At the Dubai International Film Festival last week, the Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, star of last year’s Million Dollar Baby, took on his most challenging role yet: movie entrepreneur.Dubai was one of several stops on a West Asian tour for Freeman, who was meeting with local moviemakers hoping to find independent films to distribute through his Internet venture, ClickStar.

Freeman and Intel founded ClickStar this past summer with an eye to offering movie downloads at the same time as a film’s theatrical release. Freeman said on Wednesday by telephone from Dubai that the industry practice of showing feature films in theatres first, then selling them later on DVD, was outdated. With new advances in digital filmmaking, he predicted, consumers will demand better access to movies. "We want to give people what they want, when they want it," Freeman said. "We are following the wave." Freeman is not the only entrepreneur riding the digital technology surf. In the past several months, a handful of new ventures have been formed to help filmmakers find their audience — online, on DVD and at the movie theatre.

Among them is IndieFlix, introduced by two independent filmmakers in October. For $9.95 a disc, the company will burn a feature or documentary film onto a DVD and ship it to a customer who has ordered it online. Another outfit, 2929 Entertainment, has teamed up with the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh to offer the forthcoming movie Bubble simultaneously in theatres, on DVD and on cable television.But how big is the market? Even those working on distributing movies in new ways cannot predict what will capture the public’s interest. As many entrepreneurs did in the early days of the 1990s dot-com craze, they are experimenting with untested business models.

Hollywood has a long-established way of promoting its movies, mainly through blockbuster releases. Until that changes, entrepreneurs will probably continue to find it challenging to get people to watch their films and to earn enough money to make their ventures profitable."The idea that a lot of things can get out without marketing clout is not there," said Bob Berney, a Hollywood veteran and president of Picturehouse, a theatrical distribution company. "I think there are complications for the next several years, as we are still in a theatrically driven mode."

Still, many in Hollywood smell opportunity, particularly since Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, said he would offer some television shows and movies on the video iPod.Todd Wagner, who along with his business partner, Mark Cuban, will release Soderbergh’s Bubble in late January, said: "I’ve seen more movement in the last three months than the previous five years. I think people are now saying they can’t avoid this."

Smaller movies with limited appeal could have the most to gain from alternative distribution, whether through movie downloads or bypassing studios altogether and selling DVDs directly to consumers.

Even as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is yet to decide on the allocation of spectrum for 3G (third generation) networks for mobile operators, Bharti Tele-Ventures, India’s largest GSM mobile operator, is believed to be readying a 3G network rollout.

According to sources familiar with the development, Bharti is experimenting with 3G services, and a rollout is likely by mid-2006. Last week, Bharti Enterprises said that it will be launching 3G mobile services in Seychelles.Bharti Enterprises, which operates the Airtel brand of mobile service in Seychelles in a joint venture with Telecom Seychelles Ltd, will be investing Seychelles Rs 4.4 crores for the 3G network rollout.

"Seychelles will be a testing ground for the 3G mobile services for Bharti, because Seychelles is a smaller market. The learnings from Seychelles will be incorporated in Bharti’s 3G network rollout in India, which we expect to launch in 2006," the sources said.The sources said that TRAI is expected to announce the 3G spectrum policy in the next couple of months. "There are a lot of grey areas, and most mobile operators will not be in a position to offer 3G because the network requires huge investments in terms of technology, reconfiguration of electronics at cell sites and even new electronics," the sources said.

"In some cases, the whole network has be recast. The rollout is expected to be based on both 2.5G and 3G, because 3G requires high bandwidth," the sources said.