Indian DTH operator DishTV is set to launch personal video recorder (PVR) services to its 6.5 million subscribers, however, HD services may be at least a year away, DishTV COO Salil Kapoor told Satellite News.
    In the fiercely competitive Indian DTH market, DishTV expects to reach 7 million subscribers by the end of March based on growth of new services. DishTV was the first operator in this market, joined by competitors such as Tata Sky, Videocon, as well as major telcos Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel.
    Despite the increased competition, Kapoor believes that the size of India’s market provides tremendous room for growth. “There are around 250 million households in the country, and only 130 million of these have TV. Out of this 130 million, only around 85 million households in India have access to cable and satellite-TV services. There are still tens of millions of households for us to target. The quality of service to the average cable household is not particularly good either, so analog here has to pave the way for digital. It is DTH that will offer the last-mile-connectivity solution, and there are still lots of analog cable subscribers in India,” said Kapoor.
    Kapoor said migrating potential new customers to future services will be crucial for the company’s success in 2010, starting with its plans for Personal Live TV, the satellite offering DishTV revealed in mid-January, and developing a comprehensive PVR rollout. “We are looking at a number of different set-top boxes. The plans are ready. It is now just a matter of timing. We have to be cautious here. One of the other DTH operators has already launched PVR services in India, and they are not seeing much success so far, despite a huge investment,” said Kapoor.
    Despite the extensive personalized DishTV service plan, which aims to bring 70 satellite-TV channels service directly to inter-city buses, taxis and trains, Kapoor said DishTV will not be able to offer high-demand HD services in 2010. “We are working on HD services, but there is very little HD content right now. I think the content needs to be there before we look to HD services. I think we are at least a year from launching HD services,” he said.
     However, while impressive Indian subscriber figures may drive some business models to make HD services a priority, India remains a low ARPU market. “The ARPU figure can only increase when you are able to offer customers more content and value added services, so there could be services like movies-on-demand could help increase the ARPU,” Kapoor said. “The ARPU is around $3 a month. In India, you also have to subsidize the subscriber initially with a set-top box, so you have to make large investments in front.”
     With such low ARPUs, the path to profitability is much more difficult, and DishTV has yet to reach this status. “We will become cash positive by the first quarter. Our operations have already reached an EBITDA positive position … in the initial few years since we launched services,” he said. “It has been a good time to be the market, as all of the DTH players have been growing, but we do expect there will be consolidation at some point. We think this might start to happen in two to three years,” said Kapoor.