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:

DTH And IPTV
DTH, though, has its limitations because of the hardware and the bandwidth – the games are from the early 90s, and there is no return path like in case of IPTV. So why did Airtel decide to go with both DTH and IPTV? IPTV plans are still on, but their outlook on IPTV is significantly different. Bindal agreed that IPTV offers far greater opportunities for value added services, but is confined to the broadband network. Airtel will target a different market segment – smaller, niche and affluent with using IPTV and DTH will be a mass play.

Targets, ARPU

Currently, there are 7 million DTH subscribers in the country, and but Airtel is targeting the 220 million households that haven’t yet subscribed. Rather sardonically, Kohli said that the existing players have done a great job in educating customers in India, and hence effectively creating a market for them. Airtel estimates that India will have 40 million DTH subscribers by the end of 2017. Kohli made a very interesting point, that globally, in the DTH space, ARPUs have actually been increasing, unlike in telecom, where they’ve been declining.

Some slides from the presentation:
Opportunity , Growth Projections, Market Situation, Launch Plan, Consumer Needs, iTV Apps, Entry Offer, Tariff Plans

6 Comments

Lord Haw Haw October 13, 2008

Integrating your bills is a really bad idea... You have a dispute with your mobile phone bill, and they knock of your landline, internet and TV.

Knowing Airtel, they are eminently capable of doing this.

Nikhil Pahwa October 13, 2008

Well, this, when I've just spent 30 minutes with a call center exec about being incorrectly billed, and switched plans from NOP (apparently now discontinued) to Mobile Office, to prevent further billing. They're still not willing to accept that they billed incorrectly, but are waiving the charges...

Airtel has positioned the DTH as "digital tv"...it's a risk and can go either way. Consumers do have an idea of what they're getting if they're opting for DTH over CAS, but no one knows what Digital TV is, right? same issue that IPTV faces. Early adopters will set the tone, I guess.

to be honest, I do think that the single bill idea will work cause paying multiple bills is time consuming, and a pain. will only work if they integrate the billing departments, and that's going to be a huge ask.

MobStir October 13, 2008

BTW, Nikhil, Airtel did a great job in educating customers on mobile but its still the leader. So its possible that the existing DTH guys will continue to be the leaders?

Its obvious that in the next 2 years, AIrtel and Vodafone will try hard at holding on to their high paying customers while new entrants come in on mobile.

This strategy of bundling was tried and is being tried again by reliance & airtel as well... TV+Mobile+Electricity+Insurance+Investment (retail went to bade bhaiya)... the question is will customers put all their eggs in one basket? specially when service levels are so sad...wrong billings etc. So if you have a dispute with one service, potentially you go back to the dark ages...!! Tough Sell!!

Nikhil Pahwa October 12, 2008

Ravi: it isn't. It's SMS/Call center based

Mobstir: the feedback I've got from a few people who've tried to get the DTH service is that they're having difficulty signing up for the service. Airtel may have rushed this through because they wanted to use the India-Australia Cricket series to advertise the service, of which they're the main sponsor.

ravi October 10, 2008

How return path is achieved in Airtel DTH for interactive applications?

Thanks

MobStir October 8, 2008

Hopefully Kohli will get that clearly DTH companies run their businesses better than telecom companies....so rather than taking the telco approach to DTH, they should take the DTH approach to Telco and see if they can raise arpu's rather than reduce them.

I know how they can do that, but then they'd rather pay a several million to McKinsey and get the same info. :)