Indian DTH services go 'direct' to Pakistan, payments made through hawala

Satvijay

Member
Joined
7 Jan 2013
Messages
1,290
Reaction score
354
MUMBAI: Hasan Kazmi can't do without his weekday fix of Mahabharat and Devon Ke Dev...
Mahadev. He avidly watches the television serials on his Videocon direct-to-home (DTH)
connection.
Nothing odd about this, except that Kazmi is based in Karachi and is using a set-top box he
bought on the black market. For Pakistani viewers hooked on Indian TV, an entire ecosystem
has evolved to help foster the habit.
It's based on illegal direct-to-home (DTH) subscriptions and depends on the hawala system to
ensure payments made in Pakistan are received in India. Kazmi's connection, for instance, is
registered in India under a bogus name.
Tracing such subscriptions is near impossible, Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot told ET.
And, geographical proximity means it's impossible to stop the signal from being downloaded in
Pakistan.
He said such illegal subscriptions are also available in the Gulf, which has a large population
from the subcontinent. "We are aware the settop boxes are smuggled to Pakistan and the
Middle East, with registration done in Delhi or other Indian states. There's no way for a service
provider to fix this problem," said Dhoot.
The process works through a well-connected set of 'dealers' in India and Pakistan who place orders and even service requests on occasion
through email and Skype.
The Pakistani consumer pays locally in cash and the money is transferred to the Indian counterpart through the hawala network, a parallel
remittance system operating outside the purview of the traditional banking system.
Can't do much about it, says Pak
Pakistan, which doesn't have any DTH services, has around threecrore households, of which 80% owned a television as of 2012. Over a dozen
people in Lahore and Karachi told ET recently they had Indian DTH connections — Dish TV, Videocon DTH and Tata Sky being the most
commonly available.
Pakistani officials said they can't do much about it. "We are aware that set-top boxes are being smuggled from India and people are getting
DTH services illegally," said a top official at Pakistan's ministry of information and broadcasting.
"We believe there would be around 50,000 to 1-lakh such connections. Our ministry cannot do much to stop the smuggling, that's something
customs needs to look at. But we are working on digitisation of television channels in the country." Locals peg the number of connections as
being significantly higher, mostly concentrated in Lahore and Karachi

Some also said the government has not bothered to crack down on the illegal connections given the strong lobby of those involved in the
business. "Initially, the smuggling of set-top boxes used to be through the Wagah border," a Karachi-based dealer of DTH connections told ET.
"We would get people coming from India to carry one or two pieces. But the demand has increased manifold so now the boxes are smuggled
in large quantities through the Afghanistan border."
With the sale of LCD and LED television sets rising, there is increasing demand for high-definition (HD) broadcasts, available through Indian
DTH services. An annual HD subscription that may cost Rs 7,500 in India costs around 16,000-18 ,000 Pakistan rupees (Rs 9,600-10 ,800) in
the Pakistani black market. Dish TV is strict about cracking down on the illegal trade in subscriptions.
"We do not encourage any Dish connections going outside the country and have communicated this to all our trade partners, distributors and
dealers," the company said in an email. "Some stray incidents have been reported in the past and we have taken strict action like switching off
the connection and issuing penalty or debits to distributors. In some cases, it has even led to cancellation of distributorship of the trade partner
concerned."
Orders placed in Pakistan with the local dealer are met through local connections registered under fake names in states such as Rajashthan,
Delhi and Bihar.
The set-top box is smuggled to Pakistan and installed with a Chinese-made dish antenna on the roof to avoid suspicion and also because
sneaking such a bulky item across the border would attract attention.
Demand is such that dealers in Pakistan now maintain an inventory and can deliver a set-top box in 24 hours in some cases. Any glitches are
sorted out by the dealer.
"We don't allow the customer to get in touch with DTH companies directly ," said one such DTH trader. "If they have a problem, they call us and
we are constantly in touch with India on Skype. We pass on their problem and then the Indian dealers log a local complaint and get the issue
resolved . It's a very smooth process.

Source: ET
 
Pakistan should go the way that Nepal went.
They removed all the illegal Dish and installed their own Country Dish called Home Dish
 
I think Indian DTH must be getting considerable revenue from these overseas customers. As I remember from last years report Dishtv got almost one third of their revenue from abroad.
 
Yes, obviously these DTH ops wouldnt mind these illegal connections, as they are earning huge money out of them.
Few days back, there were reports that 5 million such connections exists in Pak. :win
 
Believe it or not at least 1 out of 5 house in UAE have Indian DTH connection rather than local cable or DTH operator due to expensive channel plans and less number of local Indian Channels. Has per information from one of dish technician which i met in Dubai said that there are around 300,000 to 500,000 Dish tv connections in Dubai and many peoples in UAE also use Airtel and D2H connections here in UAE. So one thing is sure about Dish tv is that if they stop their DTH service out side of India then surely Dish tv will shut down with in a year has most of revenue Dish tv gets is mostly from Aboard and has is D2H getting some revenue from countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Maldives has D2H has a very strong coverage beam in that part of the world. So its clear that DTH operators of India earn hugh profit from International market too not only through India Market.
 
Back
Top Bottom
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock