Big TV Introduces Special Onam Offer for Kerala

Reliance BIG TV has introduced a special offer in Kerala for Onam festival. The new Smart South 2590 offer comes with a Get Starter Kit priced at Rs 1490 and recharge voucher worth Rs 1100, inclusive of all charges.

Subscribers in Kerala are in for a treat as the offer comes with total of 83 channels, including 15 Sun Network channels and more South regional language channels. So customers will get to watch at least 11 Malayalam channels.

Smart South 2590 offer also comes with 12-months free subscription of South Starter Lite Pack plus 8 channels, one free regional pack, an interactive service application and 10 audio channels.

This offer is available till September 9th. Customers will also be able to watch ESPN, Star Sports, Star Cricket, NDTV India, NDTV 24X7, NDTV Profit, and Animax, Discovery, Discovery Travel and Living and Nick.

Competition is rapidly increasing in the DTH market with new entrant Airtel Digital TV claiming to have surpassed the one million mark after launching its services nine months ago. Following the steps of Big TV, its rival Dish TV is planning to raise Rs 1,000 crore from foreign markets by the end of this quarter.

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Big TV Launches Offer for Ganesh Chaturthi

In a bid to expand its customer base Big TV owned by Reliance ADAG has launched a Ganesh Chaturthi festival offer for new customers.

The offer states that a new customer can get a Big TV DTH connection for Rs 1,590 and this includes all the installation and hardware charges.

To make it even more enticing the company has offered its starter pack two for two monts at no charge.

The starte pack two has 95 channels and is available at price of Rs 185 + taxes.

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DTH Market to See Growth, but Profits Uncertain

The DTH market is expected to grow 57% by December this year as opposed to the same period last year, according to the latest projections made by Media Partners Asia (MPA), the international media research agency.

The five DTH operators, Big TV, Airtel Digital, Dish TV, Tata Sky and Sun Direct are expected to add six million new subscribers by the end of December, to take the overall subscriber base to over 17 million. But the report also pointed out that the DTH operators will face rising economic challenges.

Although one-third of the subscribers of DTH service in Asia will come from India alone by end of the year, the five DTH operators will still have only around 30% market share by 2013, as compared to 70% for the cable operators. Vivek Couto, executive director, MPA, said, "The economics of the DTH industry are risky, as both subscriber acquisition costs and other key operating expenses, including content, will continue to outweigh revenues for another five years for most players."

While some DTH service providers are optimistic about their growth. Reliance BIG TV said it will cross the three million subscriber mark by the end of the current financial year. Mahesh Prasad, President, Reliance Communications, for BIG TV, explained, "Currently, Reliance BIG TV has a subscriber base of 1.8 million and is aiming at a 40% share of the incremental subscriber base in the Indian DTH Sector."

Read more » DTH Market to See Growth, but Profits Uncertain