DTH
Economic Survey terms broadband as ‘next frontier’
NEW DELHI: Those technologies like broadband and DTH are important for India can be gauged from the fact they find references in the Economic Survey and the presidents address to a join session of Parliament today.
Along with liberal doses of mention of the telecom sector, countrys annual performance report card Economic Survey termed the emerging service of broadband as the “next frontier.”
“India lags behind the world to a considerable extent in the field of broadband telecom. The new policy encourages creation of growth of infrastructure through various technologies. This may have a bigger impact on the economy as compared to the growth in ordinary voice telephony,” the Survey, tabled today in Parliament, stated.
“The services have been launched recently and with the increase in volume and competition, the cost of these services are likely to decrease. Bandwidth will become cheaper to the extent the domestic traffic is switched within the country and servers accessed by Indian users are located within the country”, the survey said.
The policy aims at three million broadband subscribers
and six million Internet subscribers by 2005-end.
The Survey also called for a fresh policy on spectrum with a limited role of the government on the utilisation.
“An important area requiring a fresh policy impetus is that of reducing the extent to which a state-led planning approach is used in the utilisation of the spectrum,” it said.
The Survey, which was optimistic on the telecom sector exhorted the government to maintain pro-competitive policy, while making the environment conducive for new players to make forays.It also pushes for lower tariffs to increase tele-density.
Heaping praise on the development made in the infrastructure sector, especially telecom, the Survey said, “The most striking success is visible in telecom.
However, the Survey was critical of the expansion of the tele-density despite the fact that it has grown. Pointing out that India continues to lag behind countries like brazil and china where the tele-density is more than 40 per cent, the Survey suggested that in order to catch up there was a need to maintain vigorous pro-competitive efforts in terms of public policy.”
The broadcast and telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India also came in for some support from the Survey that wanted a bigger and stronger regulator to facilitate pro-competitive policies. The Survey said, The policy initiatives taken in the telecom sector recently address some of these issues and looking forward, the sector would feature lively competition among private firms.”
The Survey also took note of the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) the telecom sector is the second largest after power and oil refineries —But the survey was critical of the falling market share of he public sector undertaking like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd,their growth in rapidly rising mobile telephony segment, notwithstanding.
“Over the recent period, PSU operators BSNL and MTNL have lost market share in fixed telephony from 98.65 per cent to 91.39 per cent. In the past two years, PSUs have actually seen a decline in the number of fixed lines, while such lines have grown in the private sector”, the Survey said.
PRESIDENT ON DTH AND EDUCATION
Addressing the Parliament , heralding the convening of the Budget session of Parliament, president APJ Kalam said that India has been a knowledge-based civilization for millennia and yet remains a country with an unacceptably high rate of illiteracy.
Pointing out that modern technologies would help in this aspect, the president said, The launch of EDUSAT, an educational satellite, and of Doordarshans Direct-To-Home (DTH) television facility will enable us to use modern technology in spreading literacy.
“Today our best and brightest are at the forefront of the global knowledge economy and yet many of our schools and colleges are unable to meet the aspirations of all those who seek the light of knowledge.This must change. India needs a new knowledge revolution, a new wave of investment in education at all levels of the knowledge pyramid, from elementary schools in villages to world-class research institutions. My Government will give priority to issues of both access and excellence in education,” he said.
Kalam also dwelt on he telecom sector by stating the government plans to increase Indias tele-density from a lowly 8.4 per cent today to more than 20 per cent by 2008.
The priority will be to provide both voice and data transmission connectivity in rural areas. The broadband policy announced recently would enhance Internet connectivity with increased speed. This, in turn, would help our rural areas to take advantage of the benefits of e-governance, e-education and e-health. The digital divide between rural and urban areas must be bridged expeditiously, since it is possible for us to leapfrog into next generation information technology,Kalam said.
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.
