Govt considering hiking FDI in DTH services to 74%: I&B Min

The government is looking at hiking FDI in direct-to-home TV services to 74 per cent from the current 49 per cent, a senior official said today.

“We are of the view that FDI across all services should be uniform,” Information and Broadcasting Additional Secretary Uday Verma told reporters here.

Keeping this in mind, when asked if the government is looking at increasing FDI in DTH services to 74 per cent, he said, “that is what being discussed” within the ministry.

He added that the government is also looking at calculating revenue share for the DTH operators from an adjusted gross revenue (AGR) basis rather than the current practice of gross revenue.

“Two issues are being discussed — percentage to be cut down and the basis of revenue share calculation, we are looking at calculating revenue share for DTH operators on an AGR basis and cutting down the revenue share from 10 per cent to six per cent,” Verma said.

Big TV, Tatasky and DishTV are the major DTH players in the country. There are about six million DTH subscribers across the country.