The Rupert Murdoch-Subhash Chandra joint venture company has taken over the cable operators of Hathway in Ahmedabad, sources said.

Earlier, the Rahejas had two control rooms and 10,000 points in the city.Though Hathway has just one control room now, the MSO is keen to get back its cable operators by improving its quality and offering a better financial deal. The Rahejas had roped in the operators from the Hinduja-owned IN Cablenet network.

The bulk of Hathway's cable business in Delhi has also gone to SitiCable, sources said. The MSO has one control room and a marginal presence in the city. Admitted K Jayaraman, director, Hathway Cable & Datacom, "we are not focussed in Delhi."

But the Rahejas have retained their hold over Space Vision, a network in lucrative South Mumbai. They have signed a fresh agreement with the four Space Vision partners - Vivekanad Rao, Ranjit Mathur, Praveen Patel and Subhash Kambli. On June 4, the South Mumbai network broke away from Raheja's United Cable Network (UCN) and merged with SitiCable. Hathway, however, won back the network on June 9 on support from most of Space Vision's cable operators.

SitiCable, however, has not given up its claims on South Mumbai. The MSO has recruited Rupesh Rao and Jairam Palav, who were business managers in Hathway Cable. Their mission: To get back Space Vision.

In a recent circular, SitiCable has made Rao the profit centre head for South Mumbai. SitiCable has a control room at Navy Nagar in South Mumbai and plans to upgrade the network. Palav is the technical in charge of the network in the Maharashtra region. He is upgrading the network for increasing the number of channels in South Mumbai, sources said.

SitiCable, however, says Palav's appointment is a "need-based vacancy as the network's technical head in Maharashtra left for Dubai."

In an exercise to introduce accountability, SitiCable's Maharashtra region has set up three profit centre heads - South Mumbai, rest of Mumbai and outside Mumbai. While T Rajaram will look after existing business in the rest of Mumbai (except South Mumbai), Ashok Shenoy has been made the profit centre head for new network (outside Mumbai). He has the added responsibility of marketing Siti Cinema and the affiliates network.

SitiCable is concentrating on the growth of the network in Maharashtra. It is looking at identifying new districts where it can expand. Talks are on with cable operators in Nashik. In Mumbai, SitiCable is setting up a new system at Kalyan in Thane district. The MSO has signed a memorandum of understanding and made a final survey about the material requirement of the operations. The five independent operators in this region have a declared connectivity of 7,000. "The independent operators have come under our banner. We hope to increase the connectivity," a company source said.