Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) has signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Prasar Bharati and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to proliferate affordable and accessible digital services across India.
Note:
i.USOF, established in April 2002, is an attached office of the Department of Telecommunications (DOT), Ministry of Communications (MoC)
ii.Prasar Bharati, the Public Service Broadcaster of India under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting(MIB).
iii.ONDC is a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry (MoCI).
Key People: The MoU was signed in the presence of Neeraj Mittal, Secretary(telecom), MoC; Niraj Verma, Administrator of USOF; T Koshy, Managing Director (MD) & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ONDC; A K Jha, Additional Director General (ADG), Platforms, Prasar Bharati and Sunil Kumar Verma, Joint Secretary, DoT.
About the MoU:
Aim: To provide broadband services with OTT (over-the-top)and e-commerce platform for the rural India using BharatNet infrastructure under USOF.
Features:
i.Under this MoU, the bundled Prasar Bharati OTT will be enabled as a service and the USOF will ensure the efficient and high-speed broadband services in rural and remote areas.
ii.Prasar Bharati will source and produce content that will run on its OTT platform.
iii.ONDC will provide technical expertise and necessary framework in enabling digital commerce in products & services.
iv.This will be expanded to cover other services like education, health, training, credit, insurance, agriculture amongst others.
Union Minister Anurag Thakur Launched PB-SHABD
Union Minister Anurag Singh Thakur, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting(MIB), has launched Prasar Bharti – Shared Audio Visuals for Broadcast and Dissemination (PB-SHABD), a news sharing service from Prasar Bharati, during an event held in National Media Centre, New Delhi, Delhi.
- He also launched the websites of Doordarshan (DD) News and Akashvani News; and the updated News on Air mobile application.
PB-SHABD:
i.PB-SHABD will act as a single-point source of news content for news organizations across India and will provide a clean feed to news organisations without the logo of DD.
ii.PB-SHABD aims to address the challenge faced by smaller media outlets that do not have an extensive network for content gathering.
iii.The platform will offer news stories free of charge for the first year in all major Indian languages across 50 categories, including video, audio, photo, and text formats.
Points to note:
i.The revamped websites of DD News and Akashvani News offer news audios, special programs, and daily & weekly special broadcasts.
- The website also provides dedicated news in areas such as National, International, Education, Health, Business & Economy, Science & Tech, Sports, Environment, and Opinion.
ii.The updated News on Air app includes features like Personalized news feeds, push notifications for breaking news, multimedia content integration, offline reading capability, live streaming for real-time coverage, easy social media sharing, location-based news delivery, bookmarking for saving articles and powerful search functionality.
About Prasar Bharati:
Prasar Bharati is a statutory autonomous body established under the Prasar Bharati Act and came into existence in 1997.
Chief Executive Officer – Gaurav Dwivedi
Headquarters – New Delhi, Delhi
