DTH
Space Systems/Loral wins contract to build satellites for Echostar & Intelsat
MUMBAI: Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a subsidiary of Loral Space and Communications and provider of high-power commercial satellites, has announced that it has been awarded a contract to manufacture a new direct broadcast satellite (DBS) for EchoStar Orbital Corporation II, a subsidiary of EchoStar Communications Corporation. EchoStar XIV will provide expanded services and flexibility for Dish Network’s more than 13 million direct-to-home (DTH) television subscribers.
“Our long-term relationship with EchoStar is an endorsement of the performance, reliability and service that our company provides,” said Space Systems/Loral president John Celli. “With an ever-increasing amount of programming options, it is an exciting time for the DTH industry and Space Systems/Loral is well positioned to help EchoStar meet its growing demand for advanced services.”
There are currently three SS/L-built satellites on orbit in the EchoStar fleet.
“As the fastest-growing pay-TV provider in the nation and an innovator in advanced services such as HDTV, we need the power and capacity that a satellite from Space Systems/Loral can provide,” said EchoStar vice president of Space Programs Rohan Zaveri.
In addition, the company has also recently announced that Intelsat Corporation has awarded SS/L a contract to manufacture Intelsat 14, a new, high-power C- and Ku-band fixed satellite service (FSS) satellite.
“This contract underscores our long-standing relationship with Intelsat,” said Celli. “This new project provides SS/L the opportunity to demonstrate our success in combining heritage, space-proven satellite technology with new innovation. We are pleased to be awarded the contract for this important new member of Intelsat’s global fleet.”
Intelsat 14, to be located at 45 degrees West longitude, will be the 44th Space Systems/Loral satellite built over the past four decades for Intelsat, the world’s largest fixed satellite services operator. The satellite will carry 40 C-band and 22 Ku-band transponders across four different beams, covering the Americas, Europe and Africa, informs an official release.
Intelsat 14 will have a design life of 15 years and will replace the PAS-1R satellite when the new satellite is delivered in 2009. Intelsat 14 is the first satellite awarded to SS/L in 2007. The company received seven satellite awards in 2006 from a wide variety of customers, including FSS operators, direct-to-home and satellite radio service providers.
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
