DISH TV Strategy for Customer Acquisition

DTH players may have to increase spends on dealer commission and advertisements in attempt to churn customers from cable TV. Separately as the gap between cable and DTH narrows (as cable goes digital and picture quality improves), DTH players will have more compulsion to position themselves as a premium service.

All this will result in higher costs as positioning is related to higher ad spends as well. Separately the other way to improve positioning is related to more HD offerings. With no immediate solutions available to increase
transponder capacity, it may not be an easy exercise. However there could be some respite for DTH sector
overall as rise in Cable ARPUs will lower gap between DTH and Cable TV. That said, two way offerings
of cable TV network allows MSO to bundle broadband and TV services together.

In addition, post digitisation cable TV will be able to offer 500+ channels and this may used a good marketing tool by MSOs to retain present customers. While we agree that it is not about providing all channels and it is
more about being present with relevant channels, the mass market may opt for more offerings in our view. In some of the regional pockets, the regional channels have lot of demand and cable operators may be better placed to deal with such consumer behaviour.