DTH
DTH segment expands its subscriber base by 1.01 mn in 2020
KOLKATA: The direct-to-home (DTH) subscriber base in India has reached a base of around 70.99 million in 2020, according to the Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report October-December 2020 published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). This points to an addition of around one million subscribers in the year.
While the total active DTH subscriber base stands at 70.99 million as of 31 December 2020, the segment had reported a base of 69.98 million for the last quarter of 2019.
Tata Sky is leading the DTH segment with 33.03 per cent market share. It has marginally increased its market share of 32.58 per cent from July-September (2020) quarter. Airtel’s DTH arm has almost closed its gap with Dish TV with the former holding 25.17 per cent market share, and the latter gaining 25.45 per cent market share. Sun TV’s DTH arm has also improved its position with 16.35 per cent market share compared to 15.83 per cent in the previous quarter.
As on 31 December 2020, there are 1,704 MSOs registered with the ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB), as against 1,613 multi-system operators (MSO) at the end of 2019. There were 1,697 MSOs including two provisional MSOs at the end of the previous quarter. Further, TRAI data indicates that there are 12 MSOs and one HITS operator who have subscriber bases greater than one million. Siti Networks, GTPL Hathway and Hathway are the top three players in this category.
A total of 907 private satellite TV channels have been permitted by MIB for uplinking, downlinking, as on 31 December 2020. There are 326 pay TV channels including 233 SD channels and 93 HD channels and 581 free-to-air channels.
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.
