Disney-ABC International Television (Asia Pacific), the international TV distribution arm of Disney has announced a Video on Demand deal with Aksh Optifibre in India. It's supposed to be a multi-year deal, though the number of years and the number of films that Disney has shared from its catalog, have not been specified. Update: Disney's deal with Aksh covers almost 100 films. Aksh has a distribution reach that covers Delhi and Mumbai with MTNL, and 20 cities in North India with BSNL. Interestingly, the Video on Demand deal appears to be limited to IPTV only, and does not include 3G video services which Aksh has recently launched for MTNL. The service went live on March 1st, according to the release. Given the limited reach that IPTV has in India, we don't expect this to be too large a deal, though we have asked Disney about whether a minimum guarantee has been paid for the catalog, or is it merely a revenue sharing arrangement on pay per view. We'll update when we have more.
