In addition to the subscribers of the DD Free Dish (free DTH services of Doordarshan), India has around 7 cr DTH subscribers as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report October – December, 2019. The subscription figure of the total active subscribers included inactive and temporarily suspended subscribers for not more than the last 120 days.
However, as per new regulatory framework of Broadcasting and Cable TV Services, the total active subscribers are now counted to include only those subscribers who are inactive/temporarily suspended for not more than the last 90 days.
This pay DTH subscriber base was split amongst four players. The TRAI report gave the breakup of pay DTH subscribers as Tata Sky with 31.80 percent, Dish TV with 30.55 percent, Airtel Digital TV Services with 23.31 percent and Sun Direct with 14.35 percent. The numerical break up assuming that the number of subscribers was rounded off to Tata Sky 2.23 crore, Dish TV 2.14 crore , Airtel Digital TV 1.63 crore and Sun Direct one crore.
According to the TRAI report, Pay DTH subscriber base in India grew by 0.068 crore (0.6 million or 6 lakh) as on 31 December 2019 to 6.998 crore (69.88 million, 699.8 lakh) when compared to 6.930 crore (69.30 million, 693 lakh) on 30 September 2019. Please refer to the figure below for the quarter-on-quarter change in pay DTH subscriber base.
Cable TV operators As on 31st December 2019, there were 1613 MSOs registered with the ministry of information & broadcasting (MIB). Further, as per the data reported by MSOs / HITS operators, there were 14 MSOs which crossed 10 lakh subscribers. The following chart lists out those MSOs.
