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Bharathi trying a hand in DTH space
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 12 July 2008, 02:05 IST
New Delhi: After proving itself to be a successful operator in the Indian cellular market, Bharathi Airtel, one of the telecom companies in India, is planning to enter the DTH space. Bharathi Telemedia, a sister company of Bharathi Airtel, has conducted a test launch of its DTH service in Gurgaon. The company has seeded 80-100 set top boxes of its DTH services to select homes across Gurgaon for the test phase, which will be followed by the nation-wide commercial launch which is expected to be in August-September.
According to experts, the entry of Bharathi Telemedia into the DTH broadcasting is likely to lower the entry level price of the DTH subscription. Two of the DTH operators in the country, Dish TV and Tata Sky charge 
2, 490 and 2, 674 respectively as entry price for subscription. Between these DTH players the market has over 5.3 million subscribers. Both the companies continue to add about 100,000 subscribers on a monthly basis.
Subscribers will have to arrange a set top box to avail the DTH system with a subscription price according to the each subscriber. While Tata Sky and Dish TV operate the DTH service by MPEG-2 technology, Bharathi offers its service by using the MPEG-4 channel compression technology which is the next generation technology of MPEG-2. The MPEG-4 technology can bring more quality in picture as well as sound. However set top boxes of MPEG-4 technology are more costly than of MPEG-2. With the arrival of new companies into the DTH broadcasting, the market is expected to cross 12 million subscriber mark within the next for 3-4 years.
2, 490 and 2, 674 respectively as entry price for subscription. Between these DTH players the market has over 5.3 million subscribers. Both the companies continue to add about 100,000 subscribers on a monthly basis.
Subscribers will have to arrange a set top box to avail the DTH system with a subscription price according to the each subscriber. While Tata Sky and Dish TV operate the DTH service by MPEG-2 technology, Bharathi offers its service by using the MPEG-4 channel compression technology which is the next generation technology of MPEG-2. The MPEG-4 technology can bring more quality in picture as well as sound. However set top boxes of MPEG-4 technology are more costly than of MPEG-2. With the arrival of new companies into the DTH broadcasting, the market is expected to cross 12 million subscriber mark within the next for 3-4 years.
