Delhi has 88% TV Penetration of its total households; 100% Digitization achieved; How will Digitization Help
Delhi is one city in India which now has 100% TV digitization. Every household which has a cable for TV has a set top box to receive content. The overall TV penetration in the city is an astounding 88%.
There are 22.98 cable TV subscribers in the national capital; 23.21 lakh set-top boxes have already been installed. Delhi has 33.41 lakh households, with TV penetration of 88 per cent.
There has been a move from analog cable TV networks to Digital Addressable System in the four metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Chennai.
The rest of the country will be fully covered by December 2014.
What does digitization do for the industry? It will increase the revenue throughout the “food chain” and help improve content and quality for the consumer.
To give you a sense of the revenue opportunities, let us consider the statistics at hand. In India, there about 12 crore cable and satellite homes with an average monthly ARPU (average revenue per user) of Rs 160 and an average annual ARPU of approximately Rs 2,000. So the subscription base is worth about Rs 24,000 crore.
The gross domestic subscription revenues of listed and unlisted broadcasters is close to about Rs 3,500 crore. In addition, they pay out close to Rs 1,800 crore as carriage and placement fees. So the net revenue is about Rs 1,800 crore. This revenue under the TRAI formula under the DAS regime with broadcasters getting 35-40 percent of the share of a subscriber base worth Rs 24,000 crore results in revenues as high as Rs 9,500 crore as compared to the net revenue of Rs 1,800 crore. So this by itself is a five-fold jump without building in the ARPU or growth in subscribers.
We clearly believe that APRUs in the next three-five years with digitization could be up in the range of about 70 percent or even double which means that this net revenue of Rs 9,000 could hump to as big as Rs 20,000 crore.
Some other interesting and useful things to know about the Digitization of TV for India.
What is a Digital Signal? How are they superior then Analog signal?
In a digital signal, the receptivity is much clearer and all the channels have the same reception quality. As both the signals are received at the same time, there are no issues with the synchronization of sound with video.
Are Cable Operator ready to beam digital signals?
Cable operators are currently providing analog signals. There is a huge cost involved in digitization of cable signals and many cable operators are shying away from this kind of investment, barring few organized and large scale cable operators.
Why do you need to switch to DTH today?
DTH means, Direct to Home Service. Through this service, the recipient will receive the signals directly from the satellite on his Set Top Box. The viewer gets a wider range of channels to choose from which can be activated through packages. The picture quality is much superior and the sound is crystal clear. The viewers are also able to watch High Definition content which is set to make television viewing even more superlative. HD Channels is one of the major advantages for a DTH Service subscriber along with other features mentioned below. One can now watch his favorite sports action or travel & adventure series in high definition; he can now also see all the movie action with higher clarity. There is upto 5 times picture quality over normal or standard definition picture quality and the images carry 16: 9 aspect ratios