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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Varun Kashyap & Sridevi Reddy
Co-Founders, Zithara.ai
Transforming Indian Offline Retail and Customer Engagement Using AI
With the implementation of the new tariff regime by Trai, the most affected users out there belong to the Cable TV industry. Cable TV operators in the country are unable to implement the new tariff regime in a proper manner despite facing notices from the regulator. Major DTH player, Airtel Digital TV, is now looking to bank on this as the operator is eying Cable TV subscribers who’re suffering from the sub-par implementation of new tariff regime. Recently, we reported that Airtel Digital TV has added nearly four lakh users in Q4 FY19, which took its overall subscriber base to 15.4 million. However, in the coming quarters, the DTH operator is looking to grab Cable TV users who’re currently in the thought of migrating to a DTH operator. As part of the same, Airtel Digital TV has slashed prices of its set-top boxes including the Airtel Internet TV which is one of its kind offering from the company.
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Airtel Digital TV Subscriber Base Likely to Grow in the Coming Days
Right now, overall Cable TV user base in India is around 90 million, which is more than that of DTH user base. Airtel Digital TV believes that a large number of users will now migrate to the DTH platform leaving the traditional Cable TV service. “The DTH market is large because there are still about 90 million customers who have cable and terrestrial connections, so there is still a big upgradation opportunity from cable to DTH,” said Gopal Vittal, the CEO of Airtel India during the Q4 FY19 earnings call last week.
Already, the new tariff regime by Trai has created a lot of issues in the broadcasting sector. While Trai was aiming to bring transparency to the sector, customers felt that they’re paying more than the earlier prices, and as a result, they’re moving to OTT platforms. And for Cable TV users, the situation is very tough as operators are not migrating them to the new tariff regime even after choosing the channel packs. And one of the major drawbacks for Cable TV operators is the lack of a self-care portal like DTH operators, so everything has to be done manually.
