Direct-to-home (DTH) subscribers in the country are all set to get more choice in terms of channel bouquets and pricing.
NEW DELHI: Direct-to-home (DTH) subscribers in the country are all set to get more choice in terms of channel bouquets and pricing.
Broadcasters will be offering the same channel bouquets to DTH players that are available in the non-CAS (condition access service) cable homes.
They can also offer additional bouquets, according to an announcement made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday.
The rates of bouquets and a la carte (standalone) pay channels, on any DTH platform, should not exceed 50% of the rates charged in the non-CAS or non-addressable TV homes.
This tariff stipulation is as per the recent Telecom Dispute Redressal Tribunal judgement.
So far, DTH players could not offer channel bouquets to its subscribers because members of the industry failed to agree on interconnection terms.
Now, with the number of DTH players going up, Trai and broadcasters have been able to resolve the issue of offering bouquets to the direct-to-home platform.
A bouquet refers to a group of channels offered by a broadcaster or a distribution platform, to provide more choice to the subscriber and also enable flexi-pricing.
Currently, several channel bouquets at various price points are offered across cable TV networks in the country.
For instance, Zee-Turner offers as many as six bouquets; Discovery two; Sun group’s Channel Plus eight; Star Den Media Services two; Raj Television two; and one each from Ushodaya, BBC World, ESPN and Neo Sports.
In a statement issued on Friday, Trai said that a roadmap had been finalised for speedy conclusion of interconnect agreement between the broadcasters and DTH licencees.
“A general consensus has emerged on the composition of bouquets and pricing of a la carte channels and bouquets,” Trai said.
DTH operators have been in talks with Trai to fix the price that they have to pay to the broadcasters. DTH players are keen on a system like the one for cable operators in the CAS notified areas in the metros, where Trai has frozen the rates at Rs 5 per pay channel per subscriber.
Currently, Dish TV (of the Essel group) and Tata Sky (joint venture between the Tatas
and Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV) are the two main DTH players in India.
Tamil Nadu-based Sun TV, too, launched its direct-to-home broadcasting service recently. Prasar Bharati also has been running its DTH service (DD Direct Plus), but it is a free-to-air platform.
In all, there are between 5 million and 6 million DTH users in the country. Two more players-Big TV and Bharti-are likely to launch their DTH service soon. And, the Videocon group has also got a DTH licence.
DTH is a satellite broadcasting system through a extra-large pizza-sized dish and a set-top box, which eliminates the neighbourhood cablewallah.
CAS, on the other hand, is a service delivered through a cable operator with the help of a set-top box.
Both CAS and DTH are supposed to help consumers pay for the channels that they want to watch. Currently, CAS is effective only in select areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, and whole of Chennai.
Of the 120-million TV households in India, only 70 million have cable connection. DTH is still in its infancy in India, and there’s sufficient room for growth. By the year 2015, 40 per cent of the pay TV universe (cable TV and DTH) are likely to be DTH users, significantly up from around 5 per cent now, according to industry projections.
m_nivedita@dnaindia.net
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