How does DTH work? How different is DTH television viewing from the existing cable operator system?
The signal is broadcasted from a Ku-band satellite and subscribers can receive signals on small dishes ranging between 1.2 to 1.8 meters.

Subscribers need to install a set-top-box, which can decode signals at the user's end, in their television sets. The set-top-box costs around Rs 7,000 but in a tariff scheme, even the cost of this set-top box will be borne by the service providers. Monthly tariff of DTH subscribers should be around Rs 100. This will include a bouquet of free to air channel and pay channels, which can be customised to suit the choice made by the subscribers.

Currently, cable wires carry the television signals, but its quality is not very good. DTH improves the quality of broadcasting. Also in remote areas, either cable TV is not available or is very expensive and the quality is usually not good. In contrast, the best thing about DTH is that signals can be downloaded to a remote area with same ease as in a dense area, for the same cost.

What are your plans for the future? Any plans to augment the capacity of your current satellite Europe Star 1?
Within two years, we will launch another satellite with eight transponders, which like EuropeStar-I will be facing towards Indian orbit. We are investing $240 million in setting up the second satellite. The present satellite can cater to at least 80 channels and the second one can also downlink another 80 channels.

Apart from expansion, the second satellite will also lend redundancy to the whole system. This means that the system becomes more reliable, since if one of the satellites develops a snag, the signals can be automatically shifted to the other transponder and the subscriber does not have to suffer or even know that a snag happened. The two satellites will cover not only India but can also transmit signals to Europe, South Africa, Middle-East, and the entire North America. This means, whatever a broadcaster is uplinking from India can also be shown all over the world.

What are your plans for entry into India?
We are planning to form a consortium with Globecast (the broadcasting arm of France Telecom) and manufacturers of set top boxes, like Thompson and Sony to set up a DTH platform in India. We are talking to various Indian companies in the DTH arena, including Doordarshan, ZeeTV, B4U, and VSNL, to form joint venture partnership for the platform.

While the EuropeStar global consortium will take a 20 per cent stake in the DTH venture, the Indian partner will pick up the remaining. This is because policy guidelines issued by the Government allow a foreign company to have only 20 per cent stake in the DTH platform. Therefore we are looking for an India company that can take the financial risk for such a huge investment.

What according to you are the issues facing the DTH industry in India?
The 20 per cent cap on foreign participation makes it impossible for multinational companies to make such large investments, without management control. Financing of set-top-boxes needs a lot of money and can be done only by a company, which has the financial muscle to do so. The other issues are the duration of the licences, 10 years for instance is too less a time for pay back for such an investment. Besides, the licence fee share of 10 per cent in too high.

What is Internet multi-casting?
Internet multicasting allows satellites to download the sites which are most frequently visited and then broadcast them to the PCs of the subscribers. Again the same set-top-box, which decoded the signal on the TV set can be used to decode the signals. If Internet multi-casting is allowed then it would be an attractive proposition for companies us to set up infrastructure in India.