DTH
DishTV to approach TRAI on Star Sports 2
MUMBAI: For quite some time India’s largest DTH platform Dish TV has wanted to carry Star’s new sports channel launched earlier this year, Star Sports 2 as part of its service. But this has not happened.
Dish TV says it has not signed the RIO as it has several terms it objected to. It moved the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) for grievance redressal.
The interim order on the case came out late today stating that the question of validity of the terms of an RIO need to be first examined by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) under clause 13.3 of the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnect Regulations (2004).
One of the terms that Dish TV has been disputing is regarding ‘Remote access (e.g. through dial up or otherwise) to the Affiliate’s DTH platform (information related to subscribers) shall be provided to the Company in order to permit the Company to verify the subscriber numbers.’
As per this term, Star Sports wanted access to its subscribers’ details on Dish TV. To this, the tribunal stated that this term is contrary to a previous opinion of TRAI that was upheld by the TDSAT.
After hearing this, the Star Sports counsel said that his client won’t insist on incorporating this term in its RIO but the TDSAT said in a similar situation had arose before and therefore this clause may not have found mention in the RIO.
“In so far as the other disputed terms and conditions are concerned, it will be open to the petitioner to sign the interconnect agreement, including the disputed terms and conditions without prejudice to its rights and contentions and keeping its option open to seek its remedies,” reads the TDSAT order.
Dish now has two options before it – either sign the RIO, comply with the terms and take the channel or else not take the channel. Star Sports says that if it wants to take it to the TRAI, it has to sign the RIO including the above mentioned one. The TDSAT has requested the regulator to have its say on it within six weeks from the date of filing.
According to Dish TV, there are about 10 to 12 such terms that they object to and will be writing to the TRAI about in the first half of next week. “We do expect the TRAI will issue a direction to the broadcaster to amend clauses in the RIO. If Star Sports still does not adhere to the TRAI’s directions we will certainly revert to the tribunal to point out the recalcitrance again,” says Dish TV CEO R C Venkateish.
Star Sports officials, on the other hand, are also quite clear that Dish TV will have to sign the RIO if it wants the channel. “Despite the fact that the disputed terms in the RIO, this stand of the broadcaster that I have to sign the RIO before approaching the TRAI is indicative of their attitude towards the law of the land,” said Venkateish.
It is up to the regulator now to decide whether the terms in the RIO fit with the regulations.
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.
