Dish TV leads with 4.4 million subscriber base

Roping in Shah Rukh Khan was a move to counter the competition in the market. Dish TV, the market leader in direct-to-home (DTH) industry, now has a subscriber base of 4.4 million, as it has mopped up 4,31,253 subscribers in the month of October.

Following competition in the market, Dish TV has earlier announced a Happy Home package for as low as Rs 200 a month, besides a a Hattrick offer for Southern subscribers. It has also increased its physical presence.

Tata Sky, the second major player in the DTH sector, has 2.7 million subscribers as of October 2008. The company hopes to not only increase the subscriber base but also retain its customer by providing more customer centric schemes.

Tata Sky, trying to counter the competition in the market, has dropped prices by 50 per cent for the set-top box and has lowered its subscription fee by 20 per cent. The company has also started its personal video recorded functionality and digital video recorder service for its customers.

Reliance Big TV, part of the Reliance ADAG; and Airtel Digital TV, part of Bharti Airtel Ltd, have also recently launched their DTH services. Big TV in October announced that it had acquired 5,00,000 subscribers since its launch two months ago. Airtel entered the DTH market only about a month ago.

Sun Direct, the DTH service promoted by Sun TV Network, has an ambitious pan-India expansion drive. Sun Direct aims to add 2 million subscribers annually, and the company currently has more than 1.5 million subscribers, with a 2.5 million target for the current fiscal.

Direct DD Plus, a free-to-air DTH service launched in 2004 by Prasar Bharti, has an estimated subscriber base of about 6 million. The figure is based on the sale of set-top boxes and no survey has been done.

Source: televisionpoint.com