Bharti Bags Licence For Dth Services

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Source - http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070924/asp/...ory_8353516.asp

New Delhi, Sept. 23 (PTI): Bharti Airtel has got the licence to start direct-to-home (DTH) services in the country. The company will initially invest Rs 150 crore for a nationwide launch.

“We have received the licence and plan to launch the service by the first quarter of the next fiscal,” said N. Arjun, head of DTH operations, Bharti Airtel.

Bharti has chosen Tandberg Television, a subsidiary of Swedish telecom equipment firm Ericsson, to provide it with infrastructure support.

Bharti Telemedia, which handles DTH operations for Bharti Airtel, will use Tandberg Television’s solutions, including the iSIS 8000 IP head-end and MPEG-4 AVC standard definition encoders, Arjun said.

The system is one of the first satellite DTH platforms in the world that helps increase transponder capacity and double the amount of available channels.

Bharti is setting up a state-of-the-art infrastructure facility near Gurgaon for uplinking and broadcast. The technology will also help Bharti deliver more channels in less bandwidth, while maintaining high quality pictures, officials said.

On the satellite capacity, Arjun said Bharti Telemedia has acquired transponders from the recently launched 4CR Insat. The transponders are likely to become operational by the end of this month.

The Zee group’s Dish TV, the Tatas’ Tata Sky and Prasar Bharati’s DD Direct are the three DTH players in the country. The trio have a subscriber base of over 5 million. Sun Direct and Reliance Bluemagic are expected to hit the market by the end of the current year or in early 2008. According to reports, Videocon has also applied for a DTH licence.

Dish TV will invest Rs 800 crore in the next three years to consolidate its position in the DTH segment. It has already invested Rs 800 crore since its entry three years back.