Dish TV acquires additional transponders to expand channel capacity by 50%

Dish TV announced the signing up of a long term contract for additional transponders on Asiasat with 'Antriksh'. With this, the total transmission bandwidth stands increased from 432 MHz to 648MHz. The new transponders are closely located to the current transponders allowing channels beamed from it to be available to existing customers as well.

The increased transponder capacity will enable Dish TV to increase its standard definition channel capacity to over 320 and High Definition capacity to over 30 which will be substantially higher than any competing DTH operator in both HD as well as SD transmission. This substantial increase in capacity over competition is likely to be a game changer for Dish TV in the Indian DTH market.

Speaking on the occasion, Jawahar Goel, Managing Director, Dish TV India Limited, said, "The addition of significant channel capacity in both HD and SD is expected to considerably enhance our offering to subscribers. We will be able to offer region specific content, enhanced VAS, as well as a substantially enhanced HD bouquet, driving growth of HD services."

R.C Venkateish, CEO, Dish TV, added, "With the dramatically increased capacity we will be able to offer the widest HD services in the country enabling us to tap into the high income group of subscribers in major metros and cities. We will also be able to significantly enhance our suite of value added services apart from being able to provide localized and region specific content. We expect this to translate into significant gains in terms of ARPU as well as total revenue for the company. Apart from this the overall width of our bouquet in terms of number of channels will be 25-30% higher than any other DTH platform in India, giving us a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace."

Having added half a million subscribers in the month of November, Dish TV is on track to add over one million subscribers in the current quarter, a record for any operator in the country.