Bharti Airtel on Wednesday mentioned it’s in talks with Tata Group for a possible merger of their respective DTH operations. The 2 gamers have been in dialogue for the merger of Bharti Telemedia and Tata Play for a while now. This comes at a time when the DTH business is battling a dwindling subscriber base amidst heightened competitors from OTT gamers.
“Bharti Airtel Ltd and Tata Group are in bilateral discussions to discover a possible transaction to realize a mix of Tata Group’s Direct To Home-based business housed underneath Tata Play Ltd, with Bharti Telemedia Ltd, a subsidiary of Airtel, in a construction acceptable to all events,” Airtel mentioned in a regulatory submitting.
Tata Play is the main DTH participant within the nation with 19 million energetic subscribers. Airtel Digital TV at the moment has a base of 15.8 million subscribers and had earlier this month mentioned it added 29,000 subscribers within the December quarter. The corporate’s DTH subsidiary posted income of ₹761 crore, down about 3 per cent year-on-year.
“We proceed to realize buyer market share with a simplified pricing construction, a market-specific technique and differentiated converged choices. Through the quarter, we partnered with Look and launched a platform permitting clients to expertise Look TV by Airtel Xstream units powered by Android TV OS,” the telecom main mentioned in its earnings launch of Q3FY25.
As of September 2024, India’s pay DTH subscriber base stood at 59.91 million, down from 62.17 million subscribers in June 2024, as per information launched by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. At present there are 4 pay DTH gamers within the nation, together with Dish TV and Solar Direct. DD Free Dish is Prasar Bharati’s free DTH service. The business is at loggerheads with the federal government on the present regulatory licensing regime. TRAI has really helpful that licensing payment for the DTH business needs to be slashed to three per cent of Adjusted Gross Revenues from the present 8 per cent.
