[Satellite TODAY Insider 01-03-11] DishTV has inked a new long-term capacity deal with AsiaSat as it looks to build on its strong market position in India. The DTH operator, which is part of a vibrant satellite pay-TV market in India now needs extra capacity to serve its customer base in India.
    The deal with AsiaSat was likely to have been hard fought and maybe a little bit of a surprise. DishTV already had capacity on the NSS-6 satellite but has decided not to go with SES World Skies this time. Rajiv Khattar, President, Projects, DishTV, told Satellite News back in June hinted that the operator “may have to look at other options” for capacity. He said, “SES World Skies is going to build another satellite at the same location (as NSS-6), which may take some time. So, we might need some capacity before that. So, we might look at other options. The SES World Skies satellite is likely to launch in two years. I think if it goes in 2011 without signing a new deal for capacity, I think we can survive without the new capacity.” Interestingly, DishTV could not wait for new capacity, such is the demands from its customer base.
    With this new deal with AsiaSat, the total transmission bandwidth has increased from 432 MHz to 648MHz. The new transponders are closely located to the current transponders allowing channels beamed from it to be available to existing customers as well. The increased transponder capacity will enable DishTV to increase its SD channel capacity to over 320 and HD capacity to over 30.
    Like many DTH operators in India, DishTV is seeing phenomenal subscriber growth in arguably the world’s fastest growing market for DTH services. It was only in April last year it announced it went through the seven million milestone for subscribers. By, November the operator was announcing that it had reached nine million subscribers. It is on course to add around three million subscribers alone in 2010, which shows the Indian pay-TV market continues to grow at almost breakneck speed.
    Certainly, 2010 was a busy year for the operator as it looked to cement its position in the increasingly competitive Indian DTH market. With operators such as Tata Sky, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel also aggressively targeting the market, DishTV has a fight on its hand to continue its leadership in the market. It was the first of a new wave of operators to launch DTH services in India, but now with many others entering the market, it is a much tougher market place than it was a few years ago.
    The deal with AsiaSat also emphasizes a greater push towards HD services as a new battleground in the Indian DTH market. The operator launched HD services in late May. DishTV, along with Tata Sky, was one of the first to offer HD services to customers in India.

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