KOLKATA: Panaccess, a German-headquartered company for CAS, SMS, billing and VoD, aims to promote CAS in India. The company is not only betting on business from the remaining phases i.e. III and IV, but is also approaching the multi-system operators (MSOs) in phase I and II.

“There is good scope for CAS, SMS and billing in the next phases. And a few existing clients want to replace with our CAS and hence, we are approaching the MSOs in phase I and II along with newer ones,” informs Panaccess sales consultant GK Viswanath.

“We have commissioned our conditional access system, subscriber management system and billing for a MSO in Pondicherry,” he answers, when asked about the work executed in the country.

The company, which is slated to open a service centre in Bengaluru by April 2015, has already established its products and services in 32 countries across the world. It serves as a single window for a set of secured and revenue protected suite of solutions that complements and adds revenue streams to existing and new cable TV and DTH operations.

After April, the company will start visiting all the major MSOs and plans to advertise a lot more as well. “We participate in all the major cable TV exhibitions etc,” he states.

On the problems MSOs face with existing CAS system, he says, “They can resolve the problems by replacing with our CAS i.e. SMS and billing which are built in. Hence, there is no need for MSOs to go any anywhere else for these facilities. Apart from this, we also provide with solutions through broadband services.”

In the coming months, the company, which currently employees around 15 people in the country, plans to recruit a few more.  “Next fiscal will see at least 10 for sales and 15 for technical and five for backend and five demonstrator appointments,” he says.

On the extended deadline of cable TV digitisation in India from 2014 to 2016, he comments, “There are some people who had already started manufacturing STBs indigenously; they are the ones which have been affected by this decision.”

“We can coordinate with the MSOs those who are planning to go for headends or STBs. We hope to capitalise the market early,” he concludes.