Advanced Television

GSAT-10 easies India’s DTH squeeze

October 3, 2012

By Chris Forrester

Last week an Arianespace rocket launched GSAT-10 for India’s Space Research Organisation. IT has now emerged that Tata-Sky is likely to take about 8-10 of the craft’s total of 30 transponders, and thus expand its operations. Tata-Sky is owned by the giant Tata conglomerate along with News Corp-backed Star TV. Most of India’s DTH broadcasters are suffering limitations in the number of channels they can carry because of lack of available capacity.

Tata Sky MD and CEO Harit Nagpa, quoted by NexTV Asia, says, “We were never on the back-foot in most of the markets because of the [capacity] crunch. We did have to make a choice of whether to spread the content gap across the country or in a few states. So, we had chosen to concentrate our content gap on the two states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. That is because the difference between the number of regional channels needed in these two states and what we could have offered then was large to bridge. We were already strong in the other states. We can now stop making the trade-off and compete at par in these two major markets as well.”

It is understood that Bharti Airtel, another DTH player is also seeking capacity on GSAT-10.

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite