BRUNEI-MUARA

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The overall winner of this year’s Brunei Information Communication Technology Awards (Bicta) plans to market their winning software programme to regional markets, while working with the Brunei government to develop the local ICT hub.

CEO and President of Teleconsult Lord John Shazell yesterday told The Brunei Times that they launched “InDepth Stereo” last week in Singapore with the hopes of attracting regional clientele.

“We’ve won Bicta four times and all our products were innovative in their time. They were all created for our internal use, but subsequently we’ve taken it to market and we are selling them overseas,” he said.

Their winning entry was created in house to support multimedia productions at a much lower cost than those which utilise high-end Dolby and THX surround sound technology.

“It definitely cuts production costs,” said Hj Julian Johari Hj Abdul Ghafar, director of the Brunei branch of Teleconsult. “(If you use ) Dolby, the starting point is US$40,000 to US$50,000 and that’s not even including the sound engineer. We’re less than half of that and we offer the complete suite of services and tools – and it’s available in Brunei.

Teleconsult plans to market InDepth Stereo to local artistes and production houses which can use the technology in their own music, movie and multimedia productions.

InDepth Stereo inserts 3D surround sound into a production even if the audience only uses a standard 2.1 stereo system. The software programme creates a virtual environment that precisely simulates a real sound environment.

“With our system, the control is with the artiste. Many artistes get disappointed because whatever’s produced at the end isn’t exactly what they wanted or hear in their head… This enables them,” said Lord Shazell.

The CEO disclosed that they are using InDepth Stereo to produce music for “Indonesia biggest rock band” although he would not reveal who.

“I can’t say the name but it’s a household name in Indonesia. They recorded all their materials analogue and gave it to us and now we are working with them to reprocess into a music album.”

In the past, Teleconsult has marketed their products overseas, even gaining a special mention at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (Apicta).

Teleconsult is also trying to court business from government agencies. “We’ve talked to RTB about communications because they were quite interested in our multimedia capabilities,” said Hj Julian.

Lord Shazell added: “We’re also trying to work with the Brunei government to develop Brunei’s multimedia hub. This is part of our plan.”

“Teleconsult is actually a company that develops people and we train a lot of people. The idea is to train a lot of young Bruneians. We know there is talent here, we’ve seen it at the tertiary institutes, but there’s a big gap between tertiary and industry, so that’s where we see our role.”

The CEO said that InDepth Stereo is still in the beta or trial stage and the next step is to make it a software product, and there are even plans to make an accompanying hardware product.

“We have not yet decided if we will do this, but the ultimate thing is to make it into a hardware (product). That’s still some way down the street,” he said.

The Brunei Times

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