Indian natural calamity alerts on DTH TV screen

Indian satellites run by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will alert state agencies and the public about imminent natural disasters through direct-to-home (DTH) television broadcasts.

"In the next six months, (state-run) Doordarshan will relay warning signals from Insat transponders in Ku-band on impending disasters through a DTH receiver linked to the national disaster management support system in New Delhi," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair told IANS.

"The advance alert will enable state agencies and the public to prepare for any natural calamity and minimise damage to life and property," he added. "As against expensive and heavy equipment consisting of an antenna, power supply system and a TV booster, we have developed a lighter DTH receiver that can be hooked to a TV set for receiving advance warning through voice or signals even while watching any channel," Nair pointed out.

ISRO has commissioned state-run Bharat Electronics Ltd to manufacture about 1,000 DTH receiver sets for supplying to state agencies and other stakeholders.

"The receivers, costing less than Rs.10,000 per set, can be installed by state governments in disaster-prone or coastal areas for alerting people in advance about heavy rains, cyclones, high-speed winds, tsunami and other natural disasters.

"The novel project will be launched on a pilot basis by this year-end using Doordarshan's DTH platform," Nair said after delivering the valedictory address at an international seminar on disaster management.

Private DTH operators such as Tata Sky, Dish TV, Sun TV and others will subsequently be roped in to offer the service on their platform as they are also using ISRO's Ku-band transponders to telecast their bouquet of channels.

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.

ISRO To Launch More Satellites To Meet DTH Demand

Indian Space Research Organization has announced that they are planning to launch three new satellites to meet the growing demand from the DTH companies in the Indian market.

A couple of new players are all set to enter the market and existing companies too need the transponders for expanding their facilities. Isro said in a statement that the three satellites would have around 42 Ku-band transponders.Some of these would be used for the rural markets. Reliance, Bharti and Videocon are three companies which are working on launching their DTH operations throughout the country.

Dish TV itself predicts that the Indian market would require an additional 72 transponders for DTH and TV broadcast by 2015.