Videocon [Get Quote] plans a foray into the direct to home business. The company has applied for the DTH licence and is expected to start services by next year, government sources said.

A Videocon spokesperson, however, declined to comment on the issue. The domestic DTH market, which is growing rapidly due to the implementation of Conditional Access System this year, already has TataSky, DishTV and DD Direct as the current players.

Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], Sun TV [Get Quote] and Anil Ambani's Reliance [Get Quote] group are likely to launch their DTH service by this year end. Currently, the total market size for DTH is around five million customers with Doordarshan covering the maximum households (3 million).

Dish TV follows with about 2 million. TataSky has a total subscriber base of over half a million, and intends to take the number to one million by August this year.

At the current rate of the growth, India would have anything between 15 to 20 million DTH subscribers in the next five to six years.