Good news to DTH, HITS and IPTV subscribers in India. According to TRAI's new recommendations, subscribers can pick their favourite pay channels from September onwards in stead of buying bouquets of pay channels. DTH operators should provide pay channels on a la carte basis (each channel with a price) from January, 2011 onwards. This is really good news for 2 crore and 30 lakh DTH subscribers in India who are now forced to buy bouquet of channels.  DTH and IPTV operators can charge minimum fee of  Rs 150 per month to provide pay channels on a la carte basis and should publish rates of individual pay chennals once in 3 months. They should not increase prices within 6 months.   Ex. A stock trader can subscribe to CNBC only and can left out Colors and CNN IBN.  India, 147 are pay channels out of 503 available TV channels. But, subscribers are now forced to buy many pay channels due to boquet offering. There is not a single DTH operator who is offering all the available channels and most of the subscribers rarely watch more than 10-15 channels.  TRAI order will come into effect from September 1 and last date for operators to follow the orders is January 1, 2011. There is still no clarity on the impact of these decisions.   Dish TV quarterly results:  Company is gradually improving financial position but is expected to lose top position soon to Sun TV. Dish TV reported 63.2 crore loss in the first quarter. Dish TV acquired 6.2 lakh subscribers in the last 3 months. Dish TV now had 62 lakh subscribers (33% market share).  DTH operators acquired 25 lakh subscribers in the last 3 months.   … [Read more...]