Essel Shyam Communication, a joint venture between the Subhash Chandra-promoted Essel group and the Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) Shyam Telecom, has approached the Centre for a direct-to-home licence.
The company will also allow other channels to use its DTH platform. Jawahar Goel, co-promoter of the Essel group and the chief executive officer of Siti Cable, said, "Essel Shyam has filed an application and the board will be meeting soon to discuss the issue."
This will be the second DTH licence that the Essel group is pitching for.
ASC Enterprises, another Essel group company, has already got an in-principle approval for DTH from the government.
Sources at Essel Shyam, however, maintain that since Essel Shyam is a separate joint venture, it has its own business plans.
Essel Shyam hopes to have about 250 channels uplinking from its platform in two to three years.
The advantage that Essel Shyam also has is that it has its own teleport facility at Noida from where several channels from the Zee TV stable and SABe TV are uplinking.
The nod for ASC comes against the backdrop of conditional access system being enforced from July 14 this year. Goel said that the group's internal target for DTH to be put in place was 100 days.
Apart from being in talks with niche channels, ASC is also tying up with Indian Space Research Organisation for hiring transponders.
ASC will initially provide 55-60 channels on its service. These include channels on education, women, gardening, a variety of sports and some alpha channels, including Alpha Bangla.
Besides Essel Group company ASC, Star's Space TV is the only other applicant for DTH services. A Star spokesperson said from Mumbai that the company has thus far not received any communication from the government on its DTH application thus far.
Under the government's DTH guidelines, ASC will have to now furnish a Rs 40 crore bank guarantee, Rs 10 crore as entry fee, as well as 10 per cent of its DTH revenues every year to the government.
The government opened up DTH broadcasting almost two years ago. According to existing guidelines, only an Indian company can apply to launch DTH services and the total foreign equity holding has been capped at 49 per cent. Within this, the FDI component cannot exceed 20 per cent.
