After all the speculation, Airtel has launched it’s DTH service (branded Airtel digital TV, will go live by October 9th) across 62 cities and the same will be available via 21,000 retail points (including it’s customer relationship centres).
Couple of interesting features/content:
- On screen account meter
- Last viewed channel in case of power disruption/switch off
- Low battery indicator on the screen
- Interactive applications such as iMatinee (Book cinema tickets), iTravel (Browse and book travel packages), iShop (Shop on TV for your favorite brands), iCity (Get your city’s information) and Widgets (Update yourself on latest stock news). 8 screen iNews, 2 / 4 screen iSports.
- World space Radio (Exclusive content ) [via]
DTH Market Size
- Current user base stands at ~6.5 million (total TV household in India ~124 mn)
- By 2011, the DTH subscriber base is expected to grow to 25mn
- Key players include DishTV, Tata Sky , Sun Direct and Reliance.
- DishTV claims 50% market share and aims to add five million subscribers by March 2009
Earlier, Reliance launched it’s DTH service in the month of August and is targeting 40% of the market in the next 12 months.
It’s amazing to see how Airtel has diversified into different businesses and yet has managed to maintain it’s quality of service.
Are you on DTH?
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Nice.. interactive features sound interesting..
but it will be really cool if a DTH provider provides you with bundled internet connectivity.
I used to do content acquisition for Tata Sky until 2 weeks ago. Let me add my 2 cents to this business. This is an extremely tough business to be in. Look at Dish TV’s stock price. No matter how many widgets you provide, it ultimately comes down to your channel offering.
Wait till digital cable picks up, DTH will have a tough run.
Vivek
@Vivek, TV dramas are called soaps because soaps require constant ads. Many of us tend to change our brands on whim. Soaps themselves, keep changing. I would call that a tough market.
DTH, or any other proprietary service can never be a tough market. This is the reason, they happen in sequence. Tata Sky has to be tops so it lets Dish TV do all the groundwork, then comes in and captures the cream, then lets BigTV, Airtel, D2H fight it out for the remaining spoils.
Cable too is proprietary because there is no choice, you have to eat what the service would give you.
In developed countries, competitors offer free STB, DVR etc if you switch. In poor countries, you are stuck. And even there, you cannot really change every month.
The only hope is multi megabit affordable internet access because the fight really is all about the last mile. Internet access is not just interactive, it is the only OPEN last mile.
We want to know whether Airtel – Big TV ,DTH is having any Islamic channels like Q TV , Peace TV , Saudi Arabia TV for Muslim vtewers .
because we live in a pseudo secular country where all faiths are allowed to be practised except islam …they dont show peace tv or qtv cos they are afraid of showing truth to people who would then join islam
when airtel will start showing QTV/Peace tv /other islamic chaneels on its network??.if it is done , the wiewership of airtel alone will be more than the total wievership of all channels.
…they dont show peace tv or qtv cos they are afraid of showing truth to people who would then join islam