The total active DTH pay-TV subscribers in India dropped slightly during the first quarter this year. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says its quarterly performance indicator shows that the overall active subscriber numbers dropped to 67.53 million from 67.56 million.

The surprise fall follows a consistent upward trend in DTH which continued throughout last year.

There are now 5 DTH pay-TV operators following the merger between Dish TV and Videocon d2h last year, and which took the pair’s overall share of the DTH market to a 43 per cent share, followed by Tata Sky (25 per cent), Airtel DTH (21 per cent), Sun Direct (10 per cent) and Reliance Digital TV (1 per cent).

TRAI adds that a total of 875 private TV channels are now licensed as at March 31st which is down y-o-y from 888 at the same time in 2017.

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