Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

When the subscribers think of the TV and broadcasting industry, the few companies that pop into the minds of people are the DTH service providers like Tata Sky and Dish TV. There is no doubt that the industry is structured in such a way that the DTH operators are given more preference as compared to the cable operators. In fact, the dent which came as the part of the erosion of subscribers from the industry, as highlighted by the KPMG Media and Entertainment industry report, was also delivered to the cable operators more rather than the DTH operators. The industry lost around 12-15 million subscribers in the last year, and this was made up by the loss of cable operators, whose subscriber base went from 91 million homes to 83 million in FY19, whereas, the DTH operators grew their subscriber base from 62 million to 67 million in the same time period.

DTH Operators Being Helped by New Trai Tariff Regime
It is also worth noting that powered by the new tariff regime, the DTH operators also enjoyed an advantage on the revenue front as well. Although the active subscriber base shrunk overall, the ARPU went up in the third and fourth phases because of the Network Capacity Fee (NCF) of Rs 130 plus taxes. The ARPUs were much lower before the new tariff regime, so in the later period, the industry enjoyed better ARPU, which translated to a yearly growth of 8.1% despite loss in subscribers.