With competition hotting up in the direct-to-home television segment after the entry of Reliance Big TV and Bharti Airtel DTH, market leader Dish TV and TataSky are planning to introduce DVR technology around Diwali time to stay a step ahead.
The Digital Video Recorder (DVR), which allows viewers to record programmes in one channel while watching another and play according to convenience, is being billed as the next big thing in the evolving Indian DTH market.
"This, of course, will be a premium product and we plan to announce the launch of DVR technology platform for our DTH service very soon. It will be a Diwali gift to our customers," TataSky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra said.
Similarly, market leader Dish TV is also readying to roll out its DVR platform.
"Our launch of DVR is expected around Diwali and our offer will have 140 hours of recording time," Dish TV Chief Operating Officer Salil Kapoor said, adding the set top boxes for the DVR were expected to cost around Rs 10,000 each.
Their new rivals Bharti and Reliance Big entertainment are also readying DVR platform. While an RCom official said soon the company would unveil DVR, industry sources said Bharti DTH may also launch the same thing.
Asked if they were compelled to bring the new technology due to increased competition, both TataSky and Dish TV denied.
"We have been planning for it over the last eight months doing pilot studies. Now we are ready to roll-out," Mehra said.
Big TV also notes that Airtel had no copyright claims since the teaser ads ran with no brand logo or name
Mumbai / New Delhi: The country’s largest mobile phone company, Bharti Airtel Ltd, formally launched its much anticipated digital television service, a direct-to-home (DTH) service branded Airtel Digital TV, but its ad blitz was somewhat undermined by rival Reliance Big TV Ltd. Airtel Digital TV had been running teaser commercials for the past week on national television that didn’t identify the brand in an ad that ended with a voice-over saying: “See you at home.” Reliance Big TV, part of the Anil Ambani-run conglomerate, ran a strikingly similar television commercial, including the red sofa in Airtel Digital’s ad as well as a voice-over that went: “See you at home”. Big TV touted features such as 200-plus channels, 32 cinema “halls” and digital quality audio and video.
“If you (Airtel) are going to tease people, we (Big TV) are going to feed their appetite,” said Bobby Pawar, chief creative officer of Mudra Group, which created the Big TV campaign. “The brand is called Big (TV) and we don’t do things in half measure.” Big TV also notes that Airtel had no copyright claims since the teaser ads ran with no brand logo or name. “It’s an open market and every player is expected to respond to competition. The campaign also gave us an opportunity to make specific claims on the product,” says Sanjay Behl, group head (brand and marketing) of the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Big TV hopes to grab a 40% market share and is distributing its service through 100,000 outlets across 6,000 towns, piggybacking in part on affiliate Reliance Communications Ltd, which ranks behind Bharti Airtel in the country’s bitterly competitive mobile phone services business.Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have tangled before in various industry takeover battles as well as fights over industry standards and spectrum.
The ambush is similar to what PepsiCo Inc.’s India unit did for the 1996 Cricket World Cup when Coca-Cola Co. had touted the official drink status of Coke at the tournament. Pepsi countered with a “Nothing Official About It” campaign. And more recently, in 2005, publisher Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd grabbed a teaser campaign that was being used by new newspaper Daily News & Analysis in Mumbai.
JWT India, Airtel Digital TV’s agency, mocked Big TV’s attempt. “I thought Big (TV) was big enough to have ideas of their own,” says Agnello Dias, chief creative officer at JWT. “If Big (TV) thinks that Airtel DTH’s launch depends solely on a red chair, they will be very surprised when the campaign breaks.”
Airtel Digital TV’s campaign, replete with a cricket and Bollywood ensemble, features actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, cricketers Gautam Gambhir and Zaheer Khan, as well as current Airtel ad stars Madhavan and Vidya Balan, and music composer A.R. Rahman.
Bharti Airtel becomes the fifth player in this nascent business after Tata Sky Ltd, an 80:20 joint venture between the Tata group and Star Group; Dish TV Ltd, an Essel Group company; Sun Direct TV Pvt. Ltd, a joint venture between Chennai-headquartered SunTV Network Ltd and Malaysia’s South Asia Entertainment Holdings Ltd; and Big TV.
Public broadcaster Prasar Bharti runs a free service, called DD Direct.
India has an estimated seven million paying DTH customers and this number is expected to grow to 25 million by 2012, according to a report by industry lobby Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Airtel executives claimed the phone company’s large subscriber base of at least 75 million, its brand strength and a large distributor network will give it the edge in gaining market leadership, claims similar to what Reliance made when it launched Big TV in August.
“India has 225 million households and the DTH penetration is barely 3% of that,” says Manoj Kohli, chief executive officer and joint managing director at Bharti Airtel. “At Airtel, we didn’t want to miss this opportunity, and that’s how we decided last year to enter this segment and add media and entertainment to our portfolio.”
“The entrance of every new player into the segment will help expand the market and that is good news for the industry and consumers,” says Rajesh Jain, who heads the information, communication and entertainment practice at audit and consulting firm KPMG.
Airtel Digital TV will be offered in 62 cities in the first phase and will eventually be available in 252 cities. The service offers 175 channels through different packages ranging from Rs2,499 to Rs3,999. The company said it will also offer a universal remote control for the television and a set-top box as well as a dish antenna that is 20% wider to ensure better reception during rains, a major problem with DTH services.
MUMBAI: The DTH (direct-to-home) action has moved to the southern market even as Sun Direct has mopped up one million subscribers in a short span of 200 days with low subscription pricing.
With Sun pricing its packages from as low as Rs 10 to Rs 140, market leader Dish TV has been forced to drop rates. The Zee Group DTH operator, boasting of 3.5 million subscribers across the country, has reduced the entry cost by over 40 per cent and introduced a special hat-trick offer for its subscribers in the four southern states.
As per the new rates, a new Dish TV connection in South India would now be available for Rs 1990 (plus Rs 200 as installation charges) from the earlier Rs 2,950 (plus Rs 200). In addition to this, there is monthly recurring cost starting at Rs 60 per month going up to Rs 300 per month.
Dish TV is also offering three benefits to subscribers under the hat-trick offer. The subscribers will be offered five leading sports channels, 33 free movies and unlimited gaming free for one year.
Sun Group's DTH offering includes 14 add-on packages (ranging from as low as Rs 10 to Rs 140) to "suit every pocket" in a "Pay for what you watch" concept. The one million subscribers, the company says, have come from only the four southern states - Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh - and the union territory of Pondicherry.
Sun Direct launched four regional basic tiers consisting of over 100 plus channels specific to each southern state (Tamil basic, Telugu Basic, Kannada Basic and Kerala basic) at the rate of Rs 75 per month.
Sun Direct now plans to have a national roll out strategy.
