Satellite Communications Vendors Calling for DTH Market Deregulation in Asia

India's DTH market needs to source satellite capacity  from  foreign satellite carriers to sustain its growth.  Members of the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia  appealed to Asian government to ease protectionist policy to satisfy pent-up market demand. According to Simon Twiston Davies, chief  executive officer of CASBAA , the local digital telecommunications and DTH markets, despite the ISRO success, remained under-provisioned.

The local industry cannot meet the demand from commercial satellite services  and DTH network operators. Deregulating the market to make international partnership possible is therefore essential to ease the shortage in transponder capacity.  The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) can't help but agree. The agency lashed out China and India for their refusal to comply with open-trade policy when it comes to domestic satellite communications industry.

Thanks to the booming DTH market in India, new players were able to break in the local satellite service market. DHT growth is exceeding INSAT SATCOM capacity, thus foreign supply forms a critical part of the domestic network backbone. Yet INSAT heavily regulates the market, increasing the cost of services and causing disincentives to foreign satellite players (ISRO can terminate foreign contracts in favor of a domestic operator). More than 19 million households in India has digital TV (10 percent penetration), and the figure is expected to jump to 42% in 2018. Operators also complained of  heavy taxes and regulatory caps, which they say are a big stumbling block to digitization since it requires a huge capital investment.

There are around six private players serving the local DTH and digital TV markers of India: Dish TV, Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Big TV, Airtel Digital TV and Videocon D2H. There is also free DTH service provider,  Doordarshan . Zee-Group controlled Dish TV controls more than 35% of the market, thanks to partneship with  Monster.com, Shaadi.com and Yatra.com to increase  value-added services and convergent services.

Analysts believe that the Asian satellite communications industry will continue to grow in the long-run despite protectionist policy in some countries. They cite the apparent technological advantages of satellite com technology over terrestrial broadcasting platforms. Industry growth will also be driven by competition across different platforms serving the telecommunications, mobile Internet and television segments.  Many operators are  looking  forward to medium-term growth in the HDTV, IPTV , DTH and video-to-mobile services. Rural areas will also remain a good target market for the SATCOM operators.  As Asian economy grows, so does the requirement for wide-band connectivity. With a projected 4-6 CAGR through 2020, Asian mobile broadband is a promising market for transponder market.