India seems to be on the verge of replicating its importance as a lucrative market for telecom services into the Direct-to-Home (DTH) services domain as well.

At the end of 2008, the country had close to 9 million subscribers with five prominent players namely DishTV, Tata Sky, Big TV, Airtel Digital TV and Sun Direct competing for a pie of the market.

“India now has five pay DTH satellite providers with a sixth expected to enter the market early in 2009,” says Mike Paxton, In-Stat analyst. “Additionally, in the Asia/Pacific region, China is likely to introduce a pay DTH satellite service in 2009 or 2010, which will help sustain strong growth in Asia.”

Globally the subscriber base witnessed a growth rate of 18 percent in 2008, says in-Stat research. Eastern Europe witnessed the strongest growth in subscriber base at 63.5 percent in 2008. Russian DTH subscriber base too doubled last year to reach 3.8 million.