The KBC Angle

Having
heard the meticulous details with which KBC has been executed by officials of
ECM Asia–the company who bought the Asian rights of the program, "Who
wants to be a millionaire"–one would have assumed that the back-end
technology would also have been handled by its own engineers. However, the work
of integrating the system of enabling calls, interacting with callers, selecting
the right candidates and finally, choosing the selected few has all been
executed by a small, Delhi-based IVR integrator–DialNet systems. With
indigenous CTI technology developed by Gurgaon-based Parsec Technologies,
DialNet initially undertook the pilot project in the two metros of Delhi and
Mumbai for six weeks. Thereafter, the project was expanded to the four metros
and now the installation of the system will also expand to smaller towns, the
first of which is Nagpur.

Currently there are 12 servers at the four locations of Delhi, Mumbai,
Calcutta and Bangalore. Each location has three servers each: the network
server, the database server and the Parsec server, which is loaded with its CTI
software. The system is based on the Dialogics card and operates on Windows NT
server platform.

DialNet
handles the entire execution of the selection process–from setting up of the
call centers, to maintenance of the software and the database of questions.
Arthur Anderson monitors the process at all stages.

The KBC project is essentially a small project and in the words of Dutta, is
only worth a "couple of lakhs". But considering the volumes involved
and its impact on the population, the project has required a lot of scaling in
terms of access capacity. Initially, the program started with 16 lines in Delhi,
which had to be scaled to 180 lines within no time.

DailNet has hired a lot of E1 lines to accommodate the traffic. Each E1 line
has the capacity to accommodate around 30 telephone lines simultaneously.

DialNet usually processes 8-13 episodes concurrently per session. Responding
to the query that callers have to pay much more than the normal PSTN rates when
calling up the KBC lines, Chhabra, says, "There have been a lot of wrong
reports printed in the media. Subsequently, we have also sent rejoinders to
these reports". The reality is that callers pay the same amount as in a
normal PSTN call. However, KBC also has an ISD line, which callers can also use
as a premium number to get instant connectivity.

In fact, KBC has to pay for every call that is made into the DialNet center.
Says Chhabra, "It is a service that DialNet provides KBC and they are
therefore charged for the use of our telephone lines, the software, its
maintenance and the support." He also says that the DailNet systems can
handle any number of calls but is dependent on the directives that are sent out
by KBC. The number of calls and the number of episodes to be selected is
dependent on the rate at which KBC can schedule its shooting. According to
Chhabra, the dates are decided in concurrence with KBC, Synergy–the Siddharth
Basu owned firm that provides the questions–and Amitabh Bachchan.

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal