementation of the backend software with products that can be manipulated to doctor subscription patters as well as billing. Though the technology should allow broadcasters access to SMS and billing data through the net, MSOs can even block it if they want to.
Star CEO Peter Mukherjea in a meeting I&B additional secretary Vijay Singh voiced his concerns over the lack of a universal standard for SMS and billing software as a result of which the problem of under-declaration by cable operators could well continue in the CAS regime.

The government has already allowed non- interoperable STBs, with proprietary CAS solutions from foreign firms Conax, NDS, Nagravision and Irdeto. Industry sources say they believe some of these trusted names could provide a level of security that could be mutually accepted, it's also true that not all are buying the entire CAS system — STB, SMS and billing — from the same quarters.
Many independent operators are "assembling" the CAS system with the three components from different vendors. Whether the broadcaster is able to verify each SMS and billing and find it to his satisfaction is debatable.
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UK looking to increase pharma research outsourcing from India
Kolkata: Dr Andrew Hall, the British Deputy High Commissioner to eastern India, said British firms are seriously considering the possibilities of increasing pharmaceuticals research outsourcing from India.

He added outsourcing in the area of information technology enabled services is already a growing reality for UK companies.
A British business delegation is coming to India specifically to explore the possibility of biotech and pharmaceutical research outsourcing in September, which will visit the research hubs in Hyderabad and Bangalore. This is significant in the context of India establishing an intellectual property rights (IPR) regime by January 1, 2005 under the WTO ambit.
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