Bharti Airtel to Launch DTH Service in India

Bharti Airtel has announced that Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of the company has plans to launch the DTH services by the last quarter of financial year 2007-08. The company has received the letter of intent for commencing its DTH services from the union ministry of information & broadcasting.

The DTH services will be launched nationally by the company. Towards this, the company is setting up state-of-art infrastructure near Gurgaon (Haryana) for the purpose of uplinking and broadcast.

Reliance BlueMagic to start operations in 2007

ADAG controlled, Reliance BlueMagic, a wanna be DTH player in India is likely to get INSAT Transponder space by June-2007. Due to lack of transponders their plans are on hold. This is the case in every Indian industry because the government had no plan about developing infrastructure and blindly opened the gates of liberalization.

If Reliance wants to rent satellites directly from France or Germany, it was not allowed to do so because the government invoked "national Security" clause. However, if ISRO failed to provide the necessary infrastructure, then ISRO will lease space from international providers and sub-lease it to Reliance. Bharti Airtel has also applied for space and being the last entrant, it will have to wait for 12 months.

Cricket World Cup boom for DTH Providers

With the cricket fever gripping more than 300 million Indians, DTH majors - Tata Sky and Dish TV India are all set to woo them and cash in on the boom.

Tata Sky Exclusive Offer:
Tata Sky is offering FREE 3 Month subscription to its DTH TV if subscribed within April-15th.

DTH Players expect to sell 300,000 connection in March alone and thus take their subscriber base to 2.5 Million. Cable operators in Delhi NCR and parts of Mumbai are still struggling to comply with CAS regime, DTH operatos will lure the customer away from third rate cable system that existed for over 2 decades in India without any innovation.

Tata Sky CEO, Mr Vikram Kaushik said,
Tata Sky is not worried about Sun Network, Reliance Bluemagic or Bharti's DTH plans. Tata Sky will be the number one brand in terms of subscriber numbers and Quality of Service by August-2007.

Tata Sky has committed Rs 3000 crore investment for the DTH venture and has already spent Rs 1,000 crore on the same.

DTH, IPTV, STB in India

The TRAI ruling made it mandatory to use Settop boxes for cable TV network providers. Tata sky DTH and DishTV India are other choices for the consumers available today. IPTV is a Hype and a Mess until the situation of broadband improves in India. But why this CAS or Set top box system essential ? Most Cable networks are run by local Dons/Bhai and Netas who are known to create untaxed wealth and evade royalties to Channels/MSOs by manipulating subscription figures.

Our news bureau has reports that lots of consumers are switching in the Delhi NCR from routine cable connections to Dish TVs. At the end of 2010, you can expect Dish TVs to have a penetration of 12% and revenues in excess of Rs 5000 crore. Also it does make sense to switch to Tata Sky Dish TV because of the fantastic customer service and better quality of picture and video.

The Indian consumer is probably the most happening consumer in the world today. All of a sudden he has become a king :-)