Direct to Home (DTH) operators could be asked to provide inter-operable set-top boxes to their customers with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) seeing prima facie merit in a complaint filed by a consumer organisation that it is in violation of competition laws.
With the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) directive for operators offering digital television services to allow consumers to select and pay subscription for channels they choose to watch, instead of offering only bundled packages, direct-to-home (DTH) service companies have begun rolling out the services.
After the quality of service regulations for cable operators in CAS-notified areas, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended a slew of service obligations for Direct-To-Home operators.
At a time the industry is slashing headcount, citing the downturn, direct-to-home (DTH) television service providers are adding employees.
The competition in the DTH space is set to increase further with players now looking at residential societies and apartments to add subscribers in volumes by offering Multi Dwelling Units (MDUs) that will benefit both parties.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved revision in guidelines for providing direct to home (DTH) services in the country under which licenses would be issued for 20 years, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said. The Union Cabinet has also approved 100 per cent FDI in the DTH broadcasting services sector, Javadekar said, adding that while the commerce ministry had spoken of 100 per cent FDI in the DTH sector, the guidelines of the information and broadcasting ministry needed to be changed.
In an interim order on Monday, the Supreme Court directed that Direct-to-Home (DTH) operators may charge no more than 42 per cent of the rates paid by cable operators for TV channels.
With over 40 million active subscribers (as of March 2013), DTH has grown tenfold from just 4 million customers six years ago.
With the start of general elections as a source of revenue Bharti Airtel's direct-to-home arm is ready to launch its mobile DTH units for cars.
With three more direct-to-home operators set to enter the market by the year-end, subscribers can expect services at even cheaper rates.
In reply to a Rajya Sabha question, minister of state for information and broadcasting Anand Sharma stated that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had informed that a comparison of entry level package prices of a few DTH operators with CAS offerings reveals that DTH pricing in the country are not exorbitant.
This means the consumers will have to pay an additional monthly subscription to get these HD channels. Currently, the popular DTH bouquets (80-120 channels) are available at Rs 150-300 a month across most DTH platforms.
The DTH industry has to pay entertainment tax to state governments and service tax to the central government.
With three new DTH companies set to offer DTH services, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has set new ground rules under which a DTH company will have to get into a commercial agreement within 45 days of it seeking a channel.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday said the DTH subscriber base has swelled to more than 13 million in the country, indicating an increased penetration of the service.
Tata Sky, the DTH venture of Tata group and Rupert Murdoch's Star group, on Monday went on air with the initial cost to users pegged at Rs 4,000 toward satellite dish and other hardware.
Watching movies on direct-to-home has become cheaper, with two major DTH operators, Airtel DTH and Big TV, slashing pay-per-view (PPV) prices of premiere (new) movies. While Airtel DTH has reduced prices of paid movie services by 33 per cent, Big TV has cut prices by around 50 per cent.
Also plan to charge a premium on advertising.
This move will make Dish TV, an Essel Group company, the first DTH operator to have installed their DTH services in consumer homes, cars, buses, aircraft, cruise liners and on trains. "Dish everywhere is our motto. We aim to provide our DTH services across all platforms, whether moving, flying or stationary," a senior Dish TV executive said. This move is likely to help the company market its services to the potential consumers more effectively.
Does the use of MPEG-4 automatically imply a better quality of audio and video than MPEG-2? Or is this just a marketing gimmick aimed at getting mileage out of a newer technology that isn't necessarily better?
The five private DTH operators (Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct being the other three) are expected to add over six million new subscribers by the end of December, to take the overall subscriber base to over 17 million, a 57 per cent growth over December 2008.
Big TV will be the fourth entrant in the 7-million private DTH subscribers market following Dish TV's launch in 2003, Tata Sky (2006) and Sun Direct (2007). Doordarshan's DD Direct Plus is the fifth player (also launched in 2003) but is a free-to-air service.
This means that if Star TV's bouquet of 14 channels is priced at Rs 88 in non-CAS areas (70 million cable TV homes), it can charge only Rs 44 or less from existing DTH operators like Tata Sky, Dish TV and new entrants like Big TV, Bharti and Sun Direct. But all broadcasters are charging more from DTH companies than from non-CAS cable homes.
In order to take on the competition posed by the direct-to-home (DTH) operators, large cable distribution companies will soon bring in their own digital-quality cable television offerings in select cities at competitive fees and offer quality service support.
Deal to help RCom reduce debt, Sun gain subscribers in new markets
This is no surprise, given that the deadline for digitisation in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai was October 31 and DTH firms and multiple-system operators were eyeing a windfall.
At 250 million unique visitors a month, MX Player has for long been in the same bracket as YouTube (454 million) and Meta (324 million) in reach.
The broadcasters will offer the same bouquets to the DTH operators as are being offered by them for non-CAS cable distribution. In addition, they are free to offer additional bouquets, Trai said in a statement. This is in consonance with the TDSAT's judgement dated in March, 2007, it said, adding all bouquet rates and the a-la-carte rates must satisfy the provisions of the aforesaid interconnection regulations.
Trai plans to allow consumers to change operators without changing set-top box
The Trai order is expected to change how consumers pay for cable or DTH services. This will result in disruption within the TV viewing market.
In response to the consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday, direct-to-home operators said the proposed interoperability of set-top boxes faced serious limitations.
Bharti Airtel is expected to see its highest revenue growth, and subscriber addition during the third quarter (October-December) of FY25 among telcos, said analysts. The telco's top line in Q3 may see the fastest sequential growth at 5 per cent compared to 3 per cent for Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi). Airtel's annual mobile revenue growth would rise to 16 per cent, IIFL Capital said in an analyst note.
The regulator has asked the DTH operator to file a status report over implementation of the new tariff regime
Currently, STB of a particular operator cannot be used by a consumer to receive signals of another operator
NDTV operates news channels, including NDTV 24X7 and NDTV India.
DD Freedish is the 'largest TV platform in India', going to 58 million homes, featuring 70-odd private channels. DD Freedish reaches about 278 million people, and is easily among the top five TV platforms in the world.
The festive season lit up sales numbers of direct-to home (DTH) television service providers, with nearly two million subscribers added in a month.
Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports and direct-to-home operator Tata Sky may soon get entangled in a legal battle as Tata Sky has dropped ESPN, Star Sports and Star Cricket from its basic package offerings. The move, according to ESPN's lawyers, may go against a recent Delhi high court order that restrains Tata Sky to do so, but the second largest DTH operator maintains that it is operating within the permissible rules.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Thursday launched a channel selector application which will facilitate consumers to view their TV subscription and choose the channels of their interest while removing the unwanted ones.
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