DTH
DD notifies tenders for FreeDish MPEG4 STBs
NEW DELHI: Tenders submitted for set top boxes suitable for MPEG4 upgradation of the country’s only free-to-air direct-to-home platform DD FreeDish will be opened on 25 October 2016.
In an announcement, the Indian pubcaster Doordarshan said that original equipment manufacturers filing tenders for this purpose would have to be DD authorized OEMs to sell DD approved Indian conditional access system (iCAS) and firmware/middleware-enabled boxes.
Those applying would have to buy the form for Rs 10,000 and then give earnest money for Rs 1 million and deliver the STBs within a period of three months.
A DD official, who did not want to be named, said it was clear that DD will not be paying any money to those who are found suitable but will only approve their bids in accordance with the parameters set for suitability of the STBs. The earnest money was only aimed at getting genuine manufacturers, he added.
India is expected to have 173 million paid cable and satellite home in India by the beginning of next year and the official added that the exact number of FreeDish subscribers would be known when the Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS) system becomes fully operational. Since any individual can buy a FreeDish antenna and set it atop his house, it is difficult to indicate the number of subscribers.
A pre-bid conference would be held on 3 October 2016.
The application form, including technical and financial details, can be downloaded from website www.tenderwizard.com/PB. E-application notice is also available on Doordarshan website www.ddindia.gov.in using the link tender notice (engineering) or from eprocure.gov.in/cppp.
Earlier, indiiantelevision.com had reported that FreeDish had plans to add 24 new channels, increasing the number from 80 to 104.
The platform has space for 80 channels altogether, including its own channels and Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV along with 24 All India Radio channels.
Sources told indiantelevision.com that FreeDish is being encrypted through iCAS to keep a tab on the number of subscribers, but it would remain free-to-air.
Also read: Free Dish capacity to go up from 80 to 104 TV channels before year-end
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.
