RIP, DTH: Is the End in Sight for DTH Operators in India?

IIn the early days, the Indian TV scene had always been dominated by MSOs or what are popularly known as the local ‘cable wallas’ (the local cable guy). DTH, in spite of being an old technology, had not really picked up in India, with the exception of Dish TV. And even Dish TV had been operating for a long time in areas where cable TV was not feasible to deliver and was never a large
 scale player during its early days.

However, sometime around 2010, DTH started gaining steam in India. The end of the tussle between Zee and Star regarding carriage fee opened the floodgates for mass adoption of DTH in India. High-profile DTH launches by Tata Sky, Reliance’s Big TV, Sun DTH, and Videocon D2H, pushed DTH to the next level. MSOs were content providing analogue TV, which gave users no option other than changing channels and volume through a remote, even as DTH operators stole the thunder by providing set top boxes (STBs) that could help one classify channels according to genres; know which show is running currently, what show would come next, set reminders, change languages, get monthly bill statements and a lot more. DTH operators clearly had a technological lead when they made their debut and some like Tata Sky had coupled that technological lead with above average customer care to make MSOs look even worse.

Ever since 2010, DTH operators have been growing at an upward trajectory in terms of customers with the top three DTH operators in the country easily having 10 million plus subscribers. However, this rosy period might be coming to an end soon because of a wide variety of factors.