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Dabhol Power assets transferred to Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt. Ltd.
Mumbai: Assets of the erstwhile 2,184 MW Dabhol power plant were formally transferred to Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt. Ltd, (RGPPL) on Sunday. The move paves the way for the re-commissioning of the Rs8,500 crore project by the summer of 2006.

RGPPL is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), jointly floated by the state-owned energy giants NTPC and GAIL and various financial institutions, led by ICICI Bank.

Addressing a news conference here last evening, a Govt inspection team that visited the site to start preliminary inspection said, that of the three blocks at the site, a decision would be taken as to which block to star after a detailed inspection. The decision will be taken after three weeks or so. A rough assessment, according to the team, would suggest that one of the blocks will be available by May-June 2006.

Officials said that the project would be run on LNG and the tariff would depend on its availability and the price of gas in international market.
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MMTC to source fertilizer raw material and acquire coal mines abroad
Chennai: MMTC Ltd, the State owned international trading house, plans to acquire coalmines in Indonesia and Australia and also enter into long-term agreements with suppliers of fertiliser raw materials in South Africa.

Speaking at a press conference here on Saturday, MMTC's chairman and managing director, S. Kapoor, said the company hoped to finalise the deals on the coalmines in these two countries as and when it found something attractive.

MMTC also hopes to acquire interests in a coalmine in India, he said. The company is a leading importer of coal for the country's power utilities as well as steel plants.

The company is mulling importing steam coal from Indonesia and metallurgical coal from Australia. It is also looking to acquire interests in raw materials sources for the fertiliser industry - rock phosphate and phosphoric acid - from Africa. MMTC is open to the idea of picking up equity stakes in some companies. MMTC is in discussions with some leading producers of these commodities for a long-term tie-up, officials said.

Another area that MMTC hopes to capitalise on is carbon trading. Officials pointed oput that the 1.1 million tonnes steel plant - Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd in Orissa - uses the latest technology and hence qualifies for carbon trading. MMTC also plans to assist some of the smaller companies in the country in carbon trading and earn revenues out of this.

The company will also develop free trade warehousing zones in six places - Greater Noida, Kandla, Ennore, Mumbai, Haldia and Kochi.
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Microsoft to double staff at Indian centres
Bangalore: Microsoft Corporation plans to double its staff strength at its Indian centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore by March 2006, a top company official has said.

The lab, named 'Scientia' , can house over 100 people and has a floor area of 20,000 square feet. The facility will engage in five core areas of research in multilingual systems, digital geographics, hardware and communications, technology for emerging markets and rigorous software engineering, in addition to other ongoing research programmes.

Microsoft also plans to double the headcount to around 1,000 staff members at its technology center in India's premier software hub of Bangalore.

India's 17.2-billion dollar software services industry employs about a million people. Exports of software and business services are forecast to grow 30 to 32 percent in the year to March 2006, powered by the country's low-cost, IT-savvy and English-speaking workforce.
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Bharti Info issued show cause notice for ISP licence violation
New Delhi: Private telecom operator Bharti Infotel, has been issued a show cause notice by the Govt. for violating ISP licence conditions and has been asked to explain why a penalty shouldn't be levied on ten organisation.

As a preliminary action, DoT has sent a notice, levying and recovering an amount of Rs10.1 crore, besides asking Bharti to submit an additional performance bank guarantee of Rs3.6 crore.

The DoT inspected 13 subscribers of Bharti's Internet leased lines, which were found to be receiving international voice calls. "This set up was unauthorised for receiving international calls routed through internet leased line provided by you (Bharti Infotel) and further illegally switched to various subscribers," DoT said.

This illegal arrangement, which connected international calls to local number bypassing the duly permitted switching networks have caused huge revenue loss to the government and other licensed telecom operators, DoT said.

As per DoT, connections from another private operator Reliance Infocomm were also found interfaced, through unauthorised equipment, with Internet leased line subscribers of Bharti. DoT is also investigating similar violations by Tata Teleservices for offering push-to-talk services under their ISP license.
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Anil Ambani's DTH venture renamed as Reliance Bluemagic
Mumbai: Anil Ambani has changed the name of his direct-to-home (DTH) venture to Reliance Bluemagic, following objections by the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp to the word 'Sky.'

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprise (ADAE) had applied for a DTH licence under the name 'Reliance Skymagic.' News Corp had issued a caution notice, claiming 'Sky' was its registered trademark.

News Corp runs its DTH operations in UK under the name of BSkyB. Besides, it has Sky News, Sky Sports and Sky Radio. The trademark Sky was also registered in India.

ADAE officials said that they wanted to have a different identity from T-Sky, the brand name of Tata Sky. Tata Sky is the 80:20 joint venture between Tatas and the Star Group.

Meanwhile, the introduction of T-Sky DTH services will get further delayed with Insat-4A now scheduled to launch only in December. The first launch was planned in August-end, which was later pushed to November.

The DTH market in India already has four players - the Subhash Chandra-promoted Dish TV, Prasar Bharati's DD Direct, Sun Direct and T-Sky. With Reliance and BPCL also interested in the business, India would be a unique market with several operators. Internationally, this is restricted to just one or two players depending on the size of the market.
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