Pyramid Saimira Owned Spize TV Buys South Asian Content Focused DTH Co WorldTV Europe

Spize TV, the DTH company owned by the Pyramid Saimira group, has acquired WorldTV Europe, the European operations of GlobeCast World TV. Globecast is owned by France Telecom, and also has operations in USA. Spize TV, in which Pyramid Saimira has 51 percent stake, runs a DTH network called RootsGlobal. Group Chairman PS Saminathan has told the Economic Times that they’ll be investing $15 million in the short term to integrate the operations of Spize TV and WorldTV Europe, and invest $50 million in the European operations over the next 2-3 years. Spize is targeting a total subscriber base of 30,000.

WorldTV was launched in 2007 with a South Asia focus - with a channel bouquet that included Sony Entertainment TV Asia, Star Plus, Star One, Max, Star Gold and Filmy, and the services were priced at EUR 299 per year. Since then, they have since expanded their channel bouquet to include Aaj Tak, Sahara One, NDTV 24×7, and Pakistani channels PTV and Geo News. That’s still a fairly limited list of channels.

Saimira and Spize really needs to be careful here - the South Asian piece has been attempted before, at least on the Internet, by a rather adventurous Jump TV, which then decided to focus primarily on the Sports TV business; perhaps the regional content business didn’t find many takers. However, the DTH business is different from the online TV business (wouldn’t you rather watch content on television?) so it’s perhaps not right to compare the two.

Related:
– Pyramid Saimira Winds Up Film Distribution In India; Defers Reel Acquisition
– Services On Airtel DTH: Indiatimes Shopping, MakeMyTrip, WorldSpace, MapUnity, AskLaila, StarsTell
– IPTV Gets The Government Nod; DTH, Cable FDI May Be Increased
– Reliance Launches BIG TV DTH; What About IPTV?
– Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

Services On Airtel DTH: Indiatimes Shopping, MakeMyTrip, WorldSpace, MapUnity, AskLaila, StarsTell

Internet companies feature prominently on Airtel Digital TV (DTH), and services appears to be a significant differentiator for Airtel. Some of the content and media services on offer:

- iAstro: powered by StarsTell, a services from WorldPhone, a VoIP player which is a part of Times Private Treaties (screencap)
- iCity: has two components. The Maps are powered by MapUnity, and the estimations of traffic are a function of the number of mobile phones on a particular road. The other component is local business information (restaurants) and events, being powered by AskLaila. . Screencaps: Mapunity 1, Mapunity 2 , Asklaila
- iLearn: is being powered by Edurite, and developed by Infosys (screencap)
- iMatinee: powered by BookMyShow, a Web18 site
- iNet: isn’t really Internet access on the mobile, but actually widgets which you can place on your TV screen. Widgets cover sports, news, stocks, a world time clock. The data is refreshed real time. (screencap)
- iShop: powered by Indiatimes
- iTravel: travel packages are powered by MakeMyTrip. You can’t book a ticket, but you can SMS a package to a number, and MMT will call back to close the deal. (screencap)
- Games: provided by NDS. The content will be refreshed on a regular basis.
- Worldspace: 10 Wordspace radio channels are available for free. (screencap)

The deals are essentially on revenue share. As far as the customer is concerned, depending on the package he opts for, he’ll get access to an application.

What’s interesting is that there’s a section called “Airtel Live”, like in case of the mobile WAP deck. Some of the services on offer on Airtel Live are free, while others are paid. As far as services are concerned, Airtel appears to be taking the mobile approach to DTH, where they will provide TV channels, and then bundle in other services that users can subscribe pay for.

More on IPTV and Airtels strategy, and slides from their presentation:

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IPTV Gets The Government Nod; DTH, Cable FDI May Be Increased

The Indian Government has announced amendments to downlinking guidelines for TV channels, allowing them to share their feeds with IPTV service providers, reports Business Standard. Earlier they were limited only to Cable and DTH. This go-ahead has been a long time coming, and has effectively delayed the launch of commercial IPTV services from private operators, particularly Bharti Airtel and Reliance. A LOT sooner would have helped, particularly since MTNLs IPTV services appears hardly have had any impact, and BSNL is still making headlines with announcements for IPTV services, but little to show for it.

Relaince is expected to launch IPTV services later this year, ExpressIndia reports that a compulsory content storage clause is being included in the guidelines, which will require all service providers to retain content for 90 days. This works two ways:

Firstly, it enables Time-shift TV for the consumer, allowing him to view content at leisure. I wonder if we’ll see a DVR revolution in India, particularly with products like Tivo which allow users to skip advertisements.

Secondly, since the content needs to compulsorily be available for 90 days, this will allow the government to check for any content deemed illegal in India. This has been a concern, particularly since IPTV is expected to rely heavily on international channels to differentiate themselves from DTH service providers.

Legacy of Licenses
I’ve mentioned in the past that India suffers from a legacy of licenses - different FDI limits and licensing norms for broadcast and telecom domains have so far left converged services like IPTV and Mobile TV in a limbo. In March this year the TRAI had sought to begin a process of reconciliation of licenses with a consultation paper on Foreign Investment Limits for the Broadcast sector.

The government is now planning to increase FDI in DTH and Cable TV to 74 percent, according to the Economic Times. More needs to be done, though - why should Cable Operators be barred from offering IPTV services?

Related:
– Time Broadband To Launch Web-On-Call Service On BSNL Networks
– Is Airtel Getting Its IPTV & DTH Act Together?
– Is Videocon Looking To Acquire Loss Making IPTV And VoIP Co IOL Netcom?

Reliance Launches BIG TV DTH; What About IPTV?

It’s over 3 years since we first heard Reliance ADA Groups DTH venture, and finally, they’ve launched BIG TV. Interestingly, the company - Reliance BIG TV Ltd - is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Commnications…takes me back to that interview that Kamla Bhatt did with Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment a year and a half ago, where he outlined the ADA Groups strategy of having a presence across the value chain - as content creator, licensor and distributor. Can listen to it here.

So BIG TV DTH will be the distribution arm, and there are 20 BIG TV channels planned as well. BIG TV is being priced at Rs. 1490 + recharge coupons, and offers over 200 TV channels in the MPEG4 format. Note that Airtel is also using MPEG4 for their DTH service. BIG TV claims that the retail channel for BIG TV will cover 1 lakh outlets in 6500 towns, but this part of the release easily takes the cake:

“An army capable of installing over 15,000 daily connections with specially trained installers would ensure fulfillment of every customer order within 48-72 hours.”

Reliance also has also had an IPTV service in the works…when will that be launched?

Related:
– Is Airtel Getting Its IPTV & DTH Act Together?
– Is Videocon Looking To Acquire Loss Making IPTV And VoIP Co IOL Netcom?

Is Airtel Getting Its IPTV & DTH Act Together?

Bharti Telemedia, the Broadband, DTH, Wireline and IPTV arm of Bharti Airtel is expected to launch the groups DTH operations in six weeks, reports Mint. This is a couple of quarters later than previously announced. The DTH service will be branded Airtel, and rates will be the same as other DTH operators. At present, DTH services around 13 million households, compared to around 75 million that cable reaches. DD Direct has 6 million subs, and Tata Sky. Dish TV and Sun Direct have 6 million subs in all. Others eying the DTH space include Reliance Communications and Videocon’s Bharat Business Channel Pvt Ltd (related story). While the service will use MPEG4, I wonder if that’ll make a difference when it rains…More here.

Meanwhile, another report claims that Telemedia is “all set” to launch IPTV services. I think Airtel’s been “all set” to launch IPTV services for quite a while - they’ve been testing IPTV in Gurgaon for over a year and a half (a review here). Punit Garg, GM IPTV for Airtel had told me last year that they were going to launch IPTV in December, but that never happened. Apparently, private telecom operators are not yet allowed to launch IPTV services - according to this report, the I&B ministry had pulled up Airtel for launching services without approval. This, while MTNL has commercially launched IPTV services.

Telemedia’s revenues grew at around 23 percent year-on-year in Q1 of this fiscal. At present, wireline services are operational in 94 cities, and Airtel is likely to use its mobile retail sales reach of 923472 outlets. Two different battles in this space - while Public telcos (MTNL, BSNL) have been pushing IPTV to stem the decline of wireline services, Private Telcos are banking on it to help grow the subscriber base. So far, Telemedia has an impressive broadband coversion rate of 35.6%, with around 85.3 lakh broadband subs out of 23,93,732 wireline subs.

It appears that Airtel has been hedging its bets between IPTV and DTH - In India, the last mile is not unbundled and the cost of deploying wireline infrastructure is a deterrant. At the same time, DTH, though not as interactive, already has regulatory approvals, and is also not as regulated as IPTV. Chances are that given the commercial muscle behind DTH, it has received greater consumer acceptance than IPTV. For Airtel, both technologies offer more Average Revenue Per User than the mobile space…and it looks like DTH will win.

Related:
– Airtel Mobile VAS Revenues At Rs. 235.55 Crores Per Month; Non-SMS 57% of VAS At Rs. 133.56 Crores Per Month
– Why The Decline In Wireline Subscribers Isn’t Good For India; Subscriber Numbers
– Is Videocon Looking To Acquire Loss Making IPTV And VoIP Co IOL Netcom?

Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

Looks like JeevanSathi.com won’t be able to find a DTH partner, for a while. Its peers - Shaadi (People Interactive) and Bharatmatrimony (Consim Info) have found DTH partners in Dish TV and Tata Sky. Bharatmatrimony has been live (details here) on Tata Sky as Actve Matrimony for a while now, and Shaadi announced their plans yesterday (via release). There isn’t another DTH player in the market - BIG TV (from Reliance ADAG) is still in the works, and Bharti Telemedia (Airtel) has had FDI issues.

Update: Was just informed that there is another DTH player - DD Direct. Wonder what the service will be called if JS ties up with them — Direct Saathi?

How does this work?
In case of Shaadi Active, users can search for a bride or groom, according to age, community, caste, profession etc, and the subscriber can choose to contact him/her. A problem - it appears that there will be a limited search database, refreshed on a daily basis, and not the entire database.

Actve Matrimony also has limited access - to around 1000 profiles every week, and listings are on an op-in basis from premium subscribers. DTH users can also seek contact details via SMS to Tata Sky, and Tata Sky subscribers are offered the service free of cost. Interestingly, information is being displayed without name and photo. some details here.

What this is all about

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