The Hindu Business Line : INSAT-4A fully booked — ISRO sees good demand for DTH services

INSAT-4A, ISRO's upcoming power-packed satellite that will catapult it into the direct-to-home broadcast league, is fully booked and may turn out to be a neat cash cow for the national operator, according to official sources in the organisation.

A chunk of the commercial Ku band of 12 transponders is said to have been taken up by T-Sky, the Tatas-Star Group's DTH joint venture. ISRO would not give out the capacity hired.

The country's sole satellite operator hopes to ride on a good demand for the powerful Ku band and has provided on 4A, the highest capacity so far in this frequency (apart from the regular C band capacity). Insat-4A, the first of a new fourth generation series, is slated for launch in mid-December this year.

Other DTH players such as Sun Direct are said to be waiting for space on the next ones - Insat 4B and 4C - which are set for launches in 2006-07.

Though ISRO introduced Ku capacity in the late 1990s with its INSAT-2E and the later 3 series, it has so far allowed only VSAT operators to use this higher bandwidth. Insat-4A is expected to be the spur for an Indian DTH boom. Currently, two domestic DTH providers - Zee's Dish TV and Doordarshan's DD Direct - beam their services via the foreign NSS 6 satellite.

Transponder business accounts for a third of the revenue of ISRO's commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, which grossed a revenue of Rs 367 crore in 2004-05. Next year could even see 50 per cent higher revenue, largely driven by the DTH boom, said Mr K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Executive Director of Antrix.

According to Mr Murthy, the demand for Ku band for DTH broadcast purposes is quite good, at 35-40 transponders at present. "But all that has not manifested yet and the real demand could be about 50 per cent of it. We are quite comfortable and have addressed the requirements indented for it," he told Business Line.

Worldwide, DTH broadcasting accounts for more than half of space service revenues; space services alone outstrip are much more lucrative than systems - such as sale of satellites, launches or ground facilities - which is where satellite operators like ISRO are now focussing on.

If they reach their full potential, DTH services, conservatively put at Rs 500 crore, could yield around 1 per cent of that business to the satellite operator, Mr Murthy estimated.

If DTH broadcast players are investing Rs 50-60 crore on transponder leases a year, ISRO as operator has put in over Rs 300-350 crore including insurance cover in its latest satellite - which should continue to yield good returns over the next 12-15 years.

The catch, Mr Murthy said, was that unlike in Europe or the US, private players were still wary of risking it out with direct-to-home.

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