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.
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.
“One of the things that we are looking to do is to further strengthen that stickiness by bringing in other services across our mobile as well as our DTH platforms into the home. We track that very closely and we have a metric that drives that. We are also trying to see what we can do to digitally enable the several services to be sold seamlessly to customers,” Vittal added, as reported by Indian Television.
Airtel Digital TV is the Second Best DTH Operator After Tata Sky
We have recently analysed the offerings of DTH operators after the new tariff regime and Tata Sky emerged as the winner thanks to its wide-range of content offerings. Airtel Digital TV stood second the list because it's also providing bundled channel packs, decent customer service and smooth migration. With Tata Sky on the verge of removing the multi-tv policy, customers will now incline towards Airtel Digital TV since it's charging minimal amount as NCF charges for the secondary connection. That said, Dish TV and D2h are the cheapest multi-tv operators right now, but several customers of both the operators are complaining regarding the service, so there are chances that customer might incline towards Airtel Digital TV.
