Tata Sky had the largest pay DTH subscriber base in CY 2019

BENGALURU: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report October - December, 2019 says that there were 6.998 crore (69.98 million, 699.8 lakh) direct to home (DTH) subscribers in India as on 31 December 2019 that paid for their subscription. This is in addition to the subscribers of the DD Free Dish (free DTH services of Doordarshan). It is important to note that till March 2019, the subscription figure of the total active subscribers included inactive and temporarily suspended subscribers for not more than the last 120 days. However, as per new regulatory framework of Broadcasting and Cable TV Services, the total active subscribers are now counted to includeonly those subscribers who are inactive/temporarily suspended for not more than the last 90 days.

This 6.998 crore pay DTH subscriber base was split amongst four players. The TRAI report gave the breakup of pay DTH subscribers as Tata Sky with 31.80 percent, Dish TV with 30.55 percent, Airtel Digital TV Services with 23.31 percent and Sun Direct with 14.35 percent. The numerical break up assuming that the number of subscribers was rounded off to seven crore (70 million, 700 lakh) is Tata Sky 2.23 crore (22.3 million, 223 lakh), Dish TV 2.14 crore (21.4 million, 214 lakh), Airtel Digital TV 1.63 crore (16.3 million, 163 lakh) and Sun Direct one crore (10 million 100 lakh).

Please refer to the figure below:

According to the TRAI report, Pay DTH subscriber base in India grew by 0.068 crore (0.6 million or 6 lakh) as on 31 December 2019 to 6.998 crore (69.88 million, 699.8 lakh) when compared to 6.930 crore (69.30 million, 693 lakh) on 30 September 2019. Please refer to the figure below for the quarter-on-quarter change in pay DTH subscriber base.

Cable TV operators

The TRAI report says that the country has achieved 100 percent digitisation of Cable TV network. This is a stupendous achievement making India as the only large country where 100 percent digital cable has been achieved through mandatory regulations.

As on 31st December 2019, there were 1613 MSOs registered with the ministry of information & broadcasting (MIB). Further, as per the data reported by MSOs / HITS operators, there were13 MSOs and one HITS operator who had a subscriber base of more than one million. Details of the total active subscribers of these 13 MSOs and one HITS operator are given in the following table.

Satellite TV Channels

A total of 918 private satellite TV channels have been permitted by the MIB for uplinking only/ downlinking only/both uplinking and downlinking, as on 31 January, 2019. The quarter-wise figures of the total number of TV channels is depicted in the chart given below.

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