Three of India’s biggest DTH players are planning on bringing about a major change to the Indian television landscape by contemplating a joint venture with one another. The three players are Dish TV, Airtel Digital TV and Videocon d2h.
Dish TV CEO R C Venkateish confirmed these fledgling plans in a recent interview. He said “We are in talks with two other DTH companies to form a JV that will work on content and carriage agreements with broadcasters. The idea is to float a combined entity with equal stakes of the three partners. The current system is illogical. Despite its substantial subscriber base, DTH pays more to the broadcasters while getting negligible carriage revenue. For the MSOs, carriage revenue almost covers up their content cost to broadcasters.”
Airtel currently has 8.5 million subscribers to its name and Dish TV has another 11 million subscribers. If the joint venture was to go ahead, then the three players would have a combined 25 million subscribers in India. This isn’t the first time DTH players have considered merging. In August of this year Reliance Digital TV and Sun Direct looked likely to merge together however the deal at the last moment.
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