DTH needs an OTT refresh to add pay subscribers

Direct-to-Home (DTH) business in India has slowed down, and in fact, the paying subscribers are going down. As per TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) data, the pay subscriber base of DTH operators in the country went down by 2.02% in the June 2023 quarter (from 65.50 million to 64.18 million).

This is likely because more and more consumers are switching to OTT (over-the-top) platforms for their entertainment needs. Most of the GEC (general entertainment channels) are offering their content on OTT platforms alongside TV. Thus, in a single subscription, users are getting all of the content they could have only watched on watch at a time directly on their phones, tablets, laptops, and more.

To keep adding subscribers, DTH players need to revamp their business model and add OTT as a value-added service, if not a complimentary one. Tata Play Binge, Airtel Xstream, and Dish TV Watcho are all OTT platforms of the respective companies engaged in the DTH business. But these platforms aren’t being pushed as aggressively as a primary service by the DTH operators as they want to sell more of their STBs.

While Airtel has found a way to sell more DTH connections with the help of Airtel Black, the other companies can’t do that as they don’t have other services to bundle here. DTH companies in the country have to find a way to communicate to consumers that their OTT platforms are just as good as their DTH services.

Tata Play Binge, for example, offers the kind of access to content that a traditional TV Channel pack won’t be able to. The same goes for Airtel Xstream. Since these subscriptions give consumers access to content from several platforms with a single log-in, they are much better for entertainment than regular DTH connections.

DTH companies have to find a way to bundle these OTT platforms at no extra cost with basic channel packs to ensure that more and more people purchase DTH connections as they would be getting access to these OTT platforms at a basic cost then. Further, standalone subscriptions of these platforms will also help with boosting the subscriber numbers and overall revenues. Telecomtalk