In the first part of this post-FY09 results interview with MediaNama, Aksh Optifibre MD Dr. Kailash Choudhuri spoke of the state of the companys IPTV rollouts, challenges, plans to raise money, targets and investment plans for the financial year 2009-10. Read Part 1 here. In Part 2 of this two part interview, Dr. Choudhuri talks about why the company has priced IPTV much lower than DTH, increasing their Pay TV and Time Shift TV bouquet, and plans to raise subscription rates. Interestingly, he believes that the real potential for IPTV, is from Advertising: There is a sense that you've priced IPTV fairly low - lower than DTH or MyWay... We've asked for a tariff revision from MTNL and BSNL. Our customers have developed an appetite for IPTV, and we can raise the monthly subscription by 20-30%. However, we will continue ot be one of the lowest priced services. The reason we're looking to raise the tariff is because we're offering Time Shift TV (TSTV) on paid channels. Previously we were giving recording of 5-6 days of free to air channels, which one could go back and view anytime. Now we've tied up with the STAR bouquet, NDTV bouquet, Colors etc for Time Shift TV. At 8:30, if there are 4 serials, Tata Sky Plus only records one. The viewership behaviour we've seen is that there's a large demand for TSTV. You need a high unicast ability for this, which we've built in our network. So Your Revenue Model Will Be Largely…
