News Tata Sky to invest Rs 900 crore in FY14, eyes 30% growth

[Shubham]

Direct-to-home television operator Tata Sky plans to invest Rs 900 crore this fiscal on upgrading technology as it targets a 30% growth in subscribers.

"We will invest around Rs 900 crore to shift to new technology that will help us expand our channel offerings," Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal told PTI.

The company will switch to the MPEG-4 format from the current MPEG-2 standard, enabling it to offer more than 300 channels from about 230 now. The changeover is part of Tata Sky's strategy to increase its subscriber base, which stands at 10 million.

"We have already started the process of moving over to the new technology. This is likely to be completed by July 2014. We have to change set-top boxes of each of our customers, hence it will take so long," Nagpal said.

Tata Sky is one of six private DTH companies offering services to 56.5 million subscribers as of March 31, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

"We will grow by 25-30% this financial year," Nagpal said, adding that digitisation has helped to win over former analog cable customers.

DTH companies are adding 8-10 million customers every year as analog cable systems are digitised to allow all TV signals to be provided only through set-top boxes, he said.

The second phase of digitisation of cable TV systems ended on March 31 and covered 38 cities with a population of more than 1 million, according to Trai. The whole country is expected to be covered by the end of 2014.

Tata Sky to invest Rs 900 crore in FY14, eyes 30% growth | Business Standard

 

[shawl_who]

Every DTH should be scared of TS now.

 

[Deepu]

No reference to GSAT 10 by Mr. Nagpal as to whether they have got the transponders or legal suit against ISRO

 

[SUNIEL]

No reference to GSAT 10 by Mr. Nagpal as to whether they have got the transponders or legal suit against ISRO

yet no tp from gsat. Expecting only after new satcom policy.

 

[Mazi]

Tatasky customer support system is best from all other DTHs.

They only lack with less channels , now they are able to add new channel and filling this less channel count.

If they succeed to do this then they will go far far ahead from other DTHs

 

[Gopichand Pai]

The pace with which they are changing channels to MPEG4, they will be done with it well before July, 2014. I just hope that they don't slow down and complete the migration by this year end.

 

[harshbardhan]

Though I have faith on TS but there were occasions when I had almost lost patience and looking for some other dth service but at last faith won and now TS is so to say rocking!

 

[SPANDAN]

dont know why they r saying that they would be able to offer just more then 300 channels frm 230 now as after mpeg4 migration they can just double the number of channels..

 

[shawl_who]

I d read in some article... that after full migration, they can add 100 more channels.

 

[dipayan]

I d read in some article... that after full migration, they can add 100 more channels.

If they can transmit 12 HD channel from 1 transponder then they are technically capable of transmitting almost 400 SD channels from 10 transponder. One more transponder will be used for HD along with the present one. So they will be able to provide almost 425 channels (SD+ HD) in MPEG 4 DVB S2.