DTH revolutionising TV viewing experience? Not really

Service providers in India restrict choice on packages, making subscribers pay for channels they may not want

If you thought installing DTH meant having a wider choice, think again. Harking back to the straitjacketed days of cable TV, India’s DTH service providers restrict choice to one — or at best, two — service packages, making the estimated 2.3 million subscribers pay for channels they may not want to watch.

Tata Sky, the newest entrant, has bundled all its 116 channels in a single offer of Rs 300 a month. The consumer has neither the choice of reducing nor adding to the number of channels. India’s largest DTH player Dish TV has two packages: Rs 210 a month for 85 channels or Rs 240 a month for 110 channels.

This failure by DTH operators to give consumers the option to choose specific channels and decline unwanted ones is in sharp contrast with the choice made available by multi-service operators (MSOs) providing the conditional access system (CAS). Moreover, the lump sum payment plans defy the government’s objective behind introducing the CAS/DTH system: to increase viewer choice and reduce cost.

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According to Trai regulations, under CAS, each consumer must pay a maximum of Rs 5 for every pay channel. However, there is no such stipulation for DTH, as the regulator believes competition provides sufficient price control.

Industry sources say the reason DTH service providers have shied away from offering individually tailored packages is because that would require programming every subscriber’s digital-card in the set-top box individually. Currently, Tata Sky and Dish TV offer only standard cards to their subscribers.

Globally, DTH players offer a wide range of packages. DirecTV, the largest DTH service provider in the US, offers six packages starting with a family package of 40-odd TV channels and two radio channels, apart from many other services. DirecTV’s premier package consists of 250 channels, along with 68 radio channels and other value-added services.

With the proposed entry of Anil Ambani’s Blue Magic and Sunil Mittal’s DTH operations, India’s market is projected to be worth $5 billion (Rs 22,110 crore) on 25 million paying subscribers by the end of 2012, according to a report by Kotak Institutional Equities. The study also predicts the DTH market to grow to Rs 9,300 crore in revenues by 2012. (FE)

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