DTH
DD’s DTH initially will use ‘C’ band
New Delhi: The direct-to-home (DTH) platform of Doordarshan, which is expected to initially have about 50 free-to-air television channels, will be on ‘C’ Band and not KU-band as had been expected. The service will be uplinked with the help of the Indian Space Research organisation (ISRO) to an Insat satellite.
DD’s DTH service would switch over as soon as possible – may be in a year or so – to Ku-Band, reports an India wire service, United News of India (UNI).
However, as per information available with indiantelevision, something that has been reported earlier also, DD is planning a DTH service so as to cut down on the cost of expanding its terrestrial coverage, including in those remote part of this vast country where it becomes a very expensive proposition to set up either terrestrial or cable television services.
The primary reason for launching in ‘C’ band is because free-to-air channels are aired on those frequencies and it is difficult at present to switch over to Ku Band that is generally used for DTH, ISRO sources told UNI.
Apart from about 25 channels of Doordarshan, the attempt will be to get as many other private channels on board too.
Interestingly, ISRO also has an agreement with the only other licensed DTH player – the Subhash Chandra-promoted ASC Enterprises. But India’s Space Department officials, including ISRO chief K. Kasturirangan, assured information and broadcasting ministry and Doordarshan officials earlier this week that this will not create any problems.
They said that since Doordarshan is a public service broadcaster, it will be given the number of transponders it requires. Those who attended the meeting apart from Dr Kasturirangan included I & B ministry secretary Pawan Chopra, Prasar Bharati CEO K. S. Sarma, and Doordarshan DG S. Y. Quraishi, in addition to Space Department officials.
Though more than 100 transponders are available over the Indian Ocean, ISRO officials said that a C-band transponder can accommodate at the most three to four channels though reception will be good, while each Ku-band transponder can beam up to 10 channels as these are digitized. ISRO assured that Prasar Bharati will not be charged any money for the switch-over since it is a public service broadcaster.
After mulling over the idea for a fairly long time during which ASC Enterprises managed to get its licence, the Prasar Bharati Board in its meeting on 9 April decided to set up its own DTH platform instead of just functioning as a gateway for other players.
Furthermore, Doordarshan had already initiated steps to start a limited DTH under which about 160 villages (twenty in each of the eight states) in the north-east will be provided with a DTH dish and sets to receive DD programmes under the special north-east package announced by the Government more than a year ago.
The plan in the northeast was being executed by the Broadcast Engineering Consultants (India) Limited. Doordarshan DG S. Y. Quraishi had said earlier that the Planning Commission had also approved the proposal by Doordarshan for setting up a DTH platform and a sum of up to Rs 5 billion may be spent over the next five years for this purpose.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that the ASC Enterprises will be encouraged to use the INSAT platform since that will help the government to ensure adherence to the advertising and broadcasting codes, apart from being subject to Indian laws.
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.
