India’s pay DTH platforms registered a slower growth rate during the period between April and June 2021, according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The total number of active subscriber base increased from 69.57 million in March 2021to 69.86 million by June 2021, highlighted the set of data, released last week, relating to licensed TV channels, DTH platforms and their subscriber base, and FM radio broadcasters.

The latest data on active subscribers for pay DTH services is in addition to that of the pubcaster Doordarshan’s free-to-air DTH platform FreeDish.

However, TRAI did not have any numbers for FreeDish, which is a free service as subscribers don’t pay any monthly subscription fee, while investing one time in a dish antennae and a set-top-box. But it is estimated that FreeDish — which presently offers less than 100 TV channels — subscriber base is larger than the total number of customers of all the private sector pay DTH platforms put together.

Meanwhile, TRAI data also showed that India has a total 915 private satellite TV channels that have been permitted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) as on June 30, 2021.

Type of Permission	Number of channels	Remarks
Uplinking only	16	TV channels uplinked from India but downlinked abroad only
Downlinking only	70	TV channels uplinked from abroad but downlinked only in India
Both Uplinking & downlinking	829	TV channels uplinked from India and also downlinked only in India
Total	915	Source: Ministry of I&B

According to figures supplied by broadcasters to TRAI, mandated by rules, there are 346 satellite pay TV channels as on  June 30, 2021, including 252 SD pay TV channels and 94 pay HD TV channels.

Apart from these pay channels, all other channels permitted by MIB may be considered as FTA.

There were 1,731 MSOs registered with the MIB as on June 2021. As per data reported to the regulator, there are 12 MSOs and one HITS operator who have a subscriber base of more than one million.

Sl. No.	Name of the operator	Total Active Subscriber Base (includes subscribers who have been inactive or temporarily suspended for not more than last 90 days)
1.	Siti Networks Ltd.	7,861,314
2.	GTPL Hathway Ltd.	7,833,694
3.	Hathway Digital Ltd.	5,603,942
4.	Den Networks Ltd.	4,862,741
5.	Thamizhaga Cable TV Communication Pvt Ltd	3,693,943
6.	Kerala Communicators Cable Ltd	2,889,439
7.	Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation Ltd	2,885,583
8.	Fastway Transmissions Pvt Ltd	2,195,619
9.	KAL Cables Pvt. Ltd.	2,081,801
10.	NXT Digital Ltd (HITS)	2,025,202
11.	V K Digital Network Pvt. Ltd.	1,845,823
12.	Asianet Digital Network Pvt. Ltd.	1,208,681
13.	NXT Digital Ltd (Cable TV)	1,105,650

India is, probably, the only country that has achieved 100 percent digitization of cable TV network through mandatory regulations.

Dwelling on FM radio broadcasting in the country, TRAI said apart from the radio channels operated by pubcaster All India Radio, there are 384 operational private FM radio stations in 111 cities operated by 34 private FM Radio broadcasters as on June 2021.

In the previous quarter, there were 366 private FM radio stations in 105 cities operated by 30 FM radio broadcasters.

The advertisement revenue reported by FM radio broadcasters during the quarter ending  June 30, 2021 stood at Rs. 148.02 crore as against Rs. 321.52 crore in the previous quarter, showing a dip in advertising.