Direct To Home and Digital will co-exist
As now every home will be change with digitized, where most viewers appear to prefer direct-to-home (DTH), to view television. Though, cable (digital) will still be an important broadcaster mode. This has been observed by FICCI-KPMG report on media and entertainment.
As it was been expecting to be raising the number of DTH households up to 37 million customers in 2011 and till by 2016, 86 million customers should be in digitized.
On the other hand, the Digital cable can see their subscriber support blow up from 6 million customers to 75 million over the same phase.
Not so very amazingly, analog cable, which connects most households recently, would get smaller from 68 million customers in 2011 to just around 4 million customers by 2016.
The major reason for these movements is the fact that the telecom regulatory (TRAI) has authorization compulsory to be digitizing of analog cable across the country. By June 2012 it has been made compulsory for the four metros will have to complete the process of digitize. As many as 37 cities will have to digitize by March 2013. The rest of India will have to follow suit by December 2014.
This means that a subscriber, those who currently on the normal analog cable system and not with set-top box, they have two choices. Firstly they can move to a digital cable operator who provides a set top box and also a fresh cable system. The other option is that they can go for DTH player. The regulator made these shifts to check the rampant under reporting of revenues by local cable operators (LCOs) under the current analog cable system. These causes will loss huge revenue to broadcasters and potentially lost tax revenues to the government.
Potential Subscribers
Dish TV DTH, the largest DTH operators in the country; estimate that by March 2013, possible 27 million subscribers would be up for attainment by service providers. Both the DTH and digital cable network providers would be in compete for the opportunity.
The DTH market has six players with the well-known ones being Tata Sky, Airtel Digital TV and Sun Direct. Videocon and Reliance Big TV has smaller market share.
As the digital market have presently two players – Hathway cable and Den networks- which have presence in several states in India. There are some regional players such as SCV. That digital cable would provide significant competition is also evident from Dish TV’s and Airtel Digital TV’s reported numbers.
