The Hindu Business Line : Bharti entering DTH, Net TV

New Delhi, Aug. 6 Telecom major Bharti Airtel is all set to enter the broadcasting segment with Direct-to-Home (DTH) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services. While IPTV will be initially limited to six cities, the company is betting big on DTH as a mass product.

Mr Atul Bindal, President, Bharti Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services, told Business Line: “We have partnered with Cisco for IPTV services, which will be launched by December 2007, while DTH services will be launched dur ing January-March 2008 quarter.”

Bharti has applied for a DTH licence and has got the letter of intent from the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. While DTH is satellite-based broadcasting service which is currently being offered by media houses such as Zee Group and TataSky, IPTV enables telephone service providers to use optic fibre or copper cables to deliver TV channels.

MTNL for instance offers almost 100 TV channels on its IPTV platform in Delhi and Mumbai.

Mr Bindal said that TV content will help the company push up its broadband user base from the current 6.5 lakh to cover all the homes and small and medium enterprises, which has an Airtel fixed line phone.

Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel has reduced its share in its wholly owned DTH venture, Bharti Telemedia Ltd, to 40 per cent.

Cuts stake to 40%

The move has been taken to comply with the FDI guidelines in the DTH sector. Total foreign equity holding in DTH company including FDI, NRIs and financial institutions cannot exceed 49 per cent and within the foreign equity, the FDI component should not exceed 20 per cent.

Since Bharti Airtel has an FDI component of 48 per cent, it cannot hold the entire stake in Bharti Telemedia. A Bharti group company will hold the balance 60 per cent. This will keep the FDI level in Bharti Telemedia to under the permitted 20 per cent.

It was initially planned to keep the venture under Bharti Airtel, the telecom business of the Bharti Group, to leverage synergy with broadband services. Bharti’s manufacturing arm Bharti Teletech is also set to produce set-top boxes for DTH services.

DTH players

Telecom companies are increasingly looking to foray into the broadcasting segment. Currently, there are three players in the DTH market – DD Direct, Tata Sky and Dish TV, and a fourth Sun Direct is expected to launch its services shortly.

Reliance Communications, the second largest private telecom company, is also planning to foray into the DTH space.

Telcos are also deploying IPTV that allows subscriber to receive TV content through telephone lines. Companies including Reliance Communication, BSNL, Bharti and MTNL are all set to roll out IPTV in a big way. Wireless telecom operators are also betting big on mobile TV with technologies such as DVBH and Media Flo. Analysts point out India is all set to overtake Japan as Asia’s largest satellite direct-to-home market by next year.

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