Siti Cable and Star’s RIO deal

Dinesh jain

Contributor
Joined
3 Feb 2014
Messages
13,521
Reaction score
13,841
MUMBAI: Siti Cable is planning to increase the
package price of the television channels it offers
to its cable TV subscribers by Rs 30–40 on
average even as its content cost on account of
Star India’s RIO (reference interconnect offer)
policy is expected to go up by around 50 per
cent.

MSOs calculate their content cost net of
carriage fees. In case of RIO deals, they do not
get paid carriage fees by the broadcasters.
Siti Cable will offer all the Star channels at a
price to the consumer. If this gets implemented
and the incremental cost is passed on to the
consumer, it will be a profitable business model
for the MSO. The local cable operators (LCO) will
also be given a margin.

Siti has decided to take seven Star India
channels in the base pack. These include Star
Plus, Life OK, Movies OK, Star Gold, Channel V
and NGC. The MSO will add regional-language
channels, depending on the market that is being
addressed.

The second-tier pack will have two Star Sports
channels, while the third pay pack will have the
English-language channels.

Meanwhile, Siti Cable is targeting acquisition of
100,000 direct points from the local cable
operators (LCOs) in Delhi by the end of the year.
The MSO has already added close to 25,000
direct points in the last three-month period.
Compared to other leading MSOs who have got
some direct points, Siti Cable has been out of
focus in this area. But the MSO has initiated the
process initially in the national capital region
(NCR).

Siti Cable believes in acquiring direct points
wherever it is in leadership position, consumer
ARPU is better, LCO collections are higher and it
has better management control in the
geographies. Once direct control is established,
there will be more flexibility in terms of changing
the packages.

The MSO has launched broadband using Cisco’s
Docsis 2 and Docsis 3 technology in Delhi and
the NCR. It is upgrading 600,000 plus subscribers
using the cable TV, which it believes will take
two to three quarters.

Siti Cable currently offers 100 Mbps speed, with
consumer packages starting from Rs 599 and
going up to Rs 3,489.

The plan is to take broadband to the cities
where the MSO has over 50,000 subscriber base.
The markets identified are Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal,
Jabalpur and Bangalore.

Siti Cable and Star’s RIO deal | TelevisionPost.com
 
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