Airtel digital TV, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel has announced a new Freemium Pay Per View (PPV) movie channel for its customers. This will allow Airtel digital TV customers to watch pre-scheduled movies on its Pay Per View platform for free. To make up for the revenues, Airtel will display ads on 1/4 screen on the PPV channel, thus making only 3/4 screen available for the movie. If any customer wants to view the movie in full screen, they can subscribe to the movie by sending the SMS Book to 54325 or by dialing 12150 from their registered number. This is quite similar to what BrizzTV offers. BrizzTV’s AngelList listing suggests that it will be using this platform to show users content from unsubscribed channels while showing display ads on the side. Remember that BrizzTV had partnered with Airtel Digital TV to deploy its interactive test preparation service iExam on Airtel’s DTH service in March 2012. So it's quite possible that Airtel digital TV has again partnered with BrizzTV to implement this new offering. A report by Techcircle confirms that Airtel has indeed partnered with BrizzTV for the offering and also states that BrizzTV and Airtel will share ad revenues. Airtel's Freemium PPV channel is an interesting offering for one that the company is bound to make more money from advertising than it would have made through customer subscription. Say what you want but subscription based models have not been able to sustain in most of the businesses. That said, if Airtel can bring relatively newer movies…
