Wire & Wireless India (WWIL), the cable arm of Essel Group, plans to foray into broadband services. The company would be largely targeting households and small and medium enterprises and initially launch its broadband services in metros.

WWIL, which recently got a nod from Information and Broadcasting ministry to launch its headend-in-the-sky (HITS) services, plans to invest around Rs 400 crore in the next 12 months for various expansion activities.

Speaking to Televisionpoint.com, Deepak Chandani, CEO, WWIL, said, “We plan to add about 1 lakh broadband subscribers within a year. Since we are in the process of ramping up our digital cable business, it makes perfect sense for us to become a broadband service provider as we can offer both through the same cable.”

The company believes that broadband would contribute about 20 per cent to its overall revenues in near future. It also expects to have an average revenue of about Rs 500 per month per user.

WWIL is also in the final stages of launching HITS services. The firm has already tested its signals and is in negotiations with broadcasters for sourcing content for its HITS platform.

“We are currently present in about 43 cities and we hope that in the next two years, we would be able to scale up to about 150 cities through HITS,” said Chandani. The company has installed its digital headends in about seven cities and hopes to reach smaller cities and towns.

HITS helps multi system operators (MSOs) to offer their content through satellite to the cable operators, which then reaches the consumers with the help of a cable. The new HITS policy is at present pending with the I&B ministry.

Most MSOs believe that HITS would help them scale up their operations to be able to compete with direct-to-home (DTH) service providers as it requires lower investments compared to digital cable.

WWIL, which is one of the largest cable companies in the country, has about 70 lakh analogue cable subscribers and about 2.5 lakh digital cable subscribers at the moment.