DTH Growth In India

High Growth Rate
Home-grown DTH majors Dish TV and Tata Sky are mean while beefing up their portfolio of channels with additional transponders in the face on competition. While Tata Sky is likely to be accommodated on one of ISRO’s forth coming satellites with Ku-band capacity – possibly GSAT-6/ INSAT-4E, Dish TV has plans to double its transponders with an additional 14. This space will be available to Dish when its sister company Agrani’s part-owned satellite, ProtoStar-1, is launched towards end-July.

Tata Sky’s new capacity requirements are not known. According to a senior ISRO official, allocations of any additional capacity is part of the contract and would be made on a satellite close to the operator’s present allocation or in this case at 83 degree East longitude where INSAT-4A is located.

Growing enthusiasm

The enthusiasm for the DTH sector has stumped the satellite space provider ISRO. According to ISRO, the list of players could grow longer. For operators there is the task of picking and choosing amongst the new channels that are being announced almost every week. On last count there were 100 channels from about 50 companies waiting for licence from the Government. Scrambling for the limited space available, broadcasters are willing to pay carriage fees ranging from Rs 1 crore to upwards of Rs 2.5 crore per year.

The new ventures from Reliance, Bharti Telemedia and Videocon depend on fewer transponders (between 6-8 each) but are said to be using the MPEG 4 compression technology, allowing more channels per transponder and larger bouquets.