Future of DTH in Indian Scenario ? i]Opportunities for DTH in India look great.

Since cable has penetrated the Indian market in a big way with roughly 40 million C&S homes, it is imperative that in its first few years of operations, paid service of DTH will be focused on a niche market. This niche would basically constitute the rich segment from urban as well as rural areas due to the primary reason of high initial costs for DTH and the associated psychology of people. Since Doordarshan will be starting its novel free-to-air service on Ku band, it is likely to give the prospective private DTH operators tremors and nightmares. The most attractive part of the Doordarshan platform is going to be its low initial cost and no recurring expenditure. Many cable homes are likely to make a shift to its platform and the service is likely to show its full impact in the rural areas where cable service is not possible. All in all, there exists a tremendous potential for direct to home broadcast in Indian market and it is projected that within three years, there would be around 2.5 million DTH subscribers in India. This figure is likely to increase due to the increase in TV and Cable households and also the growing multiple TV households, which would form a large percentage of the total subscriber base. Since India's population crossed the one billion mark, it is no surprise that satellite operators and programmers world-wide have set their eyes on the world's largest open market for DTH satellite TV services. The growing popularity of TV as a communication medium has resulted in the TV media sectors undergoing a rapid transformation

Dth Changing The Tv Scenario In India

Gone are those days when every month on a specific Sunday your cable wala would ring your doorbell and ask for the monthly charges. Now its time for direct-to-home services. Or as it is called DTH. You could just get your dth recharged online. Introduction of dth has made life of the common man simple. Now, you wont be disturbed every month on a lazy Sunday to pay your cable charges. You dont have to call the cable operators office to get a certain sports channel to watch a match. You get to choose the channels you want to watch and dont have to pay for other unwanted regional channels. Just recharge online for the channels that you watch. All this and more due to DTH. So what is this DTH all about?? The first dth service was introduced by Sky Television plc in 1989 in The United Kingdom. Its a different thing that the dishes at that time very huge if not gigantic. Todays dish which is less than a diameter looks like a miniature dish of the 1990s dish. The first DTH service in India was introduced by Dish TV in 2004. And many more companies followed the trend. The booming and growing dth industry has almost wiped the traces of the local cable services. It wont be long before the local cable operators are extinct like the dinosaur. This extinction would be justified as well because dth services have an edge over local cable operators. They provide high definition picture quality with better audio quality. Users dont have to pay for unwanted channels which are never watched. The users get to select channels of his interest. There are also on-demand movies which a user can watch with his family at his home. Lately they have introduced a new service where in live match or program can be recorded and can be viewed later. And also dth can be recharged at the click of a button. DTH in India is booming at a very rapid pace. One of the best performing DTH is Videocon d2h. Videocon d2h is latest entrant in the dth industry but in spite of this fact it has done tremendously well. In fact in the 2 quarter of 2011 i.e April to June Videocon d2h was the best performing dth. Adding about 7 lakh new customers. Videocon d2h has been miles ahead of Reliance BIG TV and Airtel Digital TV it is now directly giving Dish TV and Tata Sky a run for their money. Videocon d2h has the highest number of channels which is 330 channels these include most of the popular channels. Videocon d2h also has the highest number of regional channels in orrisa, bengali and marathi. This dth provider also has the highest number of Asli HD channels i.e High definition channels. The dth service provided by Videocon in India is such a huge hit because it is very rich in content but is quite affordable as opposed to Tata sky which is very expensive. Videocon d2h is the fastest growing DTH services in India with 300 Channels and Services. It has highest number of Asli DTH HD Channels , highest number of sports

channels, leading GEC channels, highest number of regional language channels in Kannada, Bengali, Marathi.

Cable Vs. DTH - An Overview

India India is a dynamic study in itself. Just ten years ago, about 20 per cent of the total homes could only receive government services broadcast on one channel operated by Doordarshan, the national television operator. By 1997 there were 50 private satellite channels and 19 different services from a revitalised Doordarshan. One-third of the homes now have television and about 10 per cent of the total homes subscribe to cable. The most significant event in the cable sector was the passage of the Cable Television Ordinance Law in January 1995. This ordinance requires the registration of cable operators and mandated technical standards that required most operators to upgrade their systems in addition to issues regarding content. This legislation has ended the "cottage industry or small scale industry," at least in the secondary cities. At one time there were over 100,000 cable operators in India, but that number has since been reduced to 60,000 networks. Many operators wishing to avoid the obligation of paying steep entertainment taxes, which can be as high as 30 to 40%, or the cost to upgrade their systems are selling out to emerging MSOs such as Siti Cable and In Cablenet or forming alliances to compete with larger MSOs. The challenge for cable exists in the rural areas where installation and application are extremely cost prohibitive, and nearly three quarters of India is designated as rural territory. This has created an opportunity for DTH, which serves an immediate threat to the high-end cable networks. Some of the key player who have shown an interest in operating a DTH service are the Star, Zee Telefilms (the Subhash-promoted group has decidedly cooled off on it though) and the Modi Group. Two or three other DTH packages are expected to launch in 2002, and package choice is likely to increase subscription rates in the medium term, although different marketing techniques may generate confusion as the benefits vary from package to package. DTH providers claim to target only the wealthy rural population, although a high proportion of their subscribers will be the urban rich as well, many of whom already subscribe to the higher-end cable networks. DTH, however, is faced with a lack of high quality programming, a lagging infrastructure for distribution and collection and technological barriers. However much like the USA the extremely high penetration of Cable in the Indian households would be a definite threat to the highly optimistic proponents of DTH in the country. Also, the MSOs are in an active drive to upgrade their existing networks in order to

lay a backbone for the recently liberalised broadband industry. Hence the cable operators seem to have won the first round of the battle by providing the consumer value additions in the form of high speed Internet and other services.