The Direct-to-Home (DTH) subscribers in India went up marginally in the June 2024 quarter. As per the data shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the total DTH users in India increased from 61.97 million by the end of March 2024 to 62.17 million by the end of June 2024. The number of satellite TV channels dipped from their peak numbers in the last financial year from 922 at the end of March 2024 to 902 by June 2024.
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Out of the 902 channels, only 362 pay TV channels. Amongst this, 259 channels were SD satellite pay TV channels and 103 were HD channels. Apart from the 362 pay TV channels, the other channels that were available for downlinking were all FTA (free-to-air) channels.
The only interesting thing that happened this quarter was the addition of DTH users. Since the previous year's June quarter, the sector was lost customers. This was not shocking because of the huge growth witnessed by the OTT (over-the-t0p) players. When it came to the market share, Tata Play Limited had 32.34% of the market share, Bharti Telemedia Limited had 28.85% of the market share, Dish TV India Limited had 19.98% share, and Sun Direct TV Ptv Limited had 18.83% share.
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The DTH operators have to figure out ways to attract new customers, sustain the current ones and also learn how to navigate this curve of subscriber loss without going out of business. With the rise of IPTV services and deployment of 5G and fiber in almost every part of the country, the DTH operators are finding it hard to grow their business rapidly. Forget growing, if the sector adding new subscribers is a surprise, that means things that not good at all.
Bharti Airtel recently clarified that it keeps evaluation businesses for possible acquisitions, but it has no material information to share with the stock exchanges regarding acquisition of Tata Play Limited.
