India’s viewers are awash with satellite TV choices, and now another entrant has joined the highly competitive arena. Telco giant Reliance ADA Group has launched its Big TV, and is looking to replicate the spectacular growth it has achieved with cellular telephony in the pay-TV market. Big TV has been testing and trialing its offering for some months, but is now offering consumers 202 channels including 50 VOD “channels”.

“With the launch of Big TV DTH, we aim to accelerate the growth momentum enhancing value of many million shareholders of Reliance Communications,” Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance ADA said in a statement.

Reliance is seeking to tap into a 40% market share within one year, not so much by “stealing” from rival players like Zee TV’s Dish, TataSky and Sun Direct TV, but in expanding the overall market for DTH pay-TV. Currently some 6m homes are equipped for DTH, and most observers are predicting a rapid expansion of the market. Big TV will try to grab share from market leader Dish TV (3.5 million subs), TataSky (2.3 million) and Sun Direct (over 1 million).

With 200 channels at launch, packages from Rs100 to Rs450 a month, and available in 6,500 towns and cities, the group is sparing no expense on the platform. It is also going for its competitors’ jugulars from the off, comparing its own value with Dish TV’s (143 channels for Rs262 a month on the Welcome Pack) and Tata Sky’s (92 channels for Rs200 a month in its Family Pack).

Arun Kapoor, CEO, of Reliance Big TV, said: “Competition is present across 30,000-35,000 retail outlets across 4,000 towns, with us launching in 6,500 towns, there will be a decent gap. We will offer nearly 10 audio channels, 32 movies channels, among others. Of the 32 movies channels, English movies channels will be pay per view while the regional and Hindi language movies channels will be based on subscription.”

Kapoor added: “Today DTH is less than 5 per cent of the total TV market, which we are waiting to capture. There is enough room for the players to grow profitably in the future.”

Reliance is seen as having a special advantage locally in that it is already heavily involved in telecoms, broadband, home video and film production. In other words there are very real opportunities for Reliance to cross-market Big TV in these related zones of interest. Reliance has some 2000 retail stores of its own (for its telephony operation) and has placed trained staff in 6500 other cities and towns.

Having already been available to Reliance Energy customers who number 3.5 million and 2 million PCOs controlled by Reliance Communications, Big TV starts with between 100,000 and 150,000 subscribers.

Unlike Zee or TataSky (or pubcaster Doordarshan) Big TV is depending on MPEG4 for its transmissions which manages to carry more channels per satellite transponder than its rivals. Its receiver boxes also come equipped with hard drives for recording content.

Next up is a matching IPTV service, says Reliance, by the end of this year.

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