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16 Jan

Web Takes Star Turn in China


10 Jan

China Communist Party-Affiliated Website Seeks Shanghai IPO


15 Dec

Preparing for the digital age


15 Dec

I&B ministry plans financial incentives in digitization effort


9 Dec

Dish TV tapping investors for Rs 1,000-cr fund


8 Dec

'Blade Runner' Film Backer Run Run Shaw to Retire Aged 104 as TVB Chairman


7 Dec

Cable digitisation to transform India's US$7bn TV industry


7 Dec

Govt may gain R55,000 cr with 100% cable digitisation


29 Nov

China's TV commercial ban may backfire


18 Nov

Indian TV mogul hopes to channel US viewers


2 Nov

Adspend to rise in Asia; India to become third-largest TV market


2 Nov

Adspend to rise in Asia


28 Oct

Cable cos need R1,000 cr in metros for digitisation


17 Oct

Utopia called digitisation


14 Oct

First Media Brings Showtime VOD in partnering with HBO Asia


10 Oct

Method in the madness


4 Oct

Asia pay TV market makes easy target


29 Sept

India set to pip Oz, Korea to 3rd spot in Asia TV ad mkt


29 Sept

There is good news and bad


28 Sept

TV ad market to expand: report


28 Sept

Annual Indian TV Revenues to Hit $15 Billion by 2016


21 Sept

Asia media to grow despite economy woes


13 Sept

What India can learn from Asian media


09 Sept

This kid grows up fast


08 Sept

Asian media money goes mobile


12 Aug

Adspend growth to slow in Asia


24 July

A riot of Colors


20 July

Asia offers Murdoch growth, but also more hurdles


6 June

Audience the winner from more Hong Kong TV stations


2 June

The rise of the DTH space


28 May

Star-Zee venture will drive digitisation, consolidation


27 May

STAR, Zee form distribution JV to shake up TV business


13 May

Soaring revenues and massive cost inflation as digital TV starts to take shape


13 May

India will be global DTH market by 2012


13 May

India to host largest number of DTH viewers by 2012


12 May

Pay-TV subscriptions in APAC grows 9% in 2010 - study


11 May

TelkomVision aims to double subscribers


11 May

Indian C&S ad market to surpass China by 2017 MPA


25 March

CVC Capital Partners Asia Pacific III to acquire 49% stake in LinkNet


22 March

First Media Receives $269m in Investment


15 March

DTH and digitization


2 March

India trims broadcast budget


28 Feb

RPT-BUDGET VIEW-Media cos seek higher FDI, lower taxes


21 Feb

Indonesia sees Celestial expansion; Booming market eager for Chinese movie channel


20 Feb

The Murdoch in Waiting


16 Feb

Tata Sky, Dish TV, Airtel to show Cup in high definition


14 Feb

10-m inactive subscribers hit DTH cos


24 Jan

TV channels bloom despite ad crunch


22 Jan

India's youth networks get local bent
The battle for India's youth TV market is heating up.


6 Jan

US Broadcast Alliance AETN To Make Inroads In Asia


6 Jan

Indonesian Ad Market One Of The Best Asian Performers In 2010


4 Jan

DTH: Beaming future on zooming economy


1 Dec

Market for Indian TV channels in US, UK gets crowded


23 Nov

DTH faces telecom pricing woes


8 Nov

Home-shopping grabs the eyeballs ; lSince its launch in August, Star CJ Alive – the...


5 Nov

New entrants will test TVB, ATV duopoly


26 Oct

DTH operators beam on rural demand


13 Oct

Indian TV industry's margins fall by half ; It had to happen.


12 Oct

When transparency pays


05 Oct

Developer Lee sparks concerns over TVB


04 Oct

Sharmistha Mukherjee & Surajeet Das Gupta New Delhi


01 Oct

Strong government spends key to Chinese TV infrastructure


01 Oct

'DTH market expected to add more than 10m subscribers'


30 Sept

India's pay-TV markets feel profits squeeze


30 Sept

US lobby group 'not able to back' move


24 Sept

PCCW's Li Says No Firm Plans Yet for Pay-TV Spinoff


25 Aug

China Plans to Form National Cable-TV Network Company in Industry Overhaul


19 Aug

CNS Bids Stretch to US$2-2.5 bn


18 Aug

CBS joins Reliance to launch in India


13 Aug

Global media titans hit China wall, take local route


10 Aug

News Corp. Sells Stakes In TV Units In China


9 Aug

News Corp sells control of China TV channels


9 Aug

Mogul's quiet retreat marks end of the affair


28 July

Big interest in Taiwan cable TV stake sale


21 July

MBK's China Network Systems Goes On Auction Block


7 July

New Study Critiques Singapore's Cross-Carriage Rules


30 June

Indian Authorities Mull Raising Foreign Investment Cap


17 June

Star Plus tests limits to retake lead in India's TV ratings war


16 June

MPA Forecasts Healthy Asia DTH Market


20 May

NDS to triple Chinese investment


14 May

Pay-TV sector claims Singapore is damaging its future


11 May

Monthly ARPUs of DTH players will climb to Rs 220 by 2014


5 May

Hazy financial signals for DTH companies; Direct-to-home (DTH) connections may have improved the picture quality on...


24 April

Indian DTH market to beat US' by 2012


23 April

SUN TV, ZEE SHINE AMONG ASIA-PACIFIC PAY BROADCASTERS


23 April

INDIA TO BECOME LARGEST DTH MARKET BY 2012: STUDY


23 April

Sun TV, Zee shine among Asia-Pacific pay broadcasters


22 April

Consolidation in DTH market seen in 5 years


22 April

Significant profit ahead for APAC pay-TV


22 April

Asia Digital to double penetration in four years


22 April

India will have 90% pay TV penetration by 2014


22 April

Asia-Pacific to see surge in pay-TV revenues


22 April

Pay-TV in Asia set to double over five years


21 April

India to be world's biggest DTH market by 2012-study


17 March

On-air rant sparks legal threat against India's CNBC by Bloomberg UTV


16 March

Rant sparks legal threat against India’s CNBC


11 March

Cable companies race for China's television audience


1 March

TV stations battle for India's top spot


21 February

Beyond music and TV


16 February

Direct to rural homes


8 February

Expensive package ; Advent of digital platforms like DTH, subscriber’s demand for quality...


30 January

Foreigners set sights on Indonesian pay-TV provider


29 January

Investors eye Indonesian pay-TV stake


26 January

TV and telecoms converge in Japan


26 January

TV and telecoms converge in Japan


23 January

Is group on sticky wicket with IPL deal?

 
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
 

29 March 2007

Connecting Broadband
By Joe Leahy, Mumbai correspondent
Financial Times
(c) 2007 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved.

Engaging India is a weekly online column analysing the issues, trends and forces behind the business and politics shaping India and its impact on the world, which appears on FT.com India, a dedicated online section on India. Engaging India appears every Thursday morning exclusively on FT.com India and is written by Jo Johnson, the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau chief; Amy Yee, New Delhi correspondent; and Joe Leahy, Mumbai correspondent.

The foreign interface with India is so often linked to high-technology: western doctors send X-rays for analysis to India, New York investment banks email spread sheets to analysts in Bangalore to crunch the numbers.

But the domestic experience of India is often very different. The high-technology revolution that has made possible India's success in exporting services has in some areas passed by the country’s consumers.

One of the key areas in which India is lagging is broadband. Seven years after the broadband revolution began sweeping the rest of the world, Indian broadband penetration continues to seriously lag behind rivals, such as China.

As of last year, less than 2 per cent of Indian homes received broadband compared with 13 per cent in China, 8 per cent in Brazil and 3 per cent in Thailand. India had only 1.8m broadband users as of September last year, far short of an original target set by the government of 3m by 2005, according to Media Partners Asia.

On behalf of a group of cable companies and investors, Media Partners recently sent a position paper to the government urging it to consider capitalising on India’s $4.3bn cable industry to improve the country’s broadband penetration.

The paper, which was backed by Star Group, the Asian arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Macquarie Media Group, part of the Sydney-based investment bank, and Liberty Global, the US-based cable giant, was of course aimed at furthering the goals of foreign participants in the Indian market.

But the paper had a point: if more of India’s cable operators could be encouraged to offer broadband to their subscribers, the government could instantly boost the availability of internet access to the country’s middle classes.

On paper, the idea looks like a no-brainer. In total, 71m Indian homes receive cable, a figure that is growing annually by 14 per cent. At the end of last year, 60 per cent of Indian homes that had a television subscribed to cable. Last year, India overtook the US as the world's biggest cable market by subscriber numbers and now trails only China. India has 20m more cable than fixed line telephone home connections.

Media Partners and its supporters argue that to encourage the necessary investment to upgrade these networks to enable them to provide broadband, the industry watchdog, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), needs to adopt a lighter touch.

In particular, they object to the regulator’s imposition starting this year of a flat rate of Rs5 per channel. They say this rate is an arbitrary number and want the regulator to lay down a more consistent, transparent policy framework anchored in the needs of the industry. A flat rate, for instance, does not allow broadcasters to charge more for premium channels.

In reality, the situation is more complex. Rather than being driven by large companies, the mainstay of India's cable industry is its plethora of small cable operators, numbering more than 30,000, each of which controls the “last-mile” networks into homes in their area.

They have typically charged subscribers rates as low as Rs200 per home compared with rates in the US or the UK of $30-$40 per connection. This has been made possible by cable operators under-reporting the number of users in their subscriber areas to broadcasters. They might tell a broadcaster they have only 2,000 subscribers in their area when they actually have 10 times as many. They then hand over fees for only 2,000 to the broadcaster and pocket the difference.

As part of efforts to begin regularising the business, India recently began introducing digital conditional access systems, or CAS, in major cities. CAS, a set-top box system for unscrambling digital signals, makes it difficult to misreport subscriber numbers because each user must have a unit.

To help encourage uptake of the new system, TRAI set the flat rate of Rs5 per channel. N Misra, chairman of TRAI, says the system has so far been successful. Following its introduction January 1, it has already garnered 500,000 subscribers, he says.

He rejects arguments that regulation is holding back the use of cable for developing broadband in India; of the country's official 71m subscribers, or 80m by his estimate, only those using the CAS system are subject to any sort of regulation.

He says the adoption of broadband will depend on a range of factors from computer penetration to the development of e-commerce and the consolidation of small cable operators into larger entities capable of investing in digital networks.

“With broadband, the story is linked with e-content, linked with how great is the computer population in the country,” says Mr Misra.

Still, efforts to regularise the industry are off to a slow start if the government is looking to encourage large-scale investment.

The low flat rate, for instance, looks like it is aimed at pacifying the concerns of small cable operators, which in combination remain a large employer and often a key source of patronage for local politicians, as well as their subscribers.

“In a way, what the government has done is regulate the broadcasters as to how much they can charge the cable operators and how much the cable operators can charge subscribers,” says Farokh Balsara, a partner at Ernst & Young specializing in media and entertainment.

The upshot is that the Indian subscriber does continue to get lower rates - amazingly low compared with his counterparts overseas.

But if this proves to be at the expense of something as important as broadband access, then he may be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

 
   
 
 
© 2012 Media Partners Asia, Ltd. All rights reserved.