India’s largest DTH operator Dish TV has received approval from the Sri Lankan government to launch a satellite broadcasting platform in the country.
The company holds 70% of Dish TV Lanka Private Limited, a joint venture with local partner Satnet…
India’s largest DTH operator Dish TV has received approval from the Sri Lankan government to launch a satellite broadcasting platform in the country.
The company holds 70% of Dish TV Lanka Private Limited, a joint venture with local partner Satnet which holds the rest, and had been waiting for a licence to start commercial services.
The service will use the SES 8 satellite that launched last December to 95E.
Dish TV, which is owned by Indian conglomerate Essel Group, has previously outlined plans to invest up to Rs1bn (US$16.3m) in the JV .
Sri Lanka’s pay-TV market is currently dominated by the country’s largest mobile carrier Dialog TV.
Dish TV’s expansion comes as India’s telecoms regulator reveals the number of inactive Indian DTH subscribers in the three months to the end of June grew 6% over the quarter to 29.33 million, or 43.41% of the total subscriber base. However, the total registered subscribers increased by around 4% over the quarter to 67.57 million, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
Dish TV recently said it added 387,000 net subscribers in the three months to 30 September, with a net subscriber base of 12.1 million at the end of the quarter. It posted Rs6.17bn (US$100.35m) in subscription revenues for Q2 2015, up 12.2% on a year-on-year basis. ARPU increased slightly on the quarter to Rs172 (US$2.8).
The company’s EBITDA was also up 3.3% to Rs1.62bn (US$26.41m), compared with the previous quarter.
Meanwhile, managing director Jawahar Goel has said the company will re-evaluate the possibility of making its set top boxes domestically, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Made in India’ campaign.
“We are hopeful of improvement in the hardware economics of STBs sourced from India and hope that the taxation structure will be suitably amended to benefit local production,” he said.
According to Goel, multiple taxation regimes remains one of the biggest challenges for the country’s DTH industry, although the company is hopeful that the incoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) will result in cost savings and margin expansion.
There are five other private DTH operators in India, while state broadcaster Doordarshan operates a free DTH service called Freedish.
