DTH
Tata-Sky leases Insat 4A; to offer 150 channels
MUMBAI: The countdown is well and truly on for Tata Sky Ltd, the Tata-Star joint venture, to launch direct-to-home (DTH) services in India.
Tata Sky announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) to lease all 12 Ku-band transponders on the Insat 4A satellite. These transponders will be used by Tata Sky to provide about 150 channels in digital quality to Indian homes, including those in the remote interiors.
Additionally, the company, formerly called Space TV, announced its re-christening to Tata Sky Ltd, and the branding of its DTH service as Tata Sky (and not T-Sky as earlier announced).
“We will be launching our service with 150 channels,” says Tata Sky Ltd CEO Vikram Kaushik.
On being queried as to how 150 channels could be offered with 12 Ku-band transponders, he refuses to spell out the compression technology the company plans to use.
Industry experts say 10 channels can be comfortably squeezed in per transponder. But with statistical multiplexing, Tata Sky can be able to accommodate 150 channels, they add.
The other option to ramp up more channels in 12 Ku-band transponders is to use MPEG-4 compression technology, but experts say the product is not fully out yet in the market and the price is not attractive at this stage.
The company is planning to launch its services in March-June 2006. But aren’t 8-10 clearances still to be obtained from various ministries? “We expect to get all the clearances very soon,” says Kaushik.
Commenting on signing up with Isro, Kaushik says: “Tata Sky is proud to use an Indian satellite to deliver its service to all television viewers in India. We are excited that our DTH service will be beamed from Isro’s Insat 4A, the most advanced and high-powered Ku-band communication satellite in the region. This will enable Tata Sky to offer superior picture and sound quality with a wider range of channels, giving us a competitive edge in the market.”
Adds executive director of Antrix Corporation, the marketing and export arm of the department of space and Isro, KR Sridhara Murthi, “We are very happy to partner with Tata Sky in their endeavour to bring about a revolution in television-viewing to India. The Insat 4A satellite has been developed keeping the local requirements in mind and will enable Tata Sky to provide superior coverage all across India.”
According to an official release, Tata Sky plans to offer its subscribers cable channels, new innovative programming and interactive services.
As already reported by indiantelevision.com, Isro is planning to launch Insat 4A from Kourou, French Guayana, on 16 December. According to information available with this website, after launch, a satellite takes anywhere between one to two months to settle into its geostationary orbital slot. What follows then is a month of signal testing after which the service can be offered to consumers. Going by this timeline, Tata Sky should become operational anytime between March and June 2006.
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.
