Thakur
Banned
- Joined
- 30 Aug 2013
- Messages
- 14,856
- Reaction score
- 8,575
For the whole of last year, it has been a bumpy ride for Jagdish Kumar. As the MD and CEO of India’s largest cable TV company, he has had to contend with broadcasters to ink favourable content deals and with local cable operators (LCOs) for collecting subscriptions.
Friction among multi-system operators (MSOs) has reduced but not entirely stopped. On top of that, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Media has poached talent from his team and is biding its time to enter the MSO business.
Being calm and quiet by nature has helped Kumar guide Hathway Cable & Datacom through this period of turbulence.
The company has seeded 8.5 million set-top boxes (STBs), the highest for any MSO.
The upgrade to Docsis 3.0 has been achieved and broadband remains an important play for Hathway.
Kumar still faces all manner of hazards, from the broadcasters selling channels to MSOs on a la carte terms (popularly termed reference interconnect offer or RIO) to LCOs’ uncompromising attitude and implementation of digital addressable system (DAS) in Phases III and IV.
In an interview with Sibabrata Das, Kumar talks about Star’s RIO strategy, its unrealistic incentive schemes, the compelling need to introduce packaging and raise ARPU. Q.
Even after digitisation in Phases I and II, MSOs have not been able to resolve the issue of consumer billing and packaging. Isn’t packaging basic to the business process of digitisation?
The key to success in real estate is ‘location, location, location’. For MSOs, it has to be ‘packaging, packaging, packaging’, as it is going to make a huge difference. We can segment consumers and upgrade ARPU.
The collection mechanism will also improve as more and more people are going to be under the prepaid system. That’s how all of us should move; it should be like the DTH industry.
Q. You have said that Star’s RIO strategy helped Hathway move to packaging while complaining about the rise in content cost.
Why this contradiction? Conceptually, the structure is good as on the back of it we could introduce packaging.
But the problem is that the incentive structure is not attractive enough. Star’s expectation of the penetration level of its channels and their positioning is very ambitious.
The discount structure should be more reasonable.
Q. Where do you think Star has been highly unreasonable in its expectations? Sports channels, for instance. Even during the cricket World Cup, this did not cross 30 per cent.
Hence, we are negotiating with them for more realistic RIO-cum-discount schemes. In fact, we are the only MSO to have largely implemented Star’s packaging.
Star has great plans to launch local channels and being the largest MSO, we offer the best platform to distribute them.
Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/interview/stars-rio-as-a-concept-is-good-but-the-discount-structure-is-unrealistic/ | TelevisionPost.com
http://www.televisionpost.com/interview/stars-rio-as-a-concept-is-good-but-the-discount-structure-is-unrealistic/
Friction among multi-system operators (MSOs) has reduced but not entirely stopped. On top of that, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Media has poached talent from his team and is biding its time to enter the MSO business.
Being calm and quiet by nature has helped Kumar guide Hathway Cable & Datacom through this period of turbulence.
The company has seeded 8.5 million set-top boxes (STBs), the highest for any MSO.
The upgrade to Docsis 3.0 has been achieved and broadband remains an important play for Hathway.
Kumar still faces all manner of hazards, from the broadcasters selling channels to MSOs on a la carte terms (popularly termed reference interconnect offer or RIO) to LCOs’ uncompromising attitude and implementation of digital addressable system (DAS) in Phases III and IV.
In an interview with Sibabrata Das, Kumar talks about Star’s RIO strategy, its unrealistic incentive schemes, the compelling need to introduce packaging and raise ARPU. Q.
Even after digitisation in Phases I and II, MSOs have not been able to resolve the issue of consumer billing and packaging. Isn’t packaging basic to the business process of digitisation?
The key to success in real estate is ‘location, location, location’. For MSOs, it has to be ‘packaging, packaging, packaging’, as it is going to make a huge difference. We can segment consumers and upgrade ARPU.
The collection mechanism will also improve as more and more people are going to be under the prepaid system. That’s how all of us should move; it should be like the DTH industry.
Q. You have said that Star’s RIO strategy helped Hathway move to packaging while complaining about the rise in content cost.
Why this contradiction? Conceptually, the structure is good as on the back of it we could introduce packaging.
But the problem is that the incentive structure is not attractive enough. Star’s expectation of the penetration level of its channels and their positioning is very ambitious.
The discount structure should be more reasonable.
Q. Where do you think Star has been highly unreasonable in its expectations? Sports channels, for instance. Even during the cricket World Cup, this did not cross 30 per cent.
Hence, we are negotiating with them for more realistic RIO-cum-discount schemes. In fact, we are the only MSO to have largely implemented Star’s packaging.
Star has great plans to launch local channels and being the largest MSO, we offer the best platform to distribute them.
Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/interview/stars-rio-as-a-concept-is-good-but-the-discount-structure-is-unrealistic/ | TelevisionPost.com
http://www.televisionpost.com/interview/stars-rio-as-a-concept-is-good-but-the-discount-structure-is-unrealistic/
