Subscriber Base - Pay TV market in India

There are 3 main types of Pay TV Service Providers in India.

1. Analog cable is still the dominant platform in India with more than 80m subscribers. Analog cable market is fragmented and is covered by ~ 6,000 MSOs who in turn provide feed to 60,000 local cable operators. Analog cable has poor picture quality and limited carriage capacity. Dominates with more than 80m subscribers but losing turf to digital platform.

2. Direct-to-home (DTH) or satellite TV services are provided by six DTH operators. DTH industry has already added 41m subscribers DTH provides more number of channels and better picture quality compared to analog cable along with other interactive services. Dish, Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Big TV, Airtel, Videocon, Reliance BIG TV, DD Direct are the major players

3. Local cable operators (LCOs) are migrating to digital cable, which requires a digital head-end at the operator’s end and a set top box at the customer’s premise to decode the signal. This service is being provided by LCOs in some parts of India to counter loss of subscribers to DTH. However mandatory digitization ordinance will provide boost to digital cable. They have 5-6 mn customers. WWIL, Hathway, In-cable,
DEN, Digicable are the major players.