Reliance, Videocon entering DTH Industry

By: BHARAT RATNA

Current Players of DTH industry in India

DD direct of Doordarsan

Dish TV of ZEE group

Tata Sky – Joint venture of Tata and Sky TV

Viewers

DD direct has 3.5 million viewers

Dish TV has 2.1 million viewers

Tata Sky has 1 million viewers

DTH charges

DD Direct – monthly charges are nil – Initial charges – Rs.3000/-

DISH TV – Rs.100 monthly charges – Initial charges – Rs.3150/-

Tata Sky – Rs.160 monthly charges – Initial charges – Rs.3999/-

DD Direct showing 33 channels , 12 Radio channels

Dish TV – showing 85 channels

Tata Sky – showing 41channels, 8 Radio channels

Viewers may be happy that Big TV of Reliance and D2H of Videocon is going enter into DTH industry this year. Reliance Communications’ Big TV and Videocon’s D2H are scheduled to launch their services in June and September respectively. Sun Direct of sun network has already entered in this market in South India.

“Almost everything is in place. We will launch the channel by June 24,” said the spokesperson of Reliance Communications. The company has lined up a robust network that includes around 1,20,000 retailers and 700 distributors. Reliance is expecting big returns since they have good network all over India.

It also plans to introduce MPEG-4 technology – a feature that offers more channels compared to the prevalent DTH offerings – besides offering ‘Mozit’, a technology that enables a viewer to watch 12 channel previews at one time.

Big TV also promises to offer 60 new movies a week as against the 20 new releases a week offered by existing player.

Close on Big TV’s heels is Videocon’s D2H. The company is on a cost-cutting spree in order to make their DTH service more affordable. It plans to bring down the prices of set-top boxes by manufacturing them at its Aurangabad plant, rather than outsourcing them.

“Ours will be the most compelling service because we plan to bring down the cost of our offering at the point of source,” said Saurabh Dhoot, Director, Videocon International Ltd.

The company plans to manufacture 40 lakh set top boxes in the first phase. Another measure to pull down costs is synergising the service with its 40,000–strong distributors across the country.

The emergence of Big TV and D2H have also made existing player Dish TV roll up its sleeves.

Besides the existing offering, the Zee TV-promoted firm is planning to roll out new features, such as the ‘Open TV’ technology, wherein a subscriber can watch specialized bulletins on genres like entertainment, sports and current affairs. The feature will also give the viewer multiple camera angles of these programmes.

In a bid to outwit the likely pricing challenge to be thrown by existing players, Dish TV is also planning to increase its channel basket from the current 185 to 400 channels by end of the year.

“We would be launching a satellite this month, which will enable us to widen our offerings,” said Jawahar Goel, Managing Director, Dish TV.

Reliance will be investing Rs 2,050 crores in next two years, Videocon plans to put in Rs 1,000 crore in the coming year. These two players are expecting good returns and good share of market since they have big plans of investment in this DTH industry.

Dish TV, on the other hand, will pump in Rs 1,600 crores in the next two years.

Even though Cable TV operators are playing very strong hold in the industry, DTH industry is slowly capturing cable operators market into their hands. But consumer felt that the charges are same and there is no necessity to change to DTH even though DTH is attracting in many ways. Financials and profits of DTH are not good so far, but DTH industry may capture the market and may have bright future by promising more channels, options to the consumer with free dishes, installation charges and charge for only rentals.