DTH players eye non-cable TV homes
Posted by Sathish | Published on June 03rd, 2009 | Comments 2
NEW DELHI: The battleground for direct-to-home (DTH) companies is expected to soon shift to semi-urban and rural India. While players try to woo the urban cable and satellite (C&S) consumers, they have already set their sights on smaller cities, especially the non-C&S television homes. Adding 8-10 lakh new subscribers per month in the past 4-6 months, players believe DTH is not just an urban phenomenon.
For instance, Airtel Digital Television will be tapping its large telecom distribution channel to reach out to tier- II and III cities. “Our initial strategy was to be present in the 250 large cities. Now, we plan to reach out to additional cities and towns. Non-C&S homes and smaller towns will bring in an important chunk of future growth,” said Bharti Airtel DTH CEO Ajai Puri.
While telecom players that expanded into DTH, such as Airtel and Reliance Communications (with Big TV), are banking on their pre-paid and fixed line customers in tier- II and III cities to broaden their base, others are working on low-cost set-top boxes (STBs) and offering tailor-made packages that suit rural consumers’ interest.
Filed Under: Airtel Digital TV • Dish TV • Reliance Digital TV • Sun Direct • Tata Sky
BIGTV BECOMES MORE COSTLY: INCREASED THEIR PACKAGE PRICES
Today BIGTV has increased the prices of their packages and become more costly and even they have reduced their number of channelsin their packages.
Check below for new and old package price comparison
Old Pricing and channels count
Package Price/ Channels count
Starter 1 98 + tax/ 68 channels
Starter 2 175+ tax/ 89 channels
Starter 3 190+ tax/ 104 channels
and as per new packs:
Package Price / Channel Count
Starter 1 = 127 / 55
Starter 2 = 204 / 80
Starter 3 = 232 / 97
So that means bigtv have hike the price of their packages by reducing the total number of channels.
http://www.bigtv.co.in/starterpack.html#
COMPARISON: BIGTV STARTER1 VS DISHTV SILVER PACKAGE
In last few days their were lots of things happening on bigtv like new channels addition and now they have hiked the prices of their base packages……by even reducing the number of channels in their corresponding packs.
I am just doing a comparison between BIGTV's new Startter1 Pack with dishtv's Silver pack.
1. Dishtv silver package cost is Rs.125 and bigtv Starter 1 pack is Rs.127
2. Dishtv Silver pack is having 135 Channels where as bigtv's Starter 1 pack has only 55 +10 radio=65 channels (as per their website). that means dishtv is having almost double number of channels then bigtv at the same cost.
3. Extra Channels on dishtv: ZeeTV , Real, 9X, Zee Cinema, and more music channels like 9XM, B4U, ETC, ZEE MUSIC, More news channels and more regional channels as well.
4. Extra Channel on BIGTV: Sahara One
So its quite simple now BIGTV is looking for sucking more money from customers. that is if you see this comparison then its quite clear that dishtv packages are very economical as compared to other DTH and also suits customer pocket and their interest.