A fortnightly cable TV newspaper? Yes, it‘s the brainwave of the colourful Delhi-based cable operator-turned-publisher-turned-industry-representative Dr A. K. Rastogi.

Rastogi, who runs the monthly Hindi-English bimonthly Avishkar Dish Antenna Programmes Guide, has introduced Avishkar Darpan which will initially target the north Indian market. He hopes that the fortnightly will serve as a platform for cable TV operators to increase awareness among viewers about issues which affect the industry.

Avishkar Darpan is also instituting the Best Channel Distributor award from the coming year. Winners will win air tickets for two to Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and Kathmandu, and contestants who vie for the award with an entry fee of Rs 5,000, will have their company profiled in a special souvenir.

Cable Television Laboratories has announced that its PacketCable test programme will be ready to qualify vendors‘ products by next year.

This will allow the cable industry to deploy PacketCable-based multimedia services such as Voice-over-Internet Protocol without delay. More than 40 PacketCable vendors have reportedly brought their products to CableLabs for experimentation and assessment. The project is updating test plans and procedures at present.

CableLabs, which comprises cable television operators from North and South America, engages in extensive R & D, helping companies tackle challenges and explore further avenues for growth. The company claims to have made great progress in demonstrating product inter-operability. The PacketCable programme is a company initiative aimed at developing inter-operable interface specifications for delivering advanced, real-time multimedia services over two-way cable plant. Built on top of the DOCSIS 1.1 cable modem infrastructure, PacketCable networks will use Internet Protocol technology to deliver multimedia services to the consumer such as IP telephony, multimedia conferencing, interactive gaming and general multimedia applications.