Anil Ambani makes the BIG DTH entry

Anil Ambani’s direct-to-home venture BIG TV DTH which was commercially launched today will be available in over 6,500 towns and cities and will be made available through one lakh retail outlets across the country in a week from now.

The service will be offered at an entry level price of Rs 1,490 with 3 months complimentary subscription (at the time of launch) of 200 channels and installation added in. The monthly subscription will range between Rs 100 to Rs 450.

Compared to this, Dish TV offers 143 channels for a monthly subscription of Rs 262 (welcome pack) while Tata Sky offers 92 channels for Rs 200 per month (family pack) in addition to a number of other offers on channel packages.

 

Of course, Reliance is also offering three other packages ranging from Rs 2,490 to Rs 4,900 which include installation as well as recharge vouchers for periods ranging from three to eighteen months.

BIG TV has an ambitious target to pick up a 40 per cent share of the total DTH market within a year. Currently, the DTH market is dominated by Dish TV with 3.5 million subscribers, Tata Sky (2.3 million subscribers) and Sun Direct (1 million-plus subscribers).

During its soft launch a few months ago, the service was offered to group company Reliance Energy customers whose base is around 3.5 million, and to the 2 million PCOs controlled by Reliance Communications. As of now, BIG TV DTH has 1 lakh to 1.5 lakh subscribers.

According to PriceWaterhouseCoppers, the DTH homes in India is estimated to increase to 25 million by 2012 from 4 million in 2007.

This will increase DTH penetration from 3 per cent of the television homes in 2007 to 19 per cent in 2012. According to industry estimates, there are about 7 million DTH subscribers, currently constituting about 8.5 per cent of the overall cable homes.

BIG TV DTH which is the fourth entrant in the DTH space after Dish TV, TATA Sky, Sun Direct TV and DD Direct Plus, is the first to offer 200 channels on its platform.

Even fellow telecom competitor Bharti Airtel is expected to launch its DTH platform very soon.

“Competition is present across 30,000-35,000 retail outlets across 4,000 towns, with us launching in 6,500 towns, there will be a decent gap. We will offer nearly 10 audio channels, 32 movies channels, among others. Of the 32 movies channels, English movies channels will be pay-per-view while the regional and Hindi language movies channels will be based on subscription,” said Arun Kapoor, CEO, Reliance BIG TV.

Kapoor was earlier the CEO of competitor Dish TV which is promoted by Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group. The company will use the MPEG4 technology which is considered the most advanced in the industry. The technology provides higher channel compression and better picture quality.

Currently, only Sun Direct uses this technology, the remaining use MPEG2.